Unearned Blessing [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. The more that I see the reality, the truth of life, the light shines, the more blessed that I see that I am. And one of the things that can happen is you can begin to train yourself so that in every moment of life you have a sensitivity by the Holy Spirit to be able to see what God's doing for you. And when you see it, you stop and you thank Him and you praise Him, and it changes everything.

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. You ready for some good news? It's simple. You and I are more blessed than we know.

That's the fact of the matter. And the more that you see the truth, the more you'll see how blessed you are. And so your life can become characterized by remembering all of what we call God moments of unearned blessing.

All the best things in your life, the cliché is true, are free. And God is the giver of every good and perfect gift. And whether you're one of those people that your mind, you wake up in the morning and you're just focused on the blessings and you have that sense of positive attitude, or whether you're somebody that sometimes gets trapped in that negative cycle of thinking, God has a word for you today to point out to you in some fresh way the magnificence of His love for you, and of just how blessed you are in Christ Jesus. I want to look at two Old Testament texts as we talk about the God moment of unearned blessing. The first one is in Deuteronomy, the fifth book in your Bible, Deuteronomy chapter 6. This is the chapter that follows the issuing of the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy 5. And it comes as really important exhortation in Deuteronomy chapter 6 verse 10. And when the Lord your God brings you into the land that He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and to give you, with great and good cities that you did not build, and houses full of all good things that you did not fill, and cisterns that you did not dig, and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant, and when you eat and are full, then take care lest you forget the Lord, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.

There's notice there that the Lord is giving this land to you, and all this emphasis is about you've got all these things, and you didn't earn it, and you didn't deserve it, and you didn't build it. And then if you just look backwards to the book of Leviticus, here in Leviticus 23 is the chapter that's all about the Feast of Israel. And as we've been talking about God moments, this principle of how you remember your past determines how you live tomorrow. So much of this was instructed through the Feast of Israel because in these feasts, seven feasts through the year, and then one and three, three seasons of the year, three feasts in the spring, one in the summer, three in the fall. And through all of this, you can just imagine you've got seven feasts you're observing through the year in the life of Israel, and every one of these feasts is designed to cause you to remember something about the goodness of God, and something about the provision of God.

And so you just couldn't forget if you're doing these things. God so wanted the people to remember, to remember, to remember. And today it was talking about honor and blessing. I want to highlight the Feast of First Fruits.

It's the third of the spring festivals associated with Passover. In verse 9 of Leviticus 23, the Lord spoke to Moses saying, speak to the people of Israel and say to them, when you come into the land that I give you, there's that emphasis again, the land is given, right? And to come to the land I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the first fruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it. So there's to be this moment when the first crops are coming in that they go and they get a sheaf of the grain, bring it to the priest, and he waves it before the Lord north, south, east, and west, and they thank God for the new harvest that's beginning.

And the first fruits is evidence that there's going to be a whole lot more. So I want to tie all this together for you today and the importance of remembering your God moments of unearned blessing in your life and how it will change everything if you build your life on that sort of mentality. My wife was a kindergarten teacher for years, and she was all in with those kindergartners. And you got to understand about, if you don't my wife, she likes to celebrate and she likes everybody to be able to join in the celebration. So one of the things she did, the little teaching tool with her kindergartners, she played bingo sometimes. She'd teach them letters and numbers playing bingo. And she came in one day, I said, what did you do today?

Well, this and that, and we played bingo. And I said, well honey, do you ever worry about the fact, you know, these little kindergartners, I said, some of them don't win, and then they just kind of feel bad. They come to school and somebody wins, somebody doesn't.

She said, oh no, that's not a problem. She said, everybody wins. I said, well, you mean everybody wins? She said, well, she said, you have to understand I am the sovereign teacher in the room, and I roam around during the bingo, and I know who has won and who has not yet to win. And if little Johnny has not won yet, I'll just come over and spy his card and I'll reach in and I'll just call out whatever I want to call out, B3. And Johnny's like, bingo, bingo, I did it. Sally, a little later, she hadn't won all day, and I'm like, look at this, oh 74. Oh bingo, bingo, I just won.

And she's like, everybody wins in my classroom. And I thought, how much that really must be the way our life with God actually is. The fact of the matter is that there's so many things that happen in life that we either attribute it to luck or coincidence or somehow our good fortune, or we attribute it to something that we've done as if somehow, bingo, I did it. And fact of the matter, if we were to be able to pull back the curtains of heaven and see into the heavenlies and see into the heart and the mind of God and the activity of this benevolent creator who loves us so much that he died for us, I think what you would discover is that so many times in life when you're saying, bingo, you know, it happened, I did it, that actually God had set it all up. The Bible says that every good and perfect gift comes down from above. The Father gives you everything that is good.

That song we were singing today, it's your breath into my lungs so I pour out my praise, is so profoundly theologically true. You begin your process of a spiritual treasure hunt asking, where did my life come from? Who made me? Why do I exist? Why has anything good happened in my life? And what I want you to see today is just how blessed you are so that all your bingo moments turn into praise you, Lord, moments. Over my life, it's just happened where the more that I see the reality, the truth of life, the light shines, the more blessed that I see that I am. And one of the things that can happen is you can begin to train yourself so that in every moment of life you have a sensitivity by the Holy Spirit to be able to see what God's doing for you. And when you see it, you stop and you thank Him and you praise Him and it changes everything. And so we're going to learn about this. We're going to learn about how it is in the life of Israel that they had this whole process and I want to show you how the Feast of First Fruits, how this all ultimately is fulfilled in Christ.

Let me just start to say this. This is one of the most important exhortations in the entirety of the Scripture is that you would thank God, you would remember, remember, remember what the Lord has done for you. But interestingly, it's not one of those commands from the Lord that has this sense of judgment attached to it. You don't get a Scripture that says you better thank the Lord or you're not going to enter the kingdom of heaven. You don't get a Scripture that says God's going to come and punish you if you're not grateful. This is one of those things that the Lord is saying to us is so, so important because it's so important for you. It makes all the difference in your life, how you see your life.

It is that important. I've told this story before, but I can't think of anything more stark or more illustrative of the separation of life based on paradigm than this story. True story happened to me years ago at the church I was serving many, many years ago in Durham.

On the same afternoon, two parishioners came to see me. The first was a lady I'll call her Cindy, the second a man I'll call him Butch. And he came after Cindy. Cindy was one of those personalities that just knew the Lord so well that if you didn't know her well enough and been around her in Bible studies and spiritual context and places to understand, you might think she was just in denial because Cindy did not have an easy life. Her marriage was in struggle. She had children, some of whom were wayward.

She had difficult things going on in her life. And every time you see her, she was just full of praise to the Lord. She was a happy person. She was just a happy person.

And you might look at that and go, ah, you know, I can't be real or something like that. But I know I had gotten to know her well. And I tell you through and through to the core of her being, this was genuinely what was in her heart.

She was a woman who just felt so blessed of the Lord. So she came to see me and we were talking about a number of issues. And as I brought up, I said, Cindy, talk to me about your marriage and how's things going? She said, Well, there's struggles. She said, you know, this and that she related. She said, you know, and I said, Well, how are you handling all this, Cindy? And she said, You know what, Pastor?

She said, It's not easy, she said. But but I tell you, I am so blessed. That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. God's always been there in every moment you narrowly escaped from danger and 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. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Alan Wright. When I think about everything that God has done for me, I mean, I am so blessed. And we began just counting out blessings, just began counting out blessings in our life. And she said, you know, I just believe God's going to bring my husband around and I believe things are going to be okay.

You know, and even if it doesn't, I'm going to be okay. Because look how much the Lord has blessed my life. And we wound up with some prayers.

She smiled. She went our way. And then next moment, in came a person, I'll call him Butch, and he just was one of the most soured personalities I had ever seen. I mean, you know, one of those people just wore it on his countenance, the furrow of his brow, the heavy bitterness that was just there all the time. And it was just so evident.

And he had very similar situations in his marriage that Cindy had had in hers, a difficult marriage, some difficult things with kids, and some things had not gone right in his life, you know, troubles like all of his face. But he was so, so angry and so discouraged, so depressed and so bitter. And I finally I just thought I would use a counseling, a simple counseling technique that, and this is something you can do in your own life. You know, when you get into that kind of cycle, sometimes the simplest thing you can do is just whatever it takes to think of at least one thing for which you're thankful. Just begin to think of one time in which your life, in which you knew God was there, something that you could be grateful to God.

Because what it will often do is it will begin to just break that kind of stuck record going on in your mind. And so I remember saying to him, I said, I know this is hard when life feels difficult and everything seems dark and negative. I said, but let's try this exercise. I said, why don't you just think of one thing for which you're thankful, just one thing today that you could say to God, I'm thankful for this. It may not be a big thing, it could just be anything. And he sat there for about 30 seconds in silence and his face just grew red and he finally said, nothing. There's not one thing. He said, God's done nothing for me. Nobody's done anything for me. And my life is terrible.

And I tried talking with him, tried to pray with him and he just left with the same bitterness, angry at God, angry at the world. Let me just tell you what happened to these two people. This is a true story. Cindy and what I'm trying to say is Cindy and Butch had about the same circumstances in their life. It was very similar. If you were to hear their stories, about the same average amount of struggles like many of us face. Cindy went on and continued to live this just jubilant life of just loving the Lord, went through some little continued rocky times in the marriage. But eventually marriage really was wonderfully reconciled.

Kids were restored and just a happy person. This is what Butch did. Some weeks or two later he went and he spent the evening with his wife from whom he was separated. And because they spent the evening together he presumed that that meant that it was time for him to move back home. And she said, No, Butch, she said, No, that's not what this meant.

This was just a trying it out here and it's not time for you to come back. And Butch walked outside systematically just very quietly. He walked outside and he took some clippers and he clipped the telephone wire. He came back in and he locked the bolt lock on the door and he walked back to the bedroom and he began to strangle his wife.

If his toddler had not toddled into the room he would have murdered her that day. And for the rest of all of my knowing of him he remained in that same anger. The reason I'm telling you this story is I saw these two people in the same afternoon and I want you just to see the fruit that happens, what's going on in your head about how you see your life. And if I ask you which one of these two people was actually seeing his or her life accurately, if you know anything of the Gospel what you begin to see is that the person who sees that life is a blessing, that life itself is a gift, and that I view life as a gift, that person is actually in touch with reality but the discouraged, depressed, and embittered Butch was not in touch with reality at all. It is a reality that we face struggles in this world.

In this world you'll have trouble Jesus said. But there is a greater reality that says this, that God made you, you didn't make yourself, so that's a gift. God gave you your breath, God gave you your heartbeat, God gave you your life, and everything good that's come into your life has come from God. And when you see that what you recognize about your life is that my life has been saturated with all these unearned blessings, ways in which I never deserved it, I never in my life could have dreamt it up and yet God brought this blessing in my life. And it changes everything the way that you see your life.

And what I'm talking about, I'm not talking about a message of positive thinking here, what I'm going to show you is the essence of the Gospel. In every situation of your life there can be two ways of seeing it in every situation. I looked for a car for about a year. I had so much fun looking for a car. I tend to get a car and just keep it for a long time and so it's time to get in my old car and I finally got a car. I looked at everything. My family was like, DeWitt, would you just get something? What are you doing?

I was like, no, I'm having fun doing this. And I finally a few months back I found the perfect car, the 2008 Toyota Avalon. And it's sweet. I mean, I'm convinced that if you look long enough you can find a used car that just doesn't have a scratch on it. There are some people, Bob Roach, go buy his car. Find somebody that takes care of his car, parks it away from other cars, takes care of it, gets it fixed.

You can find those cars out there. And I found one. It didn't have a scratch on it. It was just beautiful. I even brought Laura Hull, the ultimate discerner, to come in and give it the smell test. She sniffed all around. She said, no, it's never been smoked in.

She said, it's just perfect. And so my Toyota Avalon is just fantastic. And I drove it out to Texas last weekend to go celebrate the 21st birthday with our son and see Baylor win 70 to 17. And I pulled into the HEB grocery store into a parking place. In my mind I just said, I shouldn't pull in this place. I was pulling in next to an old beat up white pickup truck. It was all dented in. And my mind said, I'll not park next to him.

He doesn't care who he dents. But I parked there anyway. And I came out and a whole back of my car is just scraped with white paint. No note, no nothing. Just scraped it.

Just scraped the whole back of it. We were riding away. I was quiet for a while.

Abby is in the car. I'm thinking, how can I respond right now with my teenage daughter and show her, you know, something biblical? So I started, I started with the imprecatory Psalms.

You know, those ones of David things about dashing people on the rocks and stuff like that and what you could do to my enemies and that kind of thing. And so I was just like, man. And I just kind of went around just sort of depressed about this for a little while. And finally I said, okay, I can be depressed about this or I can just step back into reality and say, a scratched up Toyota Avalon that runs great is a better blessing than no car at all. And how many people in the world there are that would just love to be able to have a car like this. How blessed I am to be able to have transportation. How blessed, how blessed I am to be able to afford to have this, to live in a country where I can own this car and drive, you know. And you say, well, that's pie in the sky thinking that. No, it's reality.

I'm telling the truth about that. I'm talking about being in touch with a greater reality. And what happens when you realize how blessed you are, it will carry you through the little adversity. Somebody scratches your car.

You don't fall into a pit because at least you got a car. You understand what God's done in your life and it'll carry you through some of the adversities. I was talking to a good, dear friend, executive director of Sharing the Light and elder in this church, Jeff Deaton this week about a story I had forgotten, but it's one of his God moments.

A big unearned blessing in his life, a God moment that just illustrates this so well. Years ago, 1995, Jeff and Mary Deaton and their kids, they were living outside of town and they really wanted to live in. Their kids were going to school in town. Their life was here in town.

And they were beginning to say, we really want to move into the heart of Winston. And so they started looking at houses. And they were looking at houses, looking at houses.

And on this particular day, I think it was on a Saturday, they were, Jeff, I think, was with one kid, Mary and another or something. They were looking around different houses, not together. And they came upon a house on a street, less than about a mile away from the church here, that they just individually saw this house. It wasn't for sale, but they fell in love with the house. They said, I wish that house was for sale.

I love that house. They did this individually from each other. Came together and they said, do you see anything today? Both of them said, I saw a house today I love, but it's not for sale. And, and it was the same house.

Like that's the house we want, but it's not for sale. Allen writes Daily Blessing. It's free and just a click away at pastorallen.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 Allen 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 Allen 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 Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Allen, in this series of God Moments and in this particular teaching today, I feel like you're teaching us a little bit of a skill on how to recognize how blessed we are and recognize the blessing in the moment. And as Christians, we know it's all unearned. It's so powerful for your faith, for your gratitude, for the life of worship and praise. If you start recognizing not just the big thing, oh, I've been saved by His grace, but you start realizing all of these little things that God has done in your life that were totally unearned in ways in which God's been there showing you unmerited favor. And so we're learning about that, Daniel, and it's absolutely transforming when you see it. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.