The Prayer of Enlightenment [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. The power of God is not just some theoretical, creative power by which He created the world. It is a power that raised Jesus from the dead, and it is a power that is us-ward.

It is in us. It is through us. It is toward us. So to pray that you know this power is to pray that you're not so afraid that you shut off the presence of God in your life. 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 Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series called Praying, as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It's an audio album of Pastor Alan's teaching series, The Body You've Always Wanted.

It's available to you in physical CD, album, or a digital download. Your choice. And it can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. 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.

That's 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. I can call a beagle intent on fighting a possum. One of somebody who had absolute authority, called you. He might be able to stand next to a graveside and say, Lazarus, come out.

And in the call was resurrection power. Hope to which you've been called. Hope isn't wishful thinking. Often we use the word like that as if it means, oh, like a little girl says, I hope I get a pony for Christmas when she's not going to get one.

That's not what hope means in the Bible. It'd be more akin to if you talk to that same little girl in December and say, why are you so excited? And she said, Christmas is coming. And you say, you're excited about it.

She said, yes, there are presents under the tree and I know that there are other things going to be there on Christmas day. And what she's talking about, that delight, that bliss of her soul, that is what the Bible means by hope. It means that you have been called and you have eternity with God. It means that every single day of the Christian's life you can be assured something better is coming.

It's not wishful thinking. It's not I hope one day I go to heaven. It is I know I go to heaven and therefore I'm happy in it right now. And whether I'm on the mountaintop or walking through the valley of the shadow of death, I know the hope to which I have been called.

I pray, Paul said, that you would know what is the hope to which you have been called. And then the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. He's talking about the entirety of the Christian life because the Christian life is a move from figuratively slavery, not just into freedom, but into co-airship with Christ and inheritance. The picture of the Bible, if you want to get the whole picture of it, is of a people who were enslaved in Egypt. A great deliverer, a mediator came and through great signs and wonders the glory of God was revealed and through the blood of an innocent Passover lamb, the slaves were set free.

But the story by no means ended there did it? In fact, so much of the drama just built at that point wondering whether this free people who once were slaves were going to take their inheritance, which was called the promised land. Would they go and see themselves as heirs of this new land or would they shrink back? And a whole generation died off because they couldn't see themselves as taking over this inheritance. And so the drama then is escalated when there is a new people with a new leader whose name is Yeshua, Joshua, the very name of Jesus, Yeshua. And He leads the people into their inheritance because God never intended for His people to simply be former slaves who've been set free. He meant for them to be heirs of unspeakably wonderful things.

And all of this is a spiritual picture of the Christian life, that the Christian life is we who were slaves to sin and slaves to a cycle of law and fear and sin and death and condemnation are liberated by our true Yeshua, our true Joshua, Jesus, who liberates us not just so we could be free from the fear of death, not just so we could be free from the penalty due our sin, not just so we could be assured that one day we go to heaven, but so that we could be adopted as His children. And if adopted as His children, then heirs and if heirs then co-heirs with Christ. This is what Paul says in so many different ways in Romans chapter eight, he puts it this way, you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry Abba, Father, the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God and of children then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ adopted as sons. And he's using a very specific image here that would have been very familiar in the Roman world because in the Roman world the process of adoption was very clear. They would have, sometimes it would be the case where you have a father, a man who actually had no children, but a man who wanted to be a father and in certain instances he would adopt one of his slaves as a son for the purpose of having an heir and it was very clearly spelled out. Justinian and his institute outlines the whole process, this ancient Roman process called Adrogation from the Latin word for ask, Rogator, because in the legal process the father was asked at this moment if the person he's going to adopt should be his lawful son that's the question.

Do you want this as your lawful son? And when you say yes the process of adoption began. That was the process of Adrogation. The Adrogatus, the one being adopted came into the power of the Adrogator, the one adopting and the property of the one being adopted came into the ownership of the adoptive father. So even if you were slave you had a few possessions or whatever well they become your father's but here's the deal. The third part of the outline that Justinian has in his institutes is the debts of the one adopted and the personal servitude of the one adopted was extinguished. No matter how big the debt that you owed to a master if you were adopted there was no more debt and you are no longer in servitude once you're adopted.

It's all canceled because of a new legal status and the one adopted lost all rights in his old family but he gained all the rights of a fully legitimate son. So the image of adopting is really you get a new father. You get a new father and you're forsaking whatever loyalty you had to your old father.

Remember what Jesus said to the Pharisees? You are of your father the devil. You got one or two fathers. That's the picture in the Bible and when you're adopted in Christ you get a new father. You get God as your father and here's the thing that everyone would have known that though a father could estrange or disown a biological son Roman law forbade the estrangement of an adopted son.

You could never disown an adopted son. That's the image that Paul is using to describe what happens to us in Christ. It changes everything. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. If you think heaven is a misty place where you float around on clouds and pluck angelic harps you're in for the surprise of your life. Our special product this month is all about the hope of heaven.

It's our gift to you when you support this month. Alan's CD album invites you to discover the body you've always wanted. A spiritual resurrected body. Be assured that God isn't going to scrap you or the world. He'll make all things new overcome the gnawing anxiety about the end of your life. You can have peace now. Pastor Alan Wright's hope filled messages will lead you into more than a joyous revelation of heaven. According to the scriptures they'll lead you into a bounding hope. So please help us stay on the radio in your area by making a generous gift today and we'll be happy to send you the body you've always wanted.

The CD album that is. When you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. 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. So here's the challenge for us as Christians. And so much of Christian growth has to do with this. That you know what is the glorious riches of his inheritance in the saints.

And we live so much of our lives as though we don't really know that fully. We had our cousin Jan had many years ago adopted a little girl named Sasha from Russia. Sasha's graduating from high school and headed off to college. She's a beautiful young lady now. But I'll never forget the first day that we had her over our house. She and our Abby are about the same age.

Both graduating this year. And when Sasha came over I guess she was, I can't remember if she was three or four. A little bitty and she didn't know any English at all. And none of us knew any Russian.

So there was no verbal communication going on. But she got to America and a couple days later we had her come over to our house to play. And we had presents for her. And we put these wrapped up presents in front of this little girl and she didn't know what to do with it. She'd never seen a present before. And so our daughter goes over and shows her you're supposed to open it up. And she opens up the present and I can remember I think we had a baby doll that we'd given her. And Abby realizes that Sasha doesn't know what the baby doll does or how to play with it or anything about it. So she goes over and she takes this, let me show you how to do this. And when she started to touch that baby doll Sasha grabbed hold of that thing and pulled it back. I thought she was going to slap Abby back right there.

Why? Because at the orphanage she didn't have any of her own toys. Whatever was there was just held in common by everybody.

And she had a thought if I let go of this I may never get it back again. And so she opened up her presents and then they went in the backyard to play. And that was one of the happiest sights I ever could remember. To watch a little girl play in the backyard for the first time in her life. And we had a lovely swing set and they would swing and swing. And we had a little trampoline, a little sandbox and they went back there and played for hours in the backyard.

Not speaking to each other because there was no language but in the common language of child's laughter they played in the backyard. And it came time for Sasha to go home and her mother Jan beckoned her to come to the car and Sasha wouldn't go. And she wouldn't go.

She would not go. And I said Jan what's going on? And she said well I think it's this simple. She said this is the best time she's ever had in her life. And I don't speak Russian. And so I have no way to communicate to her that this is the way it's going to be from now on.

And that you'll come back here many times. For right now she's an heir but she still feels like an orphan. You know how you could tell if you still feel like an orphan? You got to hold on to everything. Always got to be on the lookout.

No security. No capacity for reveling in today's joy and looking for tomorrow's joy because you're always on guard. But an heir thinks differently. And so Sasha's grown up and she was over at our house on Easter weekend and my wife has these Easter Easter at our house is like Christmas at most people. My wife has these big baskets. They're not baskets now they're just big giant bags full of presents that she gets for all the cousins and nieces and nephews and Sasha opened up all her stuff and we played cornhole in the backyard and it came time to go and we gave her a hug and we said we'll see you later because she's not thinking well I'll never do this again.

She's come to know herself differently. So Paul prays that you would know you know that you're an heir. But there's an interesting thing about the grammar here that leaves scholars scratching their heads is exactly which way it should be translated because the actual language says that you would know what are the glorious riches of his inheritance among the holy ones because it also means that you are God's inheritance. It means that you are to God the ones that he has redeemed that your inheritance is also to him his inheritance. Deuteronomy chapter 4 verse 20 but the Lord has taken you and brought you out of the iron furnace out of Egypt to be a people of his own inheritance as you are this day over and over the scripture calls you God's inheritance amongst the holy ones. So when you pray this over yourself or over someone else you're being you're praying that you would know the inheritance that is yours but you're also to know yourself as God's inheritance and that you are a saint you're a holy one. Wow.

All right. The third thing that you would know what is the immeasurable greatness of his power. This is beautiful in the Greek language here because Paul is just stacking up superlatives. You know these words actually the first word for immeasurable is a word that comes it's hyper below hyper to be above beyond and below means to throw. So it means to literally mean in Greek to throw beyond. But you know the word that we get from this hyperbole hyperbole where you're saying something that's just above it's just beyond.

Right. Exaggerated and the word for greatness is megathos. You know that word mega.

We use it all the time. It's mega and the word for power is dunamis dynamite. He's saying hyperbole mega dynamite. That's what he's saying that is working and the word is in our gayo energy that is energy of God's mighty strength. It is to know the power that is just superlative the hyperbole mega dunamis of God.

Paul's saying I pray that you know that not just know about it but you know it. Because he said it is us word it is we don't know whether translate it's working in us or towards us or through us it's all of that. It's us word. The power of God is not just some theoretical creative power by which he created the world. It is a power that raised Jesus from the dead and there is a power that is us word. It is in us. It is through us.

It is toward us. So to pray that you know this power is to pray that you're not so afraid that you shut off the presence of God in your life. We have a wonderful surround sound in our family room that I installed. That's part of the problem because I attached this receiver and now everything hooks into the receiver slash amplifier which really delighted my wife because it meant one more remote control.

I say that in jest. She is mad that we already had three and now we have four remote controls but I love the way this thing is and so the first time we hooked it up and I put in like a DVD of something that would have big exciting chase scene with an explosion at the end and right as it got to the pivotal explosion or whatever and the volume built the thing shut off and it doesn't just shut off. It just shuts off the whole TV. Everything is hooked into it and I read about it and realized that I don't think the speakers match up to the receiver. It is something about ohms. That's all I can tell you and so every time something gets big like a scene somebody has to sit there with the volume control and cut it down right before you get to the most exciting part because otherwise it all turns off and then you have to cut everything back on rewind a little bit and then go back to your show.

That's my surround sound system. It shuts down at the most powerful times. I pray Paul says you won't shut down but be open to the immeasurable greatness of his power and work within you. Be so secure in the hope to which you've been called that you know that you're in the right place when you're amongst the saints so that when the very presence of God is moving in your life you just say here I am Lord send me and that's the gospel. Alan Wright and today's teaching the prayer of enlightenment we're in our series praying pure word and Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. If you think heaven is a misty place where you float around on clouds and pluck angelic harps you're in for the surprise of your life. Our special product this month is all about the hope of heaven.

It's our gift to you when you support this month. Alan's CD album invites you to discover the body you've always wanted a spiritual resurrected body. Be assured that God isn't going to scrap you or the world. He'll make all things new overcome the gnawing anxiety about the end of your life.

You can have peace now. Pastor Alan Wright's hope filled messages lead you into more than a joyous revelation of heaven according to the scriptures. They'll lead you into a bounding hope. So please help us stay on the radio in your area by making a generous gift today and we'll be happy to send you the body you've always wanted the CD album that is when you make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today we'll send you Pastor Alan's messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. 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. Alan the prayer of enlightenment and what we've just heard here in the current teaching this is we're walking to the throne room boldly right walking to the throne of grace boldly and it's not a manufactured boldness it really is something that the Holy Spirit gives you this boldness are you thinking about this from Ephesians if Paul prayed this for us and Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit and this is actually in the scriptures this actual prayer then can't we have ultimate boldness in praying this prayer you're praying a prayer that's what we're learning in this series we are praying a prayer that God authored he inspired this through Paul's pen and it comes to us so what what fear would we ever have or what lack of confidence could we have in bringing this before the Lord we should come with such confidence to bring up this prayer of enlightenment because it's something that God has made clear to us he wants it let's pray it to him and he moves through that in the mystery of God's sovereignty he moved through our prayer some astounding thing. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.