No Worries , What If?

The son of God, the son of man goes to a cross and there he bears the weight of the sin of the world you imagine this, Jesus becomes your sin going to sharing the annual Britt. We are all set to hear Allen's message from an old church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in a series called no worries, 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 available to you right now for your donation this month to sharing the as you listen to today's message go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us in sharing the.org or call 877-544-4860 that's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program now let's get started with today's teaching years Alan Wright. He called Charlie live his spine as a Charlie, would you follow me in your car as I drive my car to the mechanic in case mom breaks down then you will be there to pick me and so I said my I don't think a cardinal breakdown that okay I'll follow you to the mechanic. But here's what I have this true story. Then Max called uncle Stanley is Stanley Charlie is going to follow me in case my car breaks tell all the way car breaks down and then I get in with Charlie only knew of Charlie's car breaks down, will you follow while he follows me. Stanley said no that's pretty advanced advanced warriors can do is I can draw people into their tent with these guys did verse one of Numbers 14 the congregation raise a loud cry that people that night the whole people right into their worry all the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron Tatian said that we died in the land of Egypt died in this wilderness in the moment. While one is lifetime once-in-a-lifetime fun things that I always dreamt of doing, and we were in the Bahamas and so I splurge for Bennett and me we were going to go swim with dolphins is thought to be what I always thought it was not so signed up for the swimming with dolphins and I'm sitting on the dock waiting to get on the boat.

This will take us out to a place where where the dolphins are Alpine in harbor and ocean somewhere and go swimming with him and while I'm sitting here if you want the happiest thing I could ever do and a stranger came up and sat down next to me and he's first he seemed friendly. He started chatting with me in a civil court.

You can read so I will go take my 10-year-old son would go swim with dolphins and he said I know most people know this but dolphins bite behind in her ass and they said and they'll ram you to think differently, but they're not, they will ram you sit there like swimming sharks out there. All the sudden this thing away from his crazy how mean dolphins can be friendly as animals on the face of the error but it's amazing how contagious it can be. You need to surround yourself with people that have what it's about what God can these spies. They were just pessimistic.

I think Ed Welch, counselor and authors right when he said they were false prophets because now seriously, especially the Old Testament God to give false prophets to forecast something as if you know that is going to come to pass and it's not. It's a serious thing to do to the people of God where he is so destructive because it's in the first place. It fills our hearts and minds with wrong and ungodly beliefs that hold us back over Michael Hyatt use illustration I think aptly of what our wrong beliefs due to his and how they can limit us of a of an invisible fence how a dog can put on a collar and you put an invisible fence under the ground and administer some unpleasant thing for the dog every time he gets near the boundaries of the dog figures out the boundaries, and then you can take the collar off of the dog and the dog will not go beyond that boundary you can stand on the other side with a treat to come over there even though the caller is off and that all will experience no consequences are going to cry and is a sense which is what worry. Does this is like.

It puts this boundary around us and which were not to go beyond the limits of our worry. Just limit us from moving forward. That's what it did for the people. They didn't go forward and to the promised land. But there's something else that happens with worry thing seems strange to say it but when you put something even if it's bad you sort wanted to come true. To prove yourself right and sometimes a lady of experiences, but you can worry about something and you're almost relieved when it finally happens as it was in our church and in Durham. She was sweet as can be but she was my most advanced warriors I'd ever been around and she worried all time back in six years, hypochondria achieve always talk about it and she just wasn't that said she'd seem to have little things here and there had some arthritis itself, but no major diagnoses of anything major but she talked about on John Boehner doctor about this, but I'm concerned I could be that you know and she was a melancholy person when I went to visit her and and she had come back to the doctor with a pretty bad diagnosis and you know she was just plum giddy. I mean she was the happiest I've ever seen her. But if you predict something I wanted to come true. And so the thing that she worried about it come true and but here is his bottom line.

This one is so diabolical about worry is that worry is a kind of what if that leads towards the thing.

It worries about in the same way that the Wright brothers envision a plane and it led towards actual plane existing in the opposite direction.

Worry leads towards the negative uses illustration a lot, but I it if you would put board 12 inch board across the platform and say Alan could you walk across it. Yeah, I can walk right across that if it was just sitting right here backwards.

I might go to hop on 1 foot across maybe but if you took that same plank of wood inputted up in the sky thousand feet between two buildings. Like, did you know that there is a glass ledge in the Willis Tower in Chicago tallest building in the Western Hemisphere that you can step out onto and looked down 1300 feet below used to street and I stepped out on that element thing and yet here's what happened to me my breath away. I stepped back and stepped out on if you would that high between do this it can you walk across that two things would happen when I say no, absolutely not.

And secondly, if I did start walking across it and look down it would take my breath away. My heart would be funny I would have way more likely to fall the player who's worried about missing the last minute shot is much more likely to miss. Interestingly, the thing that Israelites were worried about was essentially this is where they were worried they were afraid we won't be able to get the promised land, and will die instead.

And ironically they didn't get the promised land, and they died in the wilderness instead is very pointed in the Scriptures irony of this numbers 1434. According to the number of days in which you spied out the land 40 days a year for each day you shall bear your iniquity 40 years, and shall know my displeasure. So they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Only thing that could have kept them from inheriting that land was their fear that they would inherit the land because it was their land.

God had already designated that.

So what does God want to do about this.

He came in the person of Jesus to do our work in which we are forgiven of our sins, made holy onto him and we are given a new mind in Christ. What he wants to do is sanctify your imagination.

Alan Wright you are listening to sharing the light will have more teaching in a moment from today's important series ever wish you could be a child again ever long for the simpler days when your biggest financial worry was counting the money in the shoebox eliminates the end ever long for the more carefree times when you wish to long summer days would never end. If you've ever long to be like a child again.

Author Alan Wright has some good news. You can Jesus invitation to become like a little child means it's possible when you make a gift to sharing the like today will send you a special bundled gift that includes two audio messages that will help you banish worry that a copy of Alan Wright's book, childlike cards that will lead you into the freedom and wonder of childlike faith.

Most of all, when you make a gift of sharing the like today� Broadcast the love of God to tens of thousands of people every day to sharing this practice is only possible because of recent financial support. When you get to we will send you today's special affect happiness in this tier as I banks from sharing the right ministries, 877-544-4860 come to my website sharing the right leg sharing the line teaching now continue you once again is Alan Wright show shark tank shark tank while love you so much.

Entrepreneurs come in with their inventions and they tried to pitch their idea to five business tycoons to get some investment money from them for their their venture. Some of the crazy things in the in the pilot program.

The very first and there was one the most bizarre there happened was 100 came he said the Bluetooth ear buds that you listen to music stuff from your phone as they move around too much in your ears, so he invented one that could be surgically implanted in the ear like a Q-tip type thing, it goes in and charges it at night money for that and I think it was six there was a man was a company by another guy was Pat Boone and they ran their pitching a car that runs on air compressed air and as airily as he moves the car on one of the sources said he wants and is this what happens on the show is these crazy ideas that come in and just love watching the imagination. How do people think these things out. But then once they make their pitch. The sharks the business tycoons they start asking questions. Hard questions Mr. plan reason to how much does it cost to make this product how much is on for what's the cost of customer acquisition, tell me about your own work life and how much time you have invested this. Are there any other monies are asking all the business questions about this and sometimes they say all this is ridiculous and I said nothing as nice as great a want to invest in this. When imagination then meets reason and intelligence, and those two things come together this explosive is wonderful, fascinated by CS Lewis and how he became a Christian, and CS Lewis. If you're not very familiar with them.

He wrote a book called mere Christianity, which is a logical defense of the Christian gospel and I read recently that other than the Bible more people report becoming Christians because of mere Christianity than any other book is written this incredibly insightful logical, but he also wrote all the Chronicles of Narnia fanciful tales of a magical land were little boys and girls are kings and queens mind but he was an atheist and is an atheist and a literature professor he'd love to the world of the imagination, but this is what he said about those days as an atheist, such that was the state of my imaginative life over against us to the life of my intellect.

The two hemispheres of my mind were in sharp contrast on the one side, a mini island in the sea of poetry and myth and on the other a glib and shallow rationalism. Listen to what he said nearly all that I love. I believe to be imaginary. Nearly all that I believe to be real. I thought grim and meaningless. What he was saying was that the things that I love art and beauty, and music and story and thoughts of another world. All that I love made my heart soar were in my imagination and I figure they're not real and all that I thought was real stuff I could touch and analyze in the world of reason was just boring to me what happened in this is why became a Christian in conversations with people I J.R.R. Tolkien and other imaginative people.

He began to have this thought. What if the things that I can imagine might be as real or more real than the things I can reason about, and he started realizing that the reason he longed for magical fanciful different world is that one must exist and we began to see the Christian gospel.

He saw that this was the imaginative truth always longed for. This way when the Wright brothers had tested and flown a number of times a few hundred yards in Kitty Hawk and then they spent some years continue to try to delve developed the concept and and get a patent on it. They first approached the United States military with the concept in order try to secure a contract from the United States and United States military rejected it out of hand didn't want to invest a single dollar is such a preposterous idea that this could be of any benefit to us militarily so they went to France, but the reality was all the rest of the world and really really smart engineers were saying were not even interested because that's reason tells us not to be is that the Wright brothers in their imagination. They were upon something more true than all the United States military. At that time.

Sometimes the thing that you could only imagine now is actually more real than anything your reason can allies and CS Lewis became a Christian and began to write because when imagination and reason come together and you realize that truth and imagination do not have to stand apart from one another, explosive things happen. So Jesus came as the living word of God, the reformer John Calvin said the Scriptures are like spectacle that you put on and everything becomes clear when you look through it. The Bible is not something you so much. Look at something you look through and you see everything in life through the truth of God's word and this is why Jesus came he came so that we could be forgiven and set free and he came so that we could see God up close and to hold the word become flash and that the whole of your imagination could be wed together with the word of God so that your imagination looks through the lens of Scripture's truth so that you can in that sense, let your imagination run wild and that's why everywhere Jesus went. What was he doing tell stories and parables and using metaphors in order to awaken the imagination of the slumbering people would come and say things. Imagine with me.

A man went out to so see some of it fell on hard ground and some fell amongst the thorns, but some fell on fertile ground produced a hundredfold.

Imagine that mountain being thrown into the heart of the sea.

Imagine this taking up your map your pad your pallet and walking instead a lien on imagine a father who had two sons and one of them went to a faraway land and brought shame on the family but could you imagine the day the father went running down a dusty road to weep upon his sons shoulders because he was so happy to see him.

He was saying. Imagine father God with me.

Imagine life and the whole Scripture ultimately beckons us to imagine a new heaven and a new earth, and Jesus was essentially saying to be out to see this ultimately because I want you imagine this son of God, the son of man goes to cross and there he bears the weight of the sin of the world.

Imagine this, Jesus becomes your sin.

Imagine when you accept his saving work on the cross.

Imagine this, his righteousness, the merits of his life are credited to you so you have become the righteousness of God.

If you can begin to imagine that you could imagine that you're seated in the heavenly's with Christ that you have been chosen in him before the foundation of the world and therefore nothing could really ever stand against you because you're in the one who was already one of the great cosmic battle and you can imagine this is going to come back one day and take us to be with him where he is and that we would reign with him in a new heaven and a new are just imagine it because when you look through the lens of Scripture you take the God-given faculty of imagination and worry goes to the side and instead arise.

You can live a worry free life by having Jesus sanctify your imagination. Imagine that. That's a gospel right you're listening to shearing the entities teaching a sanctified imagination.

It's in our series. No worries.

An alum is back here in the studio here in a moment sharing a sporting good news thought for the day watch the way a one-year-old sleeps, not a care in the world or listen to the belly laugh of a toddler finding joy in the simplest things little children don't know the meaning of dread, freedom of wonder and trust come naturally to little children.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to be like a child again. Here's the good news you can.

Jesus invitation to become like a little child means it's possible when you make your generous donation ensuring like today will send you a special bundled gift that includes a two message audio CD that will help you manage worry and a copy of Alan Wright's book a childlike heart that will lead you into the freedom and wonder of childlike faith. When you partner with shearing the you enable us to share the grace of God. People everywhere to make your gift today and rediscover the piece of a childlike heart to write this test is only possible because of recent financial support. When you get to the wall, we will send you today's special affect happiness in this tier as I banks from sharing the right ministries, 877-544-4860 or come to my website sharing the right leg.

I love the thought that CS Lewis presented. I think this is where you formerly taught will hear in this Alan about future trips taking these these worries mind trips and God is never the rescuer in our worrying is it our thing will keep coming back to learned long ago.that doesn't really give grace for hypothetical situations but from real situation. That's a worry gets out to a category of something that might happen that I dream up would happen and I think that's so painful is there's there's really not. There's not really grace for that God gives grace for real life and no matter how difficult our troubles. His grace will be sufficient. So we need to come imagination and instead let God sanctified enter all of our what-ifs instead of what if and fill in the blank with all the negative things which turn around and say what it and put it in God's word and putting God's hope and that's where our worries turned to face always encouraged to hear from you whether you visit online sharing the.war or call 877 like 60 again shearing the.OR G or call 8770 IG HT 60 get Alan Wright's daily shearing the devotional in your inbox each morning when you sign up sharing the who, Archie, this is been sharing the light right listener supported production of sharing the likeness