Revealed Truth [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. You ask him and you receive from him. You seek him and you find him. This is a God who James says will not withhold wisdom from you, but will dispense it generously without finding fault in you. He is a God who wants you to know what your purpose is in life.

He doesn't want you left guessing. Oh, this is a God who will lead you and guide you because he has made you for a great destiny. 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, God Moments, as presented at Reynolda 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 Pastor Alan's book by the same title, God Moments, 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 a copy of Pastor Alan's book, God Moments, our special offer today. 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 on God Moments.

Here is Alan Wright. I have pivotal moments in my life, and I know I tell them over and over, but this is what we do with our lives. We just say, these are my God moments, and this has shaped my life. I was going to become, I was moving in college, I was moving towards studying religious studies, maybe New Testament, do a PhD, and then go teach in a secular university.

That's where I was headed, and I didn't even ask God, and one day I was just simply praying, and God came into my little dormitory room my junior year in college, and I had never encountered God or anything like this, so holy, so... It's so hard to describe spiritual things, but in those moments where I wept and wept and wept, and God said, Alan, you know I'm calling you to the ministry, and I said, oh, I know it. And from that day forward, I just began telling everybody, I have had moments in my life where I thought, oh, it'd be nice not to be a minister right now, and I've had those moments. I've had moments in my life where I thought, I'm not doing that good of a job. I've had moments in my life where I feel like I could have run away. I've had all those kind of moments just like anybody, but I've never honestly had a moment, never ever had a moment where I doubted the vision and the voice of God that I heard in my college dormitory room at junior year college.

I just never have. I can't deny that any more than I would deny that they're talking to you today. It's just that's not real to me. That's what Paul is saying. He said, something so real to me, it happened, it trumps anything that the king would say. It trumps anything that Festus the governor would say. It trumps anything because I know that this to be the case. And he's just saying, I've not been disobedient to that vision because if I were to go against that, then I would know for sure I was being disobedient.

It would just be that real. So what God does is he arouses the obedience in your life because of his voice. So the key here is recognizing how much God loves to speak to you and recognizing his voice to you.

And I'm always hesitant to read this Damascus road story or talk about just the dramatic moments because some of you might say, well, I've just not had these Damascus road experiences with God. I haven't heard him speak to me like that. But the point of this is that God is speaking every day and he's speaking through his word and he's speaking through the body of Christ and he's speaking to your heart and God is communicating with you because he loves to do so.

Why? Why does God speak to us like this? I'm going to just give you some of the reasons that I think God speaks to us. But number one, he wants you to know that he exists and that he is there. He very simply wants you to know I'm here. And explaining the gift of prophecy and how important it is in the body of Christ, a gift that's often misunderstood, sometimes misused in the body of Christ, it simply means this, that people in the body of Christ are prompted by the Holy Spirit to speak words that are really from the Lord that are words that are consistent with the Bible and are encouraging and edifying for the strengthening of individuals or for the corporate body of Christ.

It's that simple. And when explaining this in 1 Corinthians chapter 14, Paul says when there's prophecy, an unbeliever or outsider enters. He's convicted. He's called to account and the secrets of his heart is disclosed. So falling on his face, he'll worship God. Here's the purpose.

What are you saying? Here's the central purpose of the prophetic word. He'll worship God and declare God is really among you.

That's what it's all about. It's God. God's here. I didn't know it, but He's here.

He just wants you to know that. We have moved into a new house. It's been sort of a downsizing. And lo and behold, when I got there, there was a golf course in the backyard too. So I don't know how that happened, but very different than our other house. The other house, the bedrooms were all upstairs. And now we've got a couple of bedrooms on the main level, which is really nice. This season of life.

Ann and I are there, our daughter Abby. So we got these two bedrooms. The one who's most confused in this move is our Beagle because he knew in the other house the rooms he could go in and there were only a couple of rooms he could go in. He had a big backyard. He had a couple of rooms in the house.

That was it. He never went upstairs. In the whole 16 years we lived in that other house, he'd never been upstairs, not once.

It was just a giant mystery to him. What goes on upstairs? What is upstairs? He'd never been into a bedroom like that.

And now the bedrooms are right there in this kind of open floor plan. And the dog is very confused. We're trying to teach him, you can't come in our bedroom. And I think he knows now you can't come in our bedroom.

But early in the morning, oftentimes I hear this little pause clicking into our bedroom. And we just look over at him. We're here and he'll just turn around and walk back out.

And I know what he's doing. He's just like, I'm not coming to stay. I just want to know you're in the house. We're kind of like that. We're just like, I just want to know you're in my house, God.

And just show me, just teach me. God wants you to know he's here. Every week when we pray for people, God speaks.

He does wonderful things. Years ago, there's some reason this story really touched me. One of our prayer ministers, the elder in our church, Jeff Deaton, was praying with a lady. And she was asking for prayer about something in her life. She felt very stuck. She felt like she was in a very stuck place in her life and couldn't get past something. And while he was praying, Jeff just had an image that came to his mind.

And he was faithful to share it because he thought it might be from the Holy Spirit. He said, I see this image of you as a little girl stuck in a tree calling for help and nobody coming. She didn't say anything. They finished their prayer time. And Jeff thought, well, I wonder if that meant anything to her.

I don't know. Two days later, she came back and she said, it was an apple tree. I was seven years old and I couldn't get out.

Now, why did God do that? Well, he primarily said, I'm with you. I saw you in the apple tree. I see you today and you can trust me.

You're not stuck. I'm going to get you through this. God's with us. He wants us to know it. There's a second reason that God speaks to you. He loves you and he wants you to know how much he loves you. He loves you and he wants you to know how much he loves you. It's hard because a lot of us in our life, we had people that if they did love us, they didn't necessarily want us to know how much they loved us. But God not only loves you, he wants you to know that he loves you.

And he reveals his love to you in a thousand different ways. Years ago, I was at a retreat and the closing of it was a communion service. And there was a woman who I had known had had anxiety disorder in her life. She was always a nervous person.

She'd never settled. She'd been a believer quite some time, but it's like something hadn't gotten through. And she was just standing in line for waiting for communion, just standing in line. The woman in front of her had a t-shirt on that said something about the love of God.

That's all. And she just said later, she said, I looked at this shirt and all of a sudden I just had, it was like the words of the shirt were leaping off to my heart. And the Lord came and said, and I love you too. And you know it healed her.

Look at somebody's t-shirt. God loves you. He wants you to know. So he speaks to you. Let me tell you another reason God likes to speak to you. He enjoys your company. Oh, you think, well, God's so much smarter, so much more holy, so much better, so much bigger. Why would he enjoy the company of someone like you? Because he's so far superior.

How could he? Have you got any grandparents in here that maybe ever had a three-year-old grandchild? Did you like talking to their toddler grandchild?

Huh? It's probably the greatest thing in the world. I love it when my kids were like three years old and just sit down and just talk to them. And they're just saying things that don't make any sense. And you just know so much more than them. And you can't tell them everything you know.

And you don't care because you just love to hear what's going on in their little heart. Is this just, I mean, this is an astounding thing to say that an all-knowing God just loves to get to know you better. He already knows you. He knows every hero in your head.

He knows so much more than you. But if you could believe that any grandparent, whatever, just interacting with a grandchild, you could understand that God, though he is the creator of the ends of the earth, he really enjoys your company. It's what he wanted to get back after the fellowship was broken in the Garden of Eden.

He sent Jesus so that we could be reconciled to God and have peace with God and talk with God. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. 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. You can talk to him. He likes meeting with you. He likes meeting in the morning over your cup of coffee. He likes meeting with you when you're riding down the road. He likes meeting with you when you're in the middle of a problem and you're just saying, Daddy, I don't know what to do about this. God enjoys the conversation.

Here's another reason, a fourth reason. He likes to talk to you. He cares immensely about your well-being, and he wants to show you the best way to live. He corrects you. The Bible calls it conviction of the Holy Spirit, and it's very different than what a lot of people have been taught or think. I love what my friend and mentor Dudley Hall said about the difference in shame and conviction and the way that God corrects us. Shame is you step into a dark room. You bump your shin into a piece of furniture. It hurts. You say, ouch, and a voice in the darkness comes and says, quit bumping into the furniture. You fool. It stays dark.

It's pitch black. You take another couple steps. You bump into another piece of furniture. It hurts. You say, ouch. The voice comes back and says, I thought I told you to quit bumping into the furniture.

That's shame, but conviction is where you step into a dark room. You bump your shin into a piece of furniture. You go out.

That hurts. A voice comes back, and it says, I know that hurt, and then a light comes on. It says, there's a better way.

Here's the path, and you walk a different way. That's God. He speaks to you because he knows what's best for you, and he wants to instruct you, and he wants to guide you, and he wants to correct you because he wants your life to go well.

He made you to prosper, and he's with you. He wants to speak to you because he likes to comfort you. He is a parent, and so he likes to comfort. Parents don't like their children to be comfortless.

Their children are disturbed. We want them to be comforted and have peace in their heart, and sometimes he speaks to you not to fix a problem, but just to comfort you in the midst of the problem, and it's a beautiful thing about God. A story I've told before, but maybe some of you never heard that years and years ago, we were going through an extremely difficult time in our life, especially because my wife's sister Mary was sick with a cancer that would eventually take her life. It was a very difficult time, and we were in the midst of this, and a friend, a mentor, came to speak to our church. His name was Jack Deere, and Jack had done a lot of teaching about hearing the voice of God.

That's one of the things he taught about, and he had brought a friend. He discipled a businessman named Carl Greer, who later became a very good friend of ours, but I didn't know Carl at the time, but he brought Carl, and Carl did some ministry, and one of the things Carl had a beautiful, beautiful gift, that he's one of those rare people. He could get up in front of a large group of people like this, and the Holy Spirit would just show him encouraging things to say to the people, and we don't do this very much on Sunday morning because in a gathering like this size, we don't want to put somebody on the spot. We don't want somebody to feel all of a sudden like the spotlight's on them, so we do this more in small groups, but on this Sunday morning, we had this as a public ministry because Carl was just so uniquely gifted. I said, Carl, why don't you just get up, see if the Lord shows you, and you share things, and he did with several people. He just, and it was like when Carl would give a word, you weren't embarrassed. You weren't like, oh no, he's talking about me because it's just so wonderful, and everybody wanted to get a word, right, and he got, he shared several words, and then my wife was sitting on the front pew, and he looked at her, and he said, I'm almost reluctant. I know you're the senior pastor's wife. I'm almost reluctant to say this, but I just feel like the Lord has just given me a word for you, and he said, he said, you've been calling out to the Lord in the middle of the night, and he gave some very specific description of that, and he said, the Lord just wants you to know that he hears you, and that your prayer is powerful, and we just sat there on the front, and I held her hand, and we're just, we're just weeping and thanking God.

We don't understand why we're going through this, the sickness of Mary, but God's comforting us. Well, two days later, Ann and I were in a Christian bookstore, and we were just browsing around like sometimes we're just passing the time. We weren't looking at anything in particular, and she came walking over to me, and she had pulled off a book, a fairly obscure book.

There was only one of these in the store. It was a book by a man named Ken Guyer. It was called The Reflective Life. Now, I'd heard of Ken Guyer, and I knew of a couple of his books, but not of this book. It wasn't a bestseller, and it wasn't turned around facing out. It was just one of hundreds of Christian living books. They were on the shelf. She put out, she said, I just pulled this off the shelf.

There's just something about it. It just looks so good to me, and I just like, I would just kind of say, honey, I said, we got so many books right now. Really, you got time to read another book, you know, and me, the one who's surrounded by books, you know, trying to, and she said, no, I really, I'm gonna get this book.

I said, well, if you think so, then just get it. Well, she got that book, and she would sit in bed at night for the next several nights, every night, just staying up late, and just listen to this. Listen to what she says, right?

Just speaking. It was just nourishing her in the midst of this time of great travail in her life. This book was just like God speaking to her, and it was just wonderful. About three days after that, or four or five days, maybe after that, we got a package in the mail from Carl Greer, and it was him writing us to say, I so enjoyed coming and visiting Reynolda, and he said, and I got home, he said, the strangest thing, he said, there is a book the Lord just put on my heart that I think might really minister to you, and he had sent us Ken Geyers, The Reflective Life. Are you kidding me?

Are you kidding me? We already had a copy of it. Why did God send us a book? Because God just wants to comfort you. He speaks to you in your times of trouble. He wants to keep you from harm.

That's another reason he speaks to you. And one time my brother David, when his son Cobol was little, they pulled into a fast food restaurant. They were just going to go in to the restaurant and get a burger, and as he pulled in, my brother just said, never had this happen before, but he just felt it. He felt it from the Holy Spirit.

Just felt something. He was saying, don't go in that store. He just, he ever had, he just felt this, and it's like, there's something wrong. He's just like, there's something wrong.

Don't go in. So he just sat there. He said, let's go.

Let's just sit here for a second, and he's like, he didn't know what to do, and while they sat there for a few moments, they heard gunshots, and the place was robbed, and there were gunshots, and people were wounded, and David just pulled out of the parking lot. God will speak to you because he'll, he wants to take care of you, and I'll tell you this. He wants to speak to you because he wants to release you into the purposes that he's made you for in your life. He wants to use you. He gave you your gifts. He gave you your life. He knows what's best for you, and he wants to use you, and it doesn't mean that you got to have your name in lights. He just wants you to know who you are in Christ as we're, as we're moving, and decluttering, and going through all these things. We're coming across old papers, and you know, you'll get stuck reading something, and my wife handed me something the other day that we had saved a letter from a lady, not because there was anything of substance in the letter, but because the way she signed her name, she just was a homeschool mom, and you know how you give your signature, and at the bottom you'll list some of who you are, you know, like on your, with own letterhead or something, so you might get something from me. It says, you know, from Alan Wright, you know, senior pastor of an older church, you know, or president of Shearing Light Ministries, something listed under it like that, which this was the lady, this, this mom, and she had it listed, and it said at the end, I'll just call her Susan, she said, sincerely Susan, and then it had listed under that, wife of Dan, mother of two nations, ambassador to the earth.

I love that. He wants to speak to you so you know who you are, and what your life is all about, and the direction that you're to go, and he wants to speak to you because he's, he's a father who is shepherding you along the way. I remember speaking years ago to a man who said in a ministry encounter with him, and he said that, that when he was going from boyhood into manhood, and he was making that church, and he came to his father one day, and he said, dad, he said, I'm not sure what to do in my life. He said, well, what do you think I'm good at?

What do you think I ought to do? What do you, what do you see? He was wanting his father to speak some destiny into him, and his dad barely looked up from the paper, and he said, well, that's for you to figure out, son. He said, I can't possibly tell you that. He went back to reading his paper, and the man said, that was the most painful moment of my life, and I just want you to know that God's not that kind of God. He's a God you ask him, and you receive from him. You seek him, and you find him. This is a God who James says will not withhold wisdom from you, but will dispense it generously without finding fault in you. He is a God who wants you to know what your purpose is in life.

He doesn't want you left guessing. Oh, this is a God who will lead you, and guide you, because he has made you for a great destiny. God wants to encourage you. He wants to fill you with the sense of you can do this.

He's the greatest coach in all the world. He is a God who is right here. You can hear from God.

If you don't believe it, think about Saul of Tarsus, the chief persecutor of the Christians. If God would speak to a man who hated Jesus, how much more would you speak to those who love Jesus? With God, it's always a local call, and that's the gospel. Alan Wright. It's today's teaching, Reveal Truth, in the God Moment series.

Stick with us. Alan is back here in a moment for today's final word. 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. God's always been there. In every moment, you narrowly escaped from danger. In every moment, you were surprised by a blessing.

In every moment, you just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace. Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book, God Moments, that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. 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. So Alan, we will often talk about the great quote from Spurgeon that says, when you can't trace his hand, trust his heart. And we go through moments like that. But today's teaching is talking about the times when you know God was there. You have no question or no explanation.

You can see it or feel it or sense it in a very personal way. God's always going to speak in a way that's consistent with his word. We're not talking about a time in which you're getting outside of something that's extra biblical or something like that.

No. But God is there leading, guiding, speaking, revealing himself. I just want to say this again, Daniel, to every listener. If you're a Christian, you can hear from God because the Word says, his sheep hear his voice. And you can be led by the Holy Spirit. The Word says as many as are the children of God will be led by the Spirit of God. So maybe you're in a time right now you need God's hand in a special way. Ask him, ask God, and open up your spiritual ears. I believe that he's ready to lead you, guide you, and reveal the truth to you. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.