Prayer and Praise in the Spirit [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. When you're wondering whether the whole society is going to reject you, it's a powerful thing when a prophetic, revelatory word comes in and blesses you. Blessed are you among women.

This is no curse. This is a blessing, and you are a blessed woman. It's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Higher Power, as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout our entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org.

Or call 877-544-4860, 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Okay, beloved, are you ready for some good news?

Yes. Well, your body can get weary, and your mind can become confused. But if you are a born-again Christian, you are a spiritual being. You have a living spirit that is always ready and wanting to rejoice in God your Savior. And I want to talk to you about cultivating the life in the spirit as we come to this beautiful story of Mary, who has heard the news that she's going to give birth to the Savior of the world.

And everything in her life has been turned upside down, of course. And she goes to visit her relative, Elizabeth, and her husband, Zechariah. And this is the account of what happens, and then the song of praise that erupts from her spirit.

Luke chapter 1 is where we are, and we're at verse 39. In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. And she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. For he's looked on the humblest state of his servant.

For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed. A Sunday school class was putting on a Christmas pageant, and one little boy wanted to be Joseph. But another child was chosen to play the part of Joseph, and the first boy was assigned the role of the innkeeper. He was somewhat bitter over his assignment to the lesser role.

So when the actual pageant arose, I guess you know what bitterness can do to you. And so Joseph and Mary come, and Joseph knocks on the innkeeper's door. Innkeeper appears, and Joseph says, Do you have any room in the inn? And the little boy said, Why, sure. Come on in. I'll give you the best room. But quick thinking, Joseph put his head through the door and said, No wife of mine is going to stay in a dump like this. Come on, honey.

Let's go to the barn. It's hard to wrap your mind around what Mary was feeling in those early days. When an angel appears in Scripture, people are terrified because these are mighty warriors.

They are radiant and glorious and huge. And so every time someone encounters an angel, they have to be told, Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. But she is afraid, and she's confused, and she's uncertain. And she goes to visit her relative, Elizabeth. And there, when Elizabeth, who is an old woman who has miraculously conceived a child who will be John the Baptist, when Elizabeth sees Mary, she actually feels baby John the Baptist inside of her leap up as if John the Baptist is already beginning his prophetic ministry of saying, Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. I believe that. I believe that God could give spiritual perception to an unborn infant of something of a spiritual reality.

I believe that. And when that happens, then Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. We've been talking for weeks now about the Holy Spirit, about what it is to live and the power of the Holy Spirit.

And so here we are in Christmas, and this is what's happening. The power of the Most High God comes upon Elizabeth, and she is filled up with the Holy Spirit, and she has a prophetic word, a revelatory word of profound encouragement that could have only come from God. And she confirms everything that has been told Mary about the baby that she is bearing. And we see in what Mary then speaks or sings to the Lord, what we call the Magnificat, based on the Latin word for magnify that Mary says, My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. And I want to explore that verse with you today. A lot of theologians would say that the word for soul and the word for spirit here are parallel, and they mean the same thing.

And there's a case to be made in the scripture, I want to be clear, that some really smart Bible scholars would say, No, we're bipartite. We're soul and body. But I'm convinced that, and I'm going to show you today a number of scriptures that we're spirit, soul and body, and that there is a distinction between spirit and soul. Not that you make too much of it, but there's some things that only make sense when you understand yourself as a spiritual being. And I think that when Mary says, My soul magnifies the Lord, that she is speaking of the mind's capacity to dwell upon the greatness and the goodness of God, which we're invited to do every day. You can set your mind on the things of God. But perhaps she speaks beyond herself and doesn't even realize the whole weight of what she says when she says, My spirit rejoices in God my Savior, that there's something that is happening in her spiritually, because she has received a prophetic word which is spiritual, right?

Elizabeth didn't get all that figured out in her mind, is something that came in her spirit. And she utters this prophetic word, and then that impacts Mary's spirit. And she can't help herself but to praise the Lord. So here is a young peasant Nazarene girl who is in the eyes of the world, come under a scandal, and has very little idea of all the implications of what's ahead of her, who gets, by the grace of God, a revelatory spirit-filled word that then does something to her spiritually, and she bursts forth in joyful praise of God. So it's possible to rejoice in the Lord spiritually, regardless of our circumstances.

And boy, don't we need that now. So Mary is young. She is inexperienced. She is unmarried.

She's betrothed, but not yet with Joseph. And so she's unprepared for this, and she's terrified. And she asks first the angel, How will this be? Because she's confused. Angel explains the Holy Spirit's going to come upon you.

This is going to be a supernatural conception of a child. And in the midst of all of this, I just imagine what Mary is thinking and feeling. She needs to talk to somebody. You know, you just need to talk to somebody. And when you're going through a time like this, you need some people in your life that are wise and spiritual and love you. You really need some people like that. And she needed that. This is a time in which Mary would probably find it difficult to talk to her own parents because this shame would be on the family.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Would you love a better marriage? You don't need more good advice.

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When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. Well, she has this relative, Elizabeth, perhaps a cousin, perhaps an aunt, who's the wife of a priest. So it's a ministry family, and she knows them, that they're spiritual people.

She knows that these are the kind of people that could maybe help her make sense of all of that. When Anne and I were first in the ministry especially, but really all throughout our lives, you've heard me mention often her Uncle Stanley, who's in heaven now, and her Aunt Joella, who is very much alive. And they were a ministry couple. They've been in all kinds of ministries. They were the pastor to the Graham family in Montreat. They were missionaries in Brazil. They pastored in a large church in Los Angeles. Pastored in small mountain churches in North Carolina.

All kinds of ministry experience. And Stanley was just full of wisdom and joy of the Lord. And for the very first time that I met Anne, she said, I just can't wait for you to meet my Aunt Joella. And so I can't tell you how many times, early in our ministry, that we would load up the kids and head up to the mountains to just go spend a couple of days with Stanley and Joella, because we needed to talk. And we needed to have some sounding board. And we needed someone to say, help me make sense of this.

So what's going on in this situation, this difficult ministry situation that we have or whatever, you see. So this is what Mary's doing. She has traveled about 75 to 80 miles. Would have taken her several days to get to Elizabeth's house. And when she arrives, she gives this normal greeting, the text says, probably an honorific sort of showing of honor to Elizabeth, and then a shalom, a peace be with you kind of thing. And we're not told for sure, but I imagine that Mary is starting to think about, I'm going to tell Elizabeth all about what's happening with me. We don't really get the indication that Elizabeth even knew of Mary's pregnancy. Not totally sure, not totally sure whether Mary knew that Elizabeth was pregnant.

I mean, this is, we didn't have, they didn't have email, you know, it just could go show up at somebody's house. And so what happens is a very supernatural thing. Well, she's come in to find someone to confide in and say, I'm terrified and yet I'm excited and yet I'm mixed and I'm not yet married.

And what is everyone going to think? And I do believe that this is from God, but I'm struggling with all of this. And she just has all of this, all these, of these emotions. And she comes to her beloved relative, Elizabeth and Elizabeth, this godly woman just has a word that just spills forth.

It's like God just interrupted the scene and said, I'm going to speak before you can. And this prophetic revelation speaks of a mighty confirmation, but it also is a blessing to Mary. When you're wondering whether the whole society is going to reject you, it's a powerful thing when a prophetic revelatory word comes in and blesses you. Blessed are you among women. This is no curse. This is a blessing.

And you are a blessed woman. And perhaps for the first time since the angel had brought these troubling words to Mary, perhaps for the first time, she experiences joy at the thought of it. She has been troubled. She has been confused. She has been weary with a three day journey.

She has been pensive. She's been thoughtful and she has been submissive to the Lord, but now she is joyful. The whole of the song or the praise of Mary we didn't read, but she speaks about God who's looked upon the humble estate of his servants. She speaks of the one who is mighty, who's done great things for me, exalted those of humble estate, filled hungry with good things and has helped us in remembrance of his own mercy. It is an expression of her awareness and appreciation of the grace of God, of being a recipient of what she could not have deserved, which means that in this revelation, she has deeply apprehended the truth that this is of God and it's good.

And she's gonna need that in days to come. So what she says at verse 46, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior. Soul, the Greek word psyche, you recognize like psychology, it means mind. We usually think of the soul as encompassing the whole of the personality and the will and the emotions and thoughts of a person, your mind. But spirit is a different word.

It is pneuma. And there are a lot of scriptural examples where distinction is made between spirit and soul. First Thessalonians, Paul wants to bless us and bless the Thessalonians and he says at verse 23 of First Thessalonians five, may God, the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Even I think more noteworthy, the writer of Hebrews chapter four, verse 12 says the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joint and marrow.

It just seems to me that's important. What he's saying is soul and spirit, really spirit, soul and body are so closely knit. We're one. We're not a tripartite being in the sense that we're just going around disconnected like we have these three different elements or something. No, you're a person. You're a whole person. But though very close, there's something in the supernatural spirit-filled word of God that is like a razor that even knows between spirit and soul.

They're so intimately connected. Paul has something very important to say in First Corinthians two that I can't spend a long time on, but I really need to show this to you. This is the sort of thing I wish I had understood very early in my Christian life. At First Corinthians 2 12, Paul says we received not the spirit of the world, but the spirit who's from God. So when you become a Christian, you receive the Holy Spirit that we might understand the things freely given us by God. So he's clearly saying here the Holy Spirit has a role of helping the Christian to understand who we are and what we have in Christ. That just because you become a Christian, you do not automatically understand everything you have in Christ and what it means to be an heir of God. But the Holy Spirit is there beginning to teach you and show you all these things that have been freely given by God. And Paul says and we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the spirit. And then he says this, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

What is he talking about here? The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they're folly to him. And he's not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. You have people in your life right now that are not Christian and are not spiritual people. Now our society has all this mumbo jumbo stuff they talk about being spiritual. And what they really mean is that they are mystically and emotionally trying to be more aware and touch with things, whatever. But spiritual in the Bible sense is more of a technical term. Alan Wright, our good news message, prayer and praise in the Spirit from the series Higher Power.

Stay with us. Pastor Alan is back here in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. If you've ever thought that being filled with the Holy Spirit meant shutting off your mind, you're in for a wonderful surprise. God's word and God's Spirit were never meant to be separated. Word and Spirit always belong together.

The key to abundant life in Christ isn't knowing your Bible. The secret isn't being filled with the Spirit. The answer is both word and spirit. Though some traditions emphasize studying scripture, and some traditions emphasize the Spirit, the path to real Christian growth is the fullness of both word and spirit. As someone once said, all word, no spirit, you dry up. All spirit, no word, you blow up. Both word and spirit, you grow up. When you make a gift of support this month, we'll send you Alan Wright's newest audio album on CD or digital download titled Word and Spirit.

It's about the beauty of balance. Embrace the fullness of God's word and his Spirit and grow like never before. With word and spirit, you'll grow up and you'll be helping someone else grow as well. And remember, when you partner with Alan Wright Ministries, you'll be broadcasting the love of God to thousands every day. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, pastoralan.org. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Alan Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing. It's free and just a click away at pastoralan.org. Back now with Pastor Alan, prayer and praise in the Spirit.

What's our parting good news thought for today? Well, Mary said, if we remember from the Christmas story, my soul magnifies the Lord and my Spirit rejoices in God my Savior. And I think there's a difference between soul and Spirit. You know, the writer of Hebrews says that the word of God is sharper than any two-edged sword able to separate even soul and Spirit. And so there's a distinction between what's happening in the mind, that's the soul, suke, and what happens in the numah, the Spirit.

And so what's happening here with Mary is something that we can learn a lot about. What does it mean to pray and praise God in the Spirit? What does that mean is distinct from merely praising Him with our mind? And we're going to be learning about that from this famous Magnificat prayer in which she is rejoicing in God in a spiritual way. We've been learning about the Holy Spirit, we've been learning about the gifts of the Holy Spirit, and now we're praying and praising God in the Spirit. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.