Unfazed by the Fire [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. You're going through something difficult, and by God's grace, you're enduring right on through it, and you're experiencing fellowship with Jesus in the midst of it, such that you can even rejoice and be glad, because you can say, honestly, I know that somehow this is producing character and hope within me.

And as you emerge from it, and you look back over your life, and you look at all the adversities, the things that were tiring, exhausting, and made you sore, and your inmost being actually strengthen you, God's putting steel in your soul. 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, The Elect Exiles, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. Now, 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 can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

So 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.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program, but right now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. We realize that hate is a real thing, and we seem like we're seeing more and more of it around us all the time. That that hate that does not have a winning power over love, that it is palpable and real, and sometimes it is just so dark as to be almost unimaginable.

You have to have an idea of where also that comes from. And it is to say, therefore, that even for the modern rational mind, as soon as you believe that there's a God and that there are angels, then it only makes sense to believe the biblical story that explains all of the evil and so much of the troubles of our lives, is that there were also angels who turned against God, and in their hatred of God, turned their hatred towards the people who love God. And so there is, beloved, in the Christian's life, a spiritual battle, and sometimes it's more intense than other times, but it's real.

And so do not be surprised by some of the kinds of things that happen. Sometimes people will hate you for no reason, and it may just be spiritual. Sometimes people will lie about you for no reason, and it's just spiritual. So if you can look in the gospels and you can see the unreasonable hatred that gets leveled towards Jesus, that's spiritual. And those same spirits are still attacking the body of Christ. So Jesus told His disciples in John, He said, if they persecute Me, basically He said, you shouldn't be surprised if they treat you the same way. And if there are people who love Me and adore Me and follow Me and obey Me, you might not be surprised.

Then there are going to be people that, what He's saying is that they're going to respond to the Spirit of Jesus in you like they did to Jesus Himself. There's a spiritual battle going on. It's a sinful world, things are broken. God's holding it together because He's so good, He's so gracious.

If He didn't, I think it'd all spin out of control and blow up and be gone. But there's a spiritual battle going on. And the third reason, not to be surprised, is something I don't have much time to talk about, but I think it's really, really important to understand, and that is that the natural mind, the mind that is not yet alive in Christ, has not been spiritually awakened. The natural mind doesn't understand the spiritual things. This is what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 2 verse 14. The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they're folly to him, and he's not able to understand them because they're spiritually discerned. So when you become a Christian, there is a beginning point, but that beginning point is not like this end all of everything that in the past was plaguing you and everything, but there is something new that happens, and that is that what once was dead to God spiritually inside of you is made alive by a miracle.

That's why, in a sense, we've already been raised with Christ. So there was a way in which the God of this age, speaking of the devil, has blinded the hearts of men and women, but when you become a Christian, you become spiritually alive, and we're spirit, soul, and body. The word that Paul uses here for natural is actually a word that we don't have in English. It means of or pertaining to the soul, of the psyche. It's a word in Greek, sukikos, that we don't have a word for. It probably should be translated soulish.

We have a word to say of or pertaining to things of the spirit, and that's spiritual, but we don't have a word to say of or pertaining only to the things that are mental, but that word's soulish. And he says, so the things that are just of the mind, even the smartest people, listen, even the smartest intellects in the whole world who have yet to meet Jesus and are still spiritually shut off from God, therefore will not understand some of the most powerful truths from some simple spiritual grandmother somewhere. So don't expect, I say this often, but don't expect people who aren't Christian to act like Christian or to be able to understand. Instead, what we do, Peter says, is you keep doing good, you keep giving a reason for your hope, you keep praying for them, you keep sharing the gospel in a way that is loving, and we pray that God opens their eyes. But you're not going to wind up having no clashes with people who don't know what you know as a Christian, and it's a spiritual thing.

So that's why. So then the second question, how can we possibly, and I'm just joining with you in this question and in this journey, how can we possibly have joy in the middle of hardship? What can we possibly, if we're not going to go looking for hardship, we're not supposed to be negative people, but we're not supposed to be surprised, and when we're in the midst of it, we are to be, we're to somehow have joy in the middle of it. Well, part of the key, back to verse 12. Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you. This word for fiery trial here is a word pyrosis that means that which has been treated in fire.

Pyrosis, so you see that from pyrotechnic, it's the word for fire. And in the Old Testament, the counterpart to this word almost always referenced the refining of gold that comes through a heating up process. So Peter's using a word here that's conveying the image of gold that's purified. It's conveying an image of that kind of trial. And then he says, when it comes upon to test you. And this is a deep examination that is to uncover character.

That's what this means. So this is not about some ending of something. This is just about a test that is helping somehow strengthen you on this journey.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most right now in a hurried, worried season. God invites you into the present modern day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness living in the present is God's idea and the Bible unveils the way Pastor Alan Wright invites you to save her life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership.

Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment in the moment every day of your life. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. 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. I only took one education class in college. It was to the famous Professor Gerald Unks who taught Education 41 at Peabody Hall and people, everybody in every major wanted to take this class because he was a, his lectures were like going to some Broadway show. He was just electric and animated and hilarious and I remember details of specific lectures, numbers of them in this one random class.

Lots of people wanted to take it because it was considered easy A and it wasn't very hard class and I look back on it and I go, yeah, it probably was, but man, I remember what he said. And I'll never forget the day that he was talking about, we had a test coming up and people moaned and groaned a little bit, you know, or something. And he said, oh, he said, you're going to miss taking tests. And everybody was kind of groaning. He said, oh no, you're going to miss, you hate tests right now, you're going to so miss it when you get out in the work world.

And I remember him going and he acted the whole thing out. He said, you're going to go into your company and you're going to be sitting there and you're going to be working hard and you're going to be doing your job and you feel like, man, you're doing A work or at least A minus work, you know, it certainly is a B plus, you're giving it your all and you're going to look around you and you're going to read people there and they're doing C minus work, they're making, they're being D's, you know, but there are no tests. And he said, what you're going to find out in the workplace is that the only people ever seem to get recognized is somebody that's an A plus plus or somebody that's an F. And the A plus plus might get a promotion, the F might get fired, and everybody else you're on the same team with all these workers and everybody's about the same, you're going to miss taking tests. He's right, because as much as we hate the test, if there is developing in you character, it is a gift from God to let you discover it. And if you're a person that wants to grow, then the test is a gift because it is enabling you to be strengthened for the very taking of it.

So in that sense, the test is a workout. Paul said there's a process by which hope develops within us. Romans 5, through Him we've obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings.

Here he goes, knowing that suffering produces endurance and endurance produces character and character produces hope. So the analogy for this, and that's why I have got this 100-pound curling iron up here. Let's see, my age, can I still curl 100 pounds? Look at that, it's amazing.

It's amazing. 100. Or is that a 50 or is that a 5 on there?

Anyway, I think it might be a 5. Anyway, I can still curl 10 pounds of weight. When you lift weights, what is actually happening? Don't be scared by that bulging bicep that's about to pop out of the shirt there.

Don't be scared by that. And I hadn't had a weight in my hand in 35 years probably. But what happens when you lift weights is there are micro tears that are taking place. Your muscle tissue itself is being torn down a bit.

Let me read it from one science website. Exercise leaves muscles riddled with microscopic tears. So after a rigorous workout, the control centers of muscle cells called nuclei scoot towards these tiny injuries to help patch them up and this ultimately builds more muscle. So the exercise can be exhausting. It can hurt a bit.

It's not supposed to hurt too much where you get physically wounded, but it's a building process if you do it right and then you give it a little bit of time and the muscle repairs itself and then it becomes stronger. So if that's the way it works in the body, I'm telling you that's the way it works for the things of the deep life within you. That there is steel that's being put into your soul. So to go through suffering and endure it, which literally means, that word means to bear up under the weight of it. So the trial comes, you bear up under the weight of it and it's building character inside of you and that character then becomes something that is so familiar with and so certain of the hope that you have in Christ because you have been shaped by this and seen the faithfulness of God and known the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life that that becomes hope to you and you live in that.

So that's how you can rejoice. You're getting stronger. When you're going through something hard, you're getting stronger.

Hope's getting built in you and you tell yourself that. I'm going through a difficult thing right now. I wish I weren't going through it. I wish I didn't have this adversity. I wish I wasn't being persecuted.

I wish this relationship were going better. I wish this person wouldn't misunderstand me like that, but something inside of me is being shaped. The second reason you can rejoice is because he says that you've got a fellowship with Jesus that's beautiful here. He says, verse 13, rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings that you may rejoice and be glad. And the word for share here is koinonia. This is one of the like 10 Greek words that I think every Christian should know, koinonia. And koinonia is a unique concept that really only makes sense in the body of Christ that is the word that usually is translated fellowship. But, you know, we have something better with each other than what the world would understand of fellowship. I mean, fellowship might be, you know, you have to eat some fried chicken together at a covered dish dinner and you have a fellowship dinner. Well, what we really are talking about is that a powerful type of covenantal connection that exists between people in the body of Christ because you and I have the same head who is Jesus and we're so connected to Jesus that you and I are inseparably connected from each other in the body of Christ. So when I'm with a Christian, when I'm with somebody that loves Jesus, there's a fellowship there that is unlike anything you can experience anywhere else.

That's koinonia. That's what he's talking about. He's not talking about a suffering here that just comes on you because of your own wrongdoing. He says, let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evil doer. He's talking about, there's a kind of intimacy and friendship and koinonia that happens when there are Christians, but then especially when there are Christians that go through something difficult together.

This is the, this is what happens to soldiers in a foxhole. This is what happens to athletes who have an extremely tough battle ahead of them that they fight through together as a team in their competition. This is what happens to two parents, a mom and a dad, if they got a difficult situation, one of their children and they come together and they face it and they see God's grace through that. There's something about the fiery trial that we go through together.

And when you have those kind of relationships, you never ever forget it. Well, what Peter's saying is that when you go through these trials like this, you have a koinonia with Jesus who came by his own deliberate decision and suffered on this earth and he knows what you're going through. And when you experience this with him, you have a fellowship that's very sweet.

And when you're experiencing it, you, you get drawn to him more. Mother Teresa, I think is the one who said, you never will know that Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you've got. I don't want the fiery trials.

I don't know anybody who does and we're not supposed to be looking for them. But boy, we grow stronger in character by the grace of God and we grow in the savor of our fellowship with Christ. And then this, verse 14, if you're insulted for the name of Christ, you're blessed because the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you. He is saying that out of this fellowship that comes of sharing and the kinds of things misunderstands and persecutions and all that Jesus himself did, when people don't understand, when people are difficult, when your life's not going, there's a fellowship with Jesus, but there's something even more than that. If you're insulted, if you're, if you're persecuted for Christ's sake, there's a blessing that comes because he says there is a way in which the spirit of glory of the, of the Lord himself, of God himself comes and rests upon you. This is a reference all the way back to Isaiah 11, speaking prophetically of the coming Messiah. There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a branch from his roots shall, shall bear fruit and the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.

The spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might and the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. That in the same way that was prophesied that the Spirit of God would rest upon the Messiah, what Peter is saying is that when you go through these fiery trials and you have this fellowship with Jesus, you, you have in some way the fulfillment of Isaiah 11 happening in your own life and there's a freshness to the power and anointing of God in your life. So, it is, it is like you're, you're a thoroughbred resource and you, you, you're going to keep running in the lead but don't be surprised if some disappointment tries to come up on the inside line.

Don't, don't be surprised if some, if some disagreeable people come up on this side line. If you're not surprised by it all, then you won't be disillusioned by it, you won't be tricked by it and you won't stop running because of it because instead you'll remember who you are, beloved, and even be able to rejoice in the midst of it. It's a broken world, there's a spiritual battle and so yes, yes, in this world you're going to have some fiery trials and some of them will take you by surprise, but not only, not only can you refuse to give up, but beloved, you can run with greater strength and even joy when you savor the fellowship that's yours in Christ. That's the gospel.

Allen Wright. Yeah, you are the beloved. Our good news message today, Unphased by the Fire, replacing a bookmark here, but coming back with more with Pastor Alan in just a moment, our parting good news thought for the day as we continue our series, The Elect Exiles. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Allen Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Allen Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at pastorallen.org. With so much worry about yesterday's failures and so much hurry getting ready for tomorrow's tasks, sometimes it's hard to focus on the moment that matters most right now. In a hurried, worried season, God invites you into the present.

Modern day life coaches call it mindfulness, but it isn't a new psychological program and it isn't rooted in Eastern religion. Mindfulness living in the present is God's idea and the Bible unveils the way Pastor Alan Wright invites you to savor life each day. When you make your gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's eight messages in an attractive CD album or through digital download as our way of saying thanks for your partnership. Make your gift today and learn how to savor the textures and flavors of God's grace each moment in the moment every day of your life. The gospel is shared when you give to Allen Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. 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 Wright, our good news message today.

It's unfazed by the fire. In the series, the elect exiles. Pastor Alan is back here in just a moment with a parting good news thought for the day for you. Stick with us.

Back here now with Pastor Alan. And as we do think about sojourners in a land that we it feels more and more foreign and we wonder, well, why are we here? Why are we going through these hard difficult times? Like his one person says, well, we're here for them. We're here to show the world. Yeah, we are the agape toy. We are the beloved of God. We're the elect of God and revel in that. But on the other hand, don't be surprised.

After all, there's so much sin in the world. Of course, there are going to be problems. Don't be surprised. There's a spiritual battle that's going on.

Of course, there are going to be trials. Don't be surprised. The natural mind doesn't understand the spiritual. The lost person doesn't understand. So, you know, in some ways, Daniel, you get more peace if you just quit expecting non-Christians to act as though they're Christian. Quit expecting people that don't yet see the truth to act as though they do know the truth. And in the midst of all of this, there can be joy because you're being made stronger. You're finding a fellowship with Christ and the glory of God is resting on you. All of that is what Peter is talking about in chapter 4, verses 12 to 16. You can live, beloved, in the midst of difficulties like one who is unfazed by the fire. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.