Amazing Rescue [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Allen Wright. Come, neighbors, let us kneel down. Let us give thanks to God. He has given me all my eight children. Let the house go.

I am rich enough. It is possible that while your house is burning down, you can feel rich, if you know your God moments. 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 Allen 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 pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.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 Allen Wright. You ready for some good news? It's a miracle you're here today. I mean, everything that could have happened, I just about fell down the steps this morning. I clumped on the thing, I didn't, I made it here.

I don't know what you made it through. You have no idea how many times God saved you just today on the way to church. God is a protector and savior. And when you reflect on all the God moments by which God has been sustaining your life, it will bring into your heart peace. I want to turn to you today, Deuteronomy chapter 5 and chapter 7, and then we're going to look over into the Gospel of John for a verse or two, as we continue to talk about God Moments. This is the principle.

How you remember yesterday will determine how you live tomorrow. And God has been in your life at every point. The problem with us is so often we have blinders on and we don't see it. It's like our pain and the negative circumstances of life scream at us, and we're quite prone to be able to see the absence of God, but it takes a discipline.

It takes a practice to see God in your life. And this really is much of the role of the Holy Spirit in the heart of a believer is to bring to remembrance all of the things that God has done for us. Deuteronomy chapter 5 is one of the places where there's the listing of the Ten Commandments. And we come to something very interesting when there's the commandment to observe the Sabbath. If you look at Deuteronomy 5 verse 15, you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. I don't know if that seems a little intriguing to you, but it does to me. Why the connection between remembering the Exodus, the Passover, the salvation that God brought for his slaves out of Egypt, and your capacity to keep the Sabbath.

We're going to talk about that. Then look at chapter 7. Here's another connection to remembering the Passover, the story of the people of God escaping Egypt by God's grace. Verse 17 of Deuteronomy 7, If you say in your heart, these nations are greater than I, how can I dispossess them? This is speaking about the future conquest of the Promised Land. Then verse 18, you shall not be afraid of them, but you shall remember what the Lord your God did to Pharaoh and to all of Egypt. The great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm by which the Lord your God brought you out.

So will the Lord your God do to all the peoples of whom you are afraid. So two things in close proximity, chapter 5, chapter 7. The first instance is the kind of peace that you need if you're ever going to really rest. And the second is the kind of peace that you need if you're ever going to be able to face your foes. And both these are connected to remembering God's saving power through the Exodus.

Isn't that interesting? Then in John chapter 14, the beautiful discourse that Jesus has with his disciples before Jesus is going to leave the earth, and he is preparing, teaching them, telling them some very important things. And he says it, verse 26 of John 14, The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I've said to you. Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you.

Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Peace of the Lord. We'll talk about the peace of the Lord as we reflect on the God moment of amazing rescue.

There are different kinds. I've categorized them into five different kinds of God moments. There could be many others, but one of them is God actively at work protecting, healing, rescuing, and saving us. In May of 1995, 34-year-old Randy Reed, a construction worker. He was working on a water tower in Chicago. He stretched out to try to do something, and the scaffolding shifted, and a wire cage moved, and he wasn't harnessed in. And Randy fell 110 feet face down, narrowly missing rock and construction debris, but instead landed on a soft pile of dirt that enabled him to survive the fall and remain conscious. And as paramedics came and secured his neck and back, and then carefully put him on the gurney, and then began to carry him three feet off the ground towards the ambulance, this man who had survived a 110 foot fall had classic words to tell the paramedics. Are you ready for this?

He said, don't drop me. What an amazing wit at that moment to be able to come up with such a line as that. But it's symbolic of how so often in our lives we're like that. We could survive a 110 foot fall, and then a few minutes later be afraid of falling from three feet. The people of God were like that too. They could come through the exodus, be saved by God's amazing power, and in three days they got thirsty and they started grumbling. It's like we forget. And there's a discipline, there's a process in our life of actively remembering what God has done in our lives. And it builds our faith. And as I'm going to show you today, it's one of the ways which God has given us to have peace. There's a connection between remembering what God has done and having the capacity to be able to rest. There's a connection between remembering what God has done in your life and having the capacity to face obstacles in your future.

And we're going to show you that today. One of the things that you'll discover as you become a spiritual treasure hunter and you start looking for the places where God has been in your life, but you hadn't noted it, is that you'll realize while we're on earth, we'll never really actually be able to know everything God's done for us. I hope when we get to heaven, we get to see it. You know, everybody talks about this big screen you're going to have to look at and show all the bad things you've done in your life. It's not going to be that way because your sin's been cast as far away as the east is from the west.

But if we do get to see a screen, I hope that screen will at least include this. It'll show us every time that God saved us. One night as I was reflecting many years ago about the God moment of Amazing Rescue and Bennett was a little boy and we went out to dinner and I came home and I wrote this down because all of these things that I realized that my toddler was completely unaware of, I had saved his life many times. I had pulled the boy back into his high chair just as he was making it tip backward, thus saving a trip to the emergency room. I had pulled the boy also away from his ice cream bowl when I recognized that he would like to eat five adult portions himself, saving him from a giant bellyache. I also pulled the large steel steak knife away from him after he grabbed it from someone else's place setting, sparing him a gaping flesh wound. I pulled him close enough to silence his excited screams, which saved us all from the flesh wounds of the other restaurant patrons. I also pulled the boy back as he darted straight into the parking lot where they were moving cars and I insisted that he sit in his designated car seat with the seat belt attached even though he didn't want to. And once home, I assured that his bath water was not scorching hot and that he did not intentionally swallow so much toothpaste as to bring on the bellyache that I had rescued him from in the restaurant. I gave him only one chewy, yummy gummy bear vitamin when he actually wanted the whole jar, which would have taken his life. And I knelt by his bed and I prayed, Oh God, keep your angels over my boy.

And it was his intercessor. So in the course of one ordinary evening, I realized that I had rescued my boy dozens of times and he didn't know any of it. How much more has God been in your life? There is an amazing connection between you having peace in your heart and building into your life the awareness of God's saving power.

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 escape 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. 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. Everybody's got stories in their family that become part of their God moment history and one of the things that's very powerful is you tell those stories and tell them regularly. Some of you've heard us tell this story.

Some of you haven't. It nourishes me just to tell the story. Our second child, Abigail, is, if you know her, she is a delight. Her name means my father's joy or causes my father's joy or my father is joyful, all of which are true.

We knew before we had our first child, Bennett, that we wanted to name, if he was a girl, it would have been named Abigail because this came in a season of our life in which the Lord had just been pouring out joy. There was a great renewal of joy in the Holy Spirit during this season in the body of Christ and we were so touched by this joy and we had little Bennett and three and a half years later, Ann was pregnant with Abigail and we were out of town, we were at the beach and Ann began having some symptoms that could be indication of miscarriage and so we called a doctor friend and talked to him about it and he said, well, he said, this could be that you're miscarrying and he said, if so, there's not really anything to be done about it, really and he said, if you're looking for reassurance, you could go and get an ultrasound and be assured that there is a heartbeat. He said, but you're in a rural area down at the beach, there's not a good hospital probably close by and it could be, and this was obviously nearly 17 years ago and said it could be that their ultrasound machines are not in good condition, it might not pick up the heartbeat anyway and then you might just have more frustration and so Ann and I talked about it and she said, I want to go and I want to get an ultrasound.

I said, all right, we'll head up there. Little Bennett was three years old and she said, no, she said, I'm fine. She said, it's going to be hard for Bennett to go spend the whole day in the hospital waiting to get all this done. She said, I'm just going to go and seek for some reassurance and so little toddler Bennett and I stayed back at the beach and she drove herself up to the community hospital and went to get the ultrasound.

When she arrived back, I could see on her face so much peace that I just knew the report had to have been great and I said, so you had good news? And she said, actually they couldn't find a heartbeat. She said, but it's okay.

And I said, well, how is that okay? And she said, while I was driving up there, I still get emotion when I tell this, she said, while I was driving up there, she said, I heard the Lord speak to me and he said, it's okay, I'm going to give you this baby twice. And she said, I just knew it was going to be okay. And she said that they couldn't find the heartbeat. She said, it was just like our doctor friend said, though the machine was old and scratchy and I think there's a heartbeat and I think this baby's fine and the Lord has spoken to me.

And sure enough, September 29, 1998, nearly 10 pound baby girl was born and she has been healthy and happy and she has been, as her name says, her father's joy and she's a delight. We went through a very difficult season during the time after Abigail had been born. Ann's younger sister was getting sick with a cancer that eventually took her life and leaving her husband with four little children. And we were very close, all the cousins were very close. And during this time, there was a day in which Ann was driving back from lunch and all the cousins had been together and I wasn't with them. I was here at the office and Ann had in the back seat, she had our baby Abigail and also our little niece Mary Grace. And as they were just riding down the road, another car ran a stop sign full speed, just full speed and collided into the side of that big old station wagon Ann was driving and turned it over and smashed it up against a wall.

And the roof caved in, jagged roof caved in. I got a desperate phone call. I knew my wife was alive because I could hear her on the other end of the phone. I said, what about my children?

She said, I don't know. And so I raced over there and when I saw the car, I thought my family's gone. That's what I thought and but then I looked up and I saw first that Bennett was safe. He hadn't been in that car and then I saw Abby and Ann's mother was holding her and Abby wasn't crying or anything. And evidently what had happened is that once they had been in the wreck, Ann was able to pull herself out of the car. She had a fairly significant wound to her leg and Mary Grace, her niece, was fine and she was able to get out of the car. She was a little bit older and Abigail was left there in the car hanging upside down in her car seat. And for a long time, nobody would go get her because so much gasoline was spilling that everybody was afraid that the car was going to blow up.

While my wife is screaming, will somebody get my baby? Finally, the man who had been driving the car that had caused the accident, he went in, crawled in and managed to get little Abigail out and came and handed her over to my mother-in-law. And they said that Abby was not even crying. We laughed later and said it was like she'd just been on a fun roller coaster ride. Nothing bothered her at all.

She had no injuries whatsoever. And it just was like one of those times where you go, an angel must have just grabbed her around like this, rolled with her and just completely protected her. And it wasn't until a couple of days after that that Ann came to me in tears and she said, I now know the meaning of what the Lord spoke to me that day on the hospital. I'm going to give you this baby twice.

She said it wasn't about I'm going to give you this baby because the baby was conceived and then I'm going to give you this baby because it's not going to miscarry. It's because the Lord already knew of this day that there were two times that this baby's life was in danger and the Lord said, I've got this covered. And what does this do in our lives?

We could look at the world and say it's a dangerous place and we should be very fearful. But instead what it does to us, it gives us an incredible peace that when Abigail's life was in the greatest danger, the Lord protected her. And it does that in her life as she hears that story as well.

It's stories like that, that they fuel something in your life when you recognize that God has been in your life. It was 1709, February, a fire broke out between 11 p.m. and midnight in an Anglican rector's home in Epworth, England. It was in the county of Lincolnshire. And the minister and his wife, Susanna, and their eight children were all asleep when the fire broke out. As soon as they realized it, the parents began desperately trying to grab the children. Very quickly everything was collapsing.

The staircase was all fire. And Susanna grabbed a couple of kids out of the nursery. There were three or four of these children in one room and got the young one, Charles, and two sisters, and made it out. And they all were so hectic and they didn't realize that John, five-year-old John, was asleep on the bed. And they got out of the house and realized John was still in the house. Five-year-old John woke up and realized he was engulfed in flames.

He pushed a dresser over next to the window to try to look outside the window from the second floor. And there was no way that he could get out. The stairs had burned up by this time. And realizing that John was still in there, his father took his trousers, pulled them up over his head, tried to run in twice, but was beaten back by the fire and realized he could not save his son. And so the father gathered his family around him and he knelt down and he commended his son to God. Meanwhile, a man had seen little John standing up on the dresser at the window and had declared that he was going to run for a ladder. And someone said, there's no time, the roof was about to collapse. And so they made a human ladder, putting a smaller man on top.

And a man was able to reach the five-year-old and grab him by the hand and they were able to pluck him out and bring him down to safety. And that little boy went on to become the founder of the Methodist faith, John Wesley. And afterwards, as the house within about five seconds of John being plucked out collapsed, his father said, according to history's notes, come neighbors, let us kneel down, let us give thanks to God. He has given me all my eight children, let the house go, I am rich enough.

It is possible that while your house is burning down, you can feel rich if you know your God moments. And later, it is attributed to Susanna, his mother, but it appears below one of John's portraits and it is a scriptural quote, is not this a brand plucked out of the burning? And many people would say that this was the God moment that fueled a sense of destiny in John's heart and changed the world.

Later, John Wesley referenced this in his journal on Friday, February 9th, 1750. All those years later, it said while he was holding a watch night service in his West Street Chapel in London, he wrote in his journal, about 11 o'clock, he says, it came into my mind that this was the very day, an hour in which 40 years ago, I was taken out of the flames. I stopped and gave a short account of that wonderful providence. The voice of praise and thanksgiving went up on high and great was our rejoicing before the Lord. Alan Wright and today's teaching, God Moments.

Stick with us, Alan is back here in the studio in just a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a 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 wanna fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at pastorallan.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. Alan, because we know where God has brought us from and how he has been there, even part of the amazing rescue in the past, if we're going through a moment where we need a rescue today, looking back helps us in this moment, and that's part of the God moments in our life, right? I think everything that you've been through in your life, if you can recognize God's presence with you, even let's say that you went through a very difficult thing, but if you could recognize, but God brought me through, right? It might be that it was very difficult, but if you say, well, God brought me through that difficult thing, how much more can I trust him that if I should face some other adversity, he'll be there with me? That's the exact opposite of the way fear speaks. Fear says you went through that difficult thing before, so watch out, you're probably going to go through another difficult thing. That's what fear says. But what faith says is, when I went through the fire before God was with me, and if I ever should have to ever face some other difficulty like that, I can trust God will carry me through that also. That's the power of the God moment of amazing rescue. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.