Bloom Where You're Planted [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Whatever you do, don't think that this is the end of your story, because there's going to be a restoration. And Beloved, sometimes it happens.

It happens so quickly. That'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 Brint, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series, Remade. Presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, I sure 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.

Don't miss it. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org.

Or call 877-544-4860. We're going to give you more on all this later in the program. But right now, let's dig in and get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Remember that God is not a God who is interested in punishing his people for the sake of punishing his people. He never was. And I'm not just talking about just since the grace of the New Covenant and what we have in Jesus. God never was like that.

The exile was a disciplinary time. But it's not because God was interested in putting his people down. In fact, God was up to something here that is mysteriously good, though it can't be discerned yet. There's something interesting here that seems to be almost contradictory in the text. In verse 1, these are the words of the letter that Jeremiah the prophet sent from Jerusalem to all the people.

Look at this. Whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile. But in verse 4, look who is accredited with sending people in exile. Jesus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I've sent into exile from Jerusalem. So now the Lord's saying, I sent. Verse 1 says Nebuchadnezzar sent them. Verse 4 says God sent them.

Which is it? Well, it's both. What he's saying is remember who I am. God is able to take what looks to be only evil from your sight and turn it for his good purposes. So wicked Nebuchadnezzar is nonetheless used by God for God's ultimate purposes. And so God's still the one who's in charge. Now Joseph, remember, he's sold into slavery by his brothers. He's falsely accused by his master's wife. He's thrown into a dungeon and eventually becomes second in command of all of Egypt. And when he's reunited with his brothers, he says you meant it for evil and God meant it for good.

Both are true at the same time. This is a wondrous mystery of the providence of God. And what this means, therefore, beloved, is that there are times in your life where something is just irritating you and God's actually using it for your good. I don't know how I stumbled on reading about the African acacia tree this week. But the African, the iconic African tree, the acacia tree that you see so often in the photos that giraffes and elephants enjoy eating of its leaves. It has thorns.

It's a thorny, bushy type tree. And those thorns, they have within them a nectar that there is a particular kind of ant that likes to crawl about on the thorns. Now, the thing that makes this interesting is these ants are very aggravating. They are biting ants.

They are ants you don't want to be bitten by. And so two things are very interesting about the ants on the acacia tree. And the first is that the elephants like to eat the leaves, but they don't like the ants. So to a certain degree, it limits how much eating the elephants do.

The ants bother the elephants. So that's sort of protecting the tree. But some years ago, some scientists had this idea that they would take some fences and put it around some acacia tree so that the animals couldn't come and eat the leaves. And you would think, great, the tree is going to really flourish because now the giraffes and the elephants and things aren't going to come eat the leaves. The tree can just grow all it wants to and just flourish.

But instead, something they never could have predicted happened. When the animals weren't eating the leaves anymore, the trees decided that they didn't need to produce as much nectar as they normally did and weren't producing their same degree of thorns. And so the ants that fed off of that were really missing the nectar. And so they started eating the tree and other insects that normally didn't come to the tree started coming to the tree.

And they found out that when they had fenced off the acacia trees to finally give them some peace and quiet from all the animals that were eating them, that actually it killed the trees because the tree needed these pernicious ants to do their work. The reason I bring this up is that because sometimes the thing that's biting you and bothering you is the very thing that God is using. We just don't feel it and we don't see it. But remember who God is. When you're in exile, remember the Lord your God is providential. Remember that His ways are not your ways. Remember that He is over all and sees all and He is in your past and in your present and in your future. So He already is able to make provision where you cannot yet see. And so when you don't understand why something's happening and you don't know how in the world it could be good, remember God.

This is His specialty. This is His redemptive nature. You never know what aggravating thing might actually be helping you in the long run.

It doesn't feel like it at the time, but I've been through many of those that only later I look back and go, well, thank God for those biting ants. Remember God. And in exile, I think what we're learning from Jeremiah 29 is not only remember who God is, but remember who you are, people of God.

Remember who you are. That's what He's reminding them. Look again at verse six. Take wives, have sons and daughters, take wives for your sons, give your daughters in marriage that they may bear sons and daughters. And look at this.

Multiply there and do not decrease. Where is it that we've heard this? Well, we heard this in the beginning. In Genesis 128 where it says God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So when the Lord speaks through Jeremiah and He says, when you're in exile, be fruitful and multiply and fill the place and increase, don't decrease. Every single, every single person in the family of God knew instantly this is hearkening to what God did in the beginning when He blessed Adam and Eve. What's God doing? He's saying, remember who you are.

You are a blessed people. It's real hard to remember that when you're in the exile times. It's real hard to feel that way when you were in a good spot and then all of a sudden you're in a Babylon. Where you were the one that was well thought of and suddenly you don't have all those people. Where you had it all together and now it feels like everything's falling apart. It's real hard to remember who you are. But you must, beloved, remember that your location does not determine your position.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Maybe you're like many Christians in America today. You're stunned by how fast a nation's culture has turned away from God. The values of our country have changed. Suddenly most people don't go to church or have a biblical worldview.

It can make you feel like an alien in your own culture. There's a lot to learn from Daniel when he was exiled to the pagan land of Babylon. Through our special offer this month, you can learn to live under the favor of God in an alien culture the way Daniel did. When you give before the end of the month, we'll send you Pastor Alan's audio series, Daniel, a favored foreigner.

You may feel like a stranger in this world, but as God showed favor to Daniel in his foreign land, God's grace is upon you as well. Your donation will not only help you navigate through these troubling times, but it will also help someone else. Thanks for your partnership with Alan Wright Ministries. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks. 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. There's no time more important than the exile times of our life for us to get up in the morning and tell ourselves again and read it in the Word of God and remind one another that we are not only children of God, but we are heirs. And if heirs, we're co-heirs with Christ himself. There's a spiritual battle for our minds such that the very heirs of God himself are tempted in exile times to instead start feeling like orphans. When you know who you are in Christ, then the humility of your situation, the disappointment of your circumstances, the role that you may temporarily play, all of that gets put into its proper perspective when you remember who you are. What I'm saying is the person who knows him or herself securely, knows him or herself to be an heir, a co-heir with Christ, that person is astoundingly resilient in difficult places and times. Because authentic humility is not thinking less of yourself, but is knowing how much God has already invested in you and made you fearfully and wonderfully. And for us who are in Christ, redeemed us in Christ so that when we are humiliated, when we are in the lowly place, we do not adopt a mentality that this means I am just unworthy. Thank you for church for loaning me out last weekend, I went and did several ministries in a couple of different places and trust God's using that good seed. You know, sometimes things that we just walk in like the power of blessing. And sometimes I get a chance to go and talk to other people and it's like, boy, they act like they have never heard it and it blesses them.

So I was I was loaned out last weekend. And one of the one of the things I got to do was to preach at a friend's church in Texas where I really want to help him. I want to have this church because he's new in his role as senior pastor.

And I'm excited about what the future holds there. But he's got a lot of you know, he's got a lot of challenges, of course, any new pastor you do. But what's interesting about his story is that he began at this church many, many years ago on the custodial staff. And so, Chris, my friend, he spent the first couple of years cleaning the building.

About two to three years cleaning toilets and learning and being in the fellowship. And then eventually he grew into a role in the children's ministry and he learned and he grew and he stayed in the fellowship. And he had spiritual fathers and the pastor there were helping him. He was learning and growing and he was getting education. And then he had oversight over the youth and the children and the family ministries. And then just two years ago after the senior pastor retired, they made him the senior pastor of this very important church. When you are in the place that feels like Babylon where it's like I don't think my whole life is about cleaning toilets.

But it is right now. And I don't, I don't let, because I might be in a subservient role now, that is not what is determining my sense of who I actually am. See, when Christ washed the disciples feet, was it because he felt so unworthy and so little of himself that he got down and became a servant?

Of course not. What happened was that Jesus knew who he was. So he's washing their feet as the son of God. Remember God and remember who you are. Remember all of the promises that are yes and amen in Christ. Remember that Babylon doesn't determine your future.

God does. Remember that your destiny is built around this promise that you're an heir and a co-heir with Christ. So an orphan who feels like he's here, she's got no future, no inheritance. The orphan goes, I might as well just grab whatever I can now because you're just living for this moment. But the heir, the one who sees a future, because I can do hard things now because I know who I am and I'm going to this place.

You will be restored. Jeremiah is prophesying. It's not going to be as quick as you think. As some of the false prophets are saying, this is a real thing.

The exile is a real thing and there's a lot that's going to be learned. There's a lot that you're going to go through during this period of time. And so during this period of time, don't put off living. Build your houses. Plant your vineyards. Marry your spouses.

Get your children into families. Get ready for your because you are going to be restored. And yet now you're in exile.

So go ahead and live. But whatever you do, don't think that this is the end of your story because there's going to be a restoration. And beloved, sometimes it happens. It happens so quick.

Cyrus of Persia and just suddenly they're going back home. I like what my spiritual dad Dudley Hall says, be dancing when the spotlight hits you. Be ready. There is a continuity to everything God does in our lives. So what you're doing in exile doesn't end in exile.

It's part of your life. I'm relearning to play the guitar from when I was a kid. But I'm not starting from scratch. I'm starting from where I had been. Because there's continuity, even though it was many years ago that I played the guitar. And everything that I am learning now, it's building on itself so that every time I pick the guitar back up, I'm a little bit better than I was.

And what I'm saying is there's a continuity, right? I'm not going to sit there and go until I can play like a world class guitar, until I can play this song that right now seems impossible to me, I'm just not going to play. That's not the way we do it.

I'm going to play now. And here's the amazing thing. I don't even think it stops in this world. How are we going to know each other in heaven? We're going to know each other because we're going to still be ourselves. And how do you know who you are?

Well, it's because of not just the way you look, but the things you like and the things you do. And you're still going to be yourself, right? So that's why we're going to know each other. There's going to be continuity in a very real sense, therefore, what you're doing now in continuity continues in heaven. Why is this important? Well, this is important because what it means, exiles, when you're in that place, start living, keep living, keep going, because guess what? If you learn the craft of making shoes while you're in Babylon, when you're back in Jerusalem, you're going to be a good shoe cobbler.

You start your family now and you get back in Jerusalem one day, you're going to enjoy your grandchildren. The devil wants us to stop living either because we think exile is so temporary and that hard times are just so quick that we just postpone living. Or because we despair and we think I might as well not try to live because there's no hope for the future and God says no to both. God says I am providential and sometimes you go through dry, difficult, exile-like periods of time, but it is not the end of your story. The end of the story is about God in Jesus Christ who came, the Word became flesh, and He Himself experienced exile on a cross, a feeling of God-forsakenness on purpose so that He could take our sin. And on Easter Day, the restoration, He's a God who makes all things new.

So keep on living, and that's the gospel. Allen Wright, today's good news message, Bloom Where You're Planted, from the series Remade. Pastor Alan is back with us here in just a moment, sharing a parting good news thought for the day.

Stick with us. When you give before the end of the month, we'll send you Pastor Alan's audio series, Daniel, a Favored Foreigner. You may feel like a stranger in this world, but as God showed favor to Daniel in his foreign land, God's grace is upon you as well. Your donation will not only help you navigate through these troubling times, but it will also help someone else. Thanks for your partnership with Allen Wright Ministries. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860.

Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Back here in the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day, and this seems to go with the sentiment that God is so often in the interruptions of our lives, and most anything of any importance is usually found on the way to something else. You know, the other day, Daniel, I'm sure every listener can identify, I was on the interstate highway driving, and I was in the left lane moving a little bit faster than the traffic in the right lane passing the car. And eight motorcycles, nothing against motorcycles, and I once had one, but eight motorcycles pulled up, and I want to say they were within four feet of my back bumper, you know, where they were at the front of it. And it wasn't just rude, it was extremely dangerous and inconsiderate and everything about it, right?

Well, these kind of things happen to us regularly, where someone's just not treating you the way they should, putting you in harm's way, or just disrespecting you, or treating you as your less than. Well, this just happens, and you know, it's just the first thing, I mean, I love the Lord, and I follow Christ daily, but I mean, in the flesh, it's not the first thing that comes up to you that's like, well bless you, God bless you, you know, have a wonderful day. And the exiles in Babylon, they are living in the enemy land. They've been taken from their houses and their families and jobs and temple, and yet, God said, pray for the welfare of that city where you live. Be a blessing there.

Listen, we must not cave in to just the ways of the world where hate is returned for hate. And you can make a difference right where you are now, even if you're being treated as less than. Bloom right where you're planted. Bless everything around you. Let the favor of God be upon you that changes things in your environment.

See what God does. So I'm blessing, I'm blessing listeners everywhere. I'm blessing you to be a blessing to the world around you. 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.