Winning the Fight for Joy [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. You need to have some way of having your own book of remembrance. You go back and you just think on it.

You speak of it. Think about his love and think about his goodness. And whatever is true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable and excellent and praiseworthy, you think of it.

Magnify. Let your psyche magnify the Lord, for he's done great things. It's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new life.

Merry Christmas. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear our teaching today. It's titled Winning the Fight for Joy as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire teaching 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. 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. And here at the end of the year, we certainly appreciate all your support through the year. And more on this later in the program. But right now, let's dive in and get started with today's Christmas teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. I love watching the celebrations, especially if it's my team that's celebrating after a sports victory, you know, watching. Here we are in basketball season, just to watch the players celebrating and there have already been some buzzer-beating winning shots at the end. It's amazing to watch when it looks like that one team's going to win and then all of a sudden the last second shot heroics goes in and then the celebration erupts and the announcer's voice elevates. The Podunks of Nowhereville have just defeated the mighty Giants of Gaff and now the buzzers and the players in basketball, they just immediately just come over and just crowd in on the guy who made the winning shot.

You know, it's really fun. In football, I like to see these giant 350-pound guys, they go and they start pouncing. They got all these pads on, so sometimes they'll just crush. I'm sitting there like, if it's my team, like, don't crush our player. You know, I used to play soccer and for whatever reason in soccer, the celebration is different. As soon as somebody in soccer wins, hits a goal, you just start taking off running. I don't know why we do that. You just take off running and everybody on the team's running after you and at some point you just slide down on your knees.

I don't know, that seems like that would hurt bad. But anyway, all of these different kinds of celebrations. My point of this being, do you have to tell somebody to celebrate if they've just been part of or seen a great victory?

You don't have to. All you have to do is just allow for it. So the issue of our celebration and praise is not an issue of so much our lack of training or our lack of skill. Um, it is automatic if you understand the victory that's taken place. So the, the notion of Christian praise is not so much about trying to ramp up somebody's emotion about something. The notion of Christian praise and celebration is much more about really grasping the victory that's taken place. This is why when people get caught up in the Holy Spirit and they become so celebrative and rejoice in the Lord is because the Holy Spirit is making real, making known the goodness of God and the victory of God by sweet assurances that commune with your spirit. That's why you, that's why you, when you get in touch with God, you want to celebrate because you know the victory more clearly. See in this world, we got all these problems and pandemic and all this stuff going on and it starts stealing our joy because we're not as in touch with the cosmic victory of God.

But when we are, we just celebrate. So in one sense, praise is very, very simple. And that's what basically has happened to Mary is that Mary is just responding to this extraordinary miracle that's taken place.

That's just what it is. And I think that honestly, it is the picture of what every Christian's life can be. Oh, I mean, we're not, I mean, she was a unique woman in time that was the mother of the Messiah, but she understood that there was a miracle that was taking place in her. And the more you understand that a miracle has taken place and is taking place in you by the presence of the Holy Spirit, the more you just praise. So if you want more praise, you get more focused on the victory of God in Jesus Christ. And then the language, let's talk about the soul and the spirit of praise.

The language here is interesting. Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior. And there's some question about whether these are just meant to be poetic parallel parallelism. My soul magnifies the Lord and it's just repeated. My spirit rejoices in God, my savior. Is it, is it essentially just saying the same thing or are we to pay attention to the fact that there are different words that are used here? You know, as you hear me speak of often, I think that we need to pay attention, not always, but we need to pay attention to the distinctions of soul and spirit and the new Testament.

There's just too many places where the, these terms are used, not interchangeably, but distinct. And there's disagreement about this, but I think that, that we are to understand ourselves primarily as one we're integrated, but we do have a, we are spiritual beings who have a soul, which the psyche, the psyche and Greek, it really refers to the mind and the will and the personality. The spirit of us is that part of us that communes with God, that part of us that sometime I think maybe the heart is different than the spirit, but maybe more similar to what we'd mean by the heart. And I think, again, I want to be careful not to read too much into it because there's disagreement about this, but I think that you should consider here that Mary says, my psyche is magnifying the Lord and my pneuma, the spirit, the language actually says has rejoiced in God, my savior. The reason that's important to me is that I think that the mind, the soul has the capacity to set its own thoughts on the, on the greatness of God.

Then in other words, we are choosing it all the time, what we're going to do with our minds. And in a real sense, what Mary is saying here is that I, I am magnifying all of my thoughts. My soul is magnifying the Lord and my spirit has joy. Those are, I think different things, but they're so related as to the fact that they cannot be separated. So what you set your mind on, you magnify and what you magnify gets related to what your spirit is experiencing.

So your spirit can experience joy and your soul will magnify the Lord for it, or you can magnify the Lord by setting your mind on his greatness and your spirit will come along and find joy. I think that's the way it works. Have you ever noticed that whatever you think about a lot, whatever you, whatever you set your mind on, it gets bigger in your eyes. So if you have a little splinter in your finger and you, and you start thinking about it and then you come back and you think it again, you rub it a little bit and you keep feeling that light. And next thing you know, it's like that splinter is the biggest issue in your life. Have you ever noticed like that?

I've had times though, where there was something, maybe some little physical ailment or some little splinter or something like that. And it comes time that I'm supposed to preach and you know, you have things you do in your life where when you're in it, you are just in it. And well, preaching is one of those for me. But as soon as you're over in whatever it is like me preaching and your mind is not on it.

Have you ever had that? You could just forget that little thing as if it was so small, you don't even remember it. But whatever you think about, it just gets bigger and bigger to you. If there's something that you're worried about and you just keep on thinking about it and you keep meditating about it and you keep meditating about it, then it just gets bigger and bigger. We become like the Israeli army that for 40 days was looking at Goliath. And if you go back sometime and read, there's all the dimensions of the shaft of his spear, the weight of his armor.

Somebody's over there spending time doing some calculus and trying to figure out how much it all weighs and what it looks like. What they're doing is the more they just thought about how big he looked, the bigger he got in their eyes. So what we're invited to do with the scripture of David's Psalm, who says, Oh, magnify the Lord with me is to set your soul, your psyche on all of the wonders of who God is. Think about all these done in your life. If you begin to have worries in your life, it's the best time to go back and look at the testimonies of your life. Look at your God moments.

Think about those things. Anne has a book. She likes physical copies of stuff.

She just does. So we've got a book. She's like, if the house is burning down, I'm grabbing that book. And in it are just testimonies and stories.

We were in it this past week. I'm going to read one from it that I read just this past week. She calls it her book of remembrance. And I'll tell you, you need to have some way of having your own book of remembrance. You go back and you just think on it. You speak of it. Think about his love and think about his goodness and whatever's true and noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable and excellent and praise worthy.

You think on these things. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. 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 pastorallen.org. Can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly? Envision it. Being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection. If you mess up, people don't roll their eyes, make fun of you or love you less.

Imagine no more of that anxious feeling that you get deep down in your gut that makes you feel like the pressure is always on so you can never really relax. What you're imagining and longing for is a life with no shame. In paradise, before sin came into the world, the Bible tells us only one thing about Adam and Eve's relationship.

They were naked and felt no shame. Ever since the fall, the human heart has been riddled with shame. It's a lie that says, until you measure up, you can't be truly acceptable. Shame causes some to say, I'll try to be perfect in order to be accepted and others to decide, since I'll never measure up, I might as well rebel.

Either way, the heart is poisoned by shame and there is only one antidote, the grace of God in Jesus Christ. In his highly acclaimed book, Free Yourself, Be Yourself, Pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame, he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul. Discover freedom, joy and destiny as you shed performance-based living and let God take the shame off you for good. It's a life-changing, full-length book from Alan Wright.

Free yourself, be yourself. 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. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Magnify, let your psyche magnify the Lord for he's done great things. It's never more important to remember that than when you are wondering what's going on in your life. And when you're waiting on the next great thing to happen, you have to remember and magnify his name. So God doesn't get bigger, but he gets bigger to you. That's what it means when you magnify the Lord. And so when she says, my spirit rejoices, she actually uses what we call in Greek the arrow is tense, which has a sense of more like finished work than ongoing work.

And I think it's because of this. It's like my spirit has discovered has great joy. So there is a capacity spiritually for joy, even when life doesn't make sense. This is a mystery, but it's a fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace. There's just some things you can barely explain to anybody because it's a spiritual thing. And joy is that and Mary is just, she's just singing to the Lord.

Oh, it has the sense, this joy that she has, it has a sense of just a, an unbridled sense of rejoicing over and over again. You know, what's odd about it is that there is a way in which you can have something that seems great to you that you're not rejoicing in. Now that's an odd thing to think about, but you can have something that you acknowledge. I mean, in a real sense, this sounds strange, but in a real sense, you could praise something and yet not be worshiping it.

I think even the demons believe in shutter. So it's not just that we acknowledge God's greatness. It's that our hearts then become consumed with affection for him because of his goodness and greatness. That joy comes because of, of seeing that he is the Lord.

You can, you can go to the Grand Canyon and just praise the Canyon, just be in awe and not necessarily worship the creator who made it. I remember as a funny thing that came to mind, I was talking as a buddy this week about a high school basketball and I was in high school at Page High School in Greensboro. Our basketball team was really good. In fact, I think that two of the years that I was at Page, if I remember it correctly, we won the state championship, but we didn't have real superstars. We did later after I left, there were some superstars that came through my high school.

We just had really good players and they played as a team. And one year that we didn't win the national, that didn't win the state championship, a team from Gastonia did. And I remember being at the state tournament to go watch our team play this team from Gastonia and the crowd was huge. It was at the Greensboro Coliseum and people wanted to go and see this game because we were playing against a team on which there was a young man, a high school student named James Worthy. James Worthy went on to play at Carolina and become one of the great pros of all time.

And when he was in high school, it was a phenomenon. You know, these players that are so fantastic, you forget they're playing in high school just against the little high school player. And so we went to watch, tried to pull our team on to victory, but the whole time we're sitting there secretly hoping to see another one of those unbelievable dunks that James Worthy would come in with his big windmill dunks and stuff. And so we're up there pulling for our own team, but we would praise James Worthy.

We couldn't help ourselves like, Oh, that was awesome. You know, so to recognize one's glory is not necessary to have allegiance to that. But what Mary is describing is when soul and spirit, my mind recognizes that he's great and my spirit has such joy. She's worshiping him. This is what it looks like to praise God. There's a relationship between what you think about and what your heart experiences and vice versa. What is the substance of her praise and our praise?

Here it is. Verse 48 for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant for behold from now on, all generations will call me blessed to say, looked upon the humble estate is to say, I recognize that I don't deserve this extraordinary blessing. The beginning of a relationship with God, the start of really inviting him into your life is to recognize yourself as a center in need of a savior. She recognizes that I have a humble estate, least likely of all people to be the one chosen to be the mother of Messiah. When she said, I rejoice in God, my savior, she was acknowledging that though it's quite apt to honor Mary, it is not right to worship Mary as if she were immaculately conceived as if she had no sin. Because when she says my savior, she's acknowledging that only sinners need a savior. So her conditions like ours, and she's a young woman of God, but she needed a savior in the way we need a savior.

And he's looked upon my humble estate. And then she says, and from now on, all generations will call me blessed. This has been a thought that has stayed with me all week. I'm continuing to think about it. I think I'm going to think about it a lot in the future from now on. Probably the most difficult part of soul transformation is to come to that statement from now on. Our regrets, our disappointments, our wounds, our traumas, these things affect the soul. We're learning from brain science. They can be identified in certain areas of the brain where we've experienced the trauma.

Part of this is God made our bodies in such a way that if you touch a hot stove, you remember that it hurts so you don't do it again. But this becomes so much of the spiritual battle when it comes to the soul that has been hurt or wounded, that it is exceedingly difficult and impossible, I would say, just in natural terms without God's help to actually start afresh. Almost every married couple that I ever have counseled with, by the time I'm counseling with them, there have been real injury that's taken place in one another's minds and hearts. The great challenge is not whether they would like for their marriage to be able to work as it moves forward.

That's why they're there with me. The challenge is not even to believe so much that God could find a way to heal them. The challenge is right at this moment.

Is there a way that somehow we could start from this moment? If we could let go of all the judgments that have been brought into this moment and let them go and start from now on, all healing is possible. All joy is possible. Let's give it up for Pastor Alan Wright and our Good News message today, winning the fight for joy this Christmas.

Stay with us. Pastor Alan has a parting Good News thought for all of us in just a moment. 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 pastorallan.org. Can you imagine what it would be like to be accepted perfectly? Envision Being free to be yourself with no fear of rejection. If you mess up, people don't roll their eyes, make fun of you, or love you less. Ever since the fall, the human heart has been riddled with shame.

It's a lie that says, until you measure up, you can't be truly acceptable. In his highly acclaimed book, Free Yourself, Be Yourself, Pastor Alan Wright not only exposes the lies of shame, he leads you into a revolution of God's love that heals your soul. Discover freedom, joy, and destiny as you shed performance-based living and let God take the shame off you for good. It's a life-changing, full-length book from Alan Wright.

Free yourself, be yourself. 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. Back here now with Pastor Alan in the studio and Merry Christmas to you. I think that is a phrase that I will never hear the same way again from now on.

And I loved your illustration of meeting and counseling with folks. And that has to be, it has to be the mindset. There has to be hope from this point forward. From this point forward. If we can live in what has become so popular a term now, mindfulness, it means that in this moment, I'm not living in yesterday's moment and I'm not living in tomorrow's moment for fear of what it might be, but in this moment, and God's with us right here, right now, and to every single listener, no matter what the year has brought you, as you are living today, you're living from now on. From this moment forward. And I pray for God's grace to just set you free from the tyranny of regrets and disappointment and liberate you unto fresh joy. Christmas is good news of great joy.

There is cause for rejoicing today. 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.