My Steps Are Ordered [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. If you start paying a little more attention, if you start thinking about my steps are ordered, then you'll find that the Holy Spirit nudges you.

And sometimes in uncommon ways that you might not think that's the Holy Spirit nudging me, but you're just walking it out, and then you realize later that was an appointment from God. 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 called Providence as presented at Granola Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout today's 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 in your study as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. Lower we cannot sink, and out of the lowest of all we shall arise to the highest of all. So he's directing in all these ways that he's delighting, means he's attending to and thinking about. He's playing some kind of cosmic bingo with us where we're doing it. We're taking the steps, but he's sovereignly above it still.

He's just smarter than us and more loving than us. And when we're not getting it right, he's helping us, and yet we're still doing it. He's prepared good works, but we're walking them out. This is what the psalmist is saying, and he's opening up a path, and he's putting a sure foundation instead of a bog. And if there's something that we're starting to go in the wrong direction and we're getting bogged down, he's like, no, here is more sure foundation.

And he's holding on to us more than we're holding on to him. This is what's going on. My steps are ordered.

And what does this do? Well, what this does for us practically is, well, so much, but I want to mention three things, three terms to hold on to. And the first is that when you see your life like this, what you start discovering in your past are God moments. This is something that became dear to me many years ago, actually wrote on this subject, because I saw first in the story of the Exodus that as God is planning it out, as he's talking about the Passover and he's describing to the Hebrew patriarchs, here's what you're supposed to do with your families.

Here's what I want you to do. And it's not just, here's how you're going to get out of Egypt, but here's how you're going to commemorate this and tell your children and make sure they never forget this, and here's a feast to celebrate it, because I want you to remember how with an outstretched hand I delivered you out of your bondage. In other words, remember God in your past, because how you remember yesterday will determine how you live tomorrow. It's faith building. When you look back and you see God moments, you know your steps have been ordered and it wasn't just you, what does that do? It makes you realize God is with you.

If you interpret your life as if it was all about you making your decisions and your own steps and your own will and your own, then where's God in that? Remember, remember, remember, it is about the accuracy of the interpretation of your past. I spend a lot of time in counseling and prayer with people to help them move to the accurate and truthful narrative of their life because most of the time depression and anxiety is rooted in a wrong narrative deception.

Let me give you an example. Many years ago when Abby was one or two and Ann was driving a big station wagon and also our niece Mary Grace was in the car, both of them there, they were coming here in Winston-Salem down the road and someone sped through a stop sign, didn't stop, didn't break at all, came through the stop sign and hit her just t-boned right in the side of that wagon so hard that it flipped the vehicle and the roof came crushing in like a dagger, glass went everywhere, gas started leaking out and Ann managed to crawl out of the car and their two children, our baby and our niece hanging upside down in the demolished vehicle and I got a call, I was here at the church and I heard my wife screaming on the phone and she said, it's been a horrible wreck. I said, are the children okay? She said, I don't know and I go flying to the scene and I look like nobody would live through this.

Are my children alive? And eventually I find that some brave person has gone in despite all the oil and gas that's leaking out, worrying about explosion, had crawled in there and gotten my baby girl out of her car seat and brought her out and she was being held by Ann's mom and I went over and looked at her and she was fine and I looked over at Mary Grace, she was fine, went to the hospital, got checked out and had a big bruise on her leg. How scary.

Now what's the narrative? You can take something like that in your life and go, wow, life is scary at any moment. Somebody could run a stop sign and you could get killed or you could say, despite all of the uncertainty of life, I think there was an angel in the back seat of a station wagon who spread his giant wings over my baby and she was not even scratched.

How could that have happened? But that God has fulfilled his word and taken care of his little one and if he did that, I can trust that should there come some difficulty tomorrow he'll be there protecting again. I'm safe in this world by the power and grace of God. I think that's an accurate narrative. It's like David who when he wanted to fight Goliath on behalf of the people of God, he came to King Saul who wasn't going to let a youngster go out and fight on behalf of the whole nation and David said to him, but I have been tending the sheep outside of Bethlehem and the Lord has been granting me all this favor as I have fought off lions and bears and wolves and he said, the God who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from this uncircumcised Philistine as well. He's talking about his God moments, talking about how God's been with me in the past and it's in the big things and it's in the little things. Our children catch the narrative. When Bennett was four years old, he was one day leaning back in his chair at the table and I told him, I said Bennett, I said don't lean back in your chair, I said because it can fall and that could hurt you and I don't want you to get hurt so we don't lean back in the chair like that at the table and he continued to lean back in the chair and so I finally decided I'm going to tell him a true story. I said Bennett, when I was a little boy, I used to lean back in the chair like that and my mother said don't lean back in the chair and I kept leaning back in the chair and one day I leaned back in the chair too far and I fell and somehow, I don't know exactly how, but when I did, I don't know if I hit my chin on the table or back on the chair or something, but I hit my chin and it put a big cut in my chin and I had to go to the hospital and they put six stitches in my chin and little Bennett's four-year-old is just looking at me like that.

He did stop leaning in his chair as much. Well sometime not that long after, Ann said she's driving along and she's got four-year-old Bennett and his best buddy four-year-old Walker in the back seat. It's fun to listen to two four-year-olds talk to each other and she said that out of nowhere Walker says when my daddy was little he fell off a motorcycle on the road but God was with him and he didn't die. Well quiet for a moment and Bennett said when my daddy was little he fell off a chair in the kitchen but God was with him and he didn't die.

How you remember yesterday determines how you're going to view tomorrow. 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 PastorAlan.org. God's love. You've heard about it with your ears.

You've believed it in your mind. Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you, and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love, which you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of the five love languages says, the incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal, enjoy his embrace, revel in his love.

After all, it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. 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. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860 or come to our website, Dr. Alan.org. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. God moments. So to believe that God orders your stuff is to be looking for all the God moments of your life. But it also is to be looking for what Squire Rushnell has called God winks.

That was a great title. Good book, When God Winks at You. A God wink, you know, where this is something that just is God saying, I see you and I want you to know I see you and I'm smiling at you right now. My assistant, Laura, she gets these God winks all the time.

It's fun to work with because I mean, this is always God speaking to her, showing her things, but just two things in the last week or so. She's riding riding her bike. She's a triathlete. She's riding, she's a cyclist. She's riding up a long steep road out in the country, not a house in Stite. And she said she began to complain to herself about how slow the pace was. Long hill, you know how we get.

This is really slow. And then she felt the Lord speak to her and say, um, because of this slow speed, you can now take in fully the beauty of your surroundings, you know, just interpreting it differently. And so she started thanking God for the hill and praising God and blessing him for the hill because it gave her time to see the beautiful leaves and to see what was around her. And, um, as she praising God for the hill and all of a sudden, see, this is the kind of thing that just happened.

A balloon H was just along the side of the road. I don't know if it came out of some happy birthday sign in somebody's yard or other, but she looked at it and she knew God was winking because she praising God for the hill and she says an H for hill and she just praises him all the more. And then a couple of days later, I'm just talking about Laura, but this happens to all of us. She's like, um, going out in the greenway near her house, stop, look down and don't know how it happened while she's out walking her dog. But all of a sudden there's a beautiful arrangement of red leaves forming a heart.

We were talking about this together. Like, you know, did somebody, you know, come by and arrange a heart and then somehow the wind just hadn't blown them at all. And then she's looking around and she's like, there is no red tree anywhere nearby. Did somebody import some red leaves to this particular sidewalk to put them out here or did an angel come arrange it for me? But in any event, it's just God gone.

I love you. If you start thinking about my steps are ordered, you're going to start seeing God winks. They can be small, but when you start realizing it's not just a coincidence, you feel the affection of God. God moments, God winks and God appointments may be most important of all. I think this is the thing that's changed the more that that I hear and say every day, Lord orders my steps. I start thinking, well, a lot of times where you're just going along on your walk, you're going along on your day and you may not be quite aware of it, but there are appointments that God has set up. We pray that every Sunday. Lord, let there be appointments that you have already made that somebody is going to be seated next to the right person or bump into the right person in the hallway or the parking lot or the classroom for the right conversation, for the right moment, for the right word that comes at the right time. These are appointments and sometimes what happens is that if you start paying a little more attention, if you start thinking about my steps are ordered, then you'll find that the Holy Spirit nudges you and sometimes in uncommon ways that you might not think that's the Holy Spirit nudging me, but you're just walking it out and then you realize later that was an appointment from God. That was something God had planned and it wasn't coincidence and I needed to be with that person and I needed to do this thing.

What it does is you start seeing and celebrating the power of God to make you fruitful. In the book God Winx, the author tells about Sammy who was two years old. He was unable to explain what had happened to him. When he arrived at the hospital, the doctor Lester Coleman said the child had an angelic face, the kind of little kid you just want to pick up and hug.

Sammy was in some kind of distress and his mother was distressed. She said that he had been playing with pennies and thought maybe he'd swallowed one. So they'd gone to the emergency room and Dr. Coleman and x-ray technician were hunched over this transparency of Sammy's chest and saw in clear view a penny was lodged in the boy's windpipe. Dr. Coleman promptly called for surgery. If the coin was not removed, the child would probably choke to death and yet the anesthesiologist voiced a fear that if the child was anesthetized by the insertion of a bronchoscope into his larynx and trachea, the instrument itself could cause swelling that would result in the walls of the larynx and trachea pressing against each other, further tightening the grip on the coin.

What could they do? They pondered for a moment and decided on their strategy if the anesthesiologist could bring Sammy's breathing down to the lowest level, still within the parameters of safety, but for a mere 15 seconds he believed he could enter the relaxed organ and retrieve the penny. So the operating room is all on high alert for this moment and that's just 15 seconds and everything just worked so efficiently and on cue from the anesthesiologist, Dr. Coleman nodded to his team in a fluid rehearse motion. He took a metal tube, inserted it in the boy's mouth and throat, took forceps in his palm, inserted it into the metal tube and just as quickly the forceps reappeared, gripping the troublesome penny.

He brought it all out. It happened in a matter of a few seconds and the whole operating room broke into applause and a gleeful mother. So the next day the doctor's entering another surgery with another patient and the nurse said that Sammy and his mother were about to be released from the hospital and Dr. Coleman felt this inexplicable urge to personally say goodbye and hug Sammy before he left. So it was just such a cute kid and he just, and so he told the nurse, he said, I don't, I just need a second with him, stall them. He said, I'll tell you what, it wouldn't be a bad idea, get another x-ray. He said, that way I'll save a little time and I can get back over there and say goodbye to that little cute little kid and he really wanted to do that. He said he'd never before had he ordered a second set of x-rays and something like that and he felt a little guilty about it, I haven't ordered it, but he did nonetheless and so after he, they did another x-ray and the doctor exited the operating room from his other procedure and he walked by to see what the x-ray tech was looking at from that scan and he said, why are you looking at Sammy's old x-ray?

And the technician said, I'm not, this is the new x-ray. And Dr. Coleman said, what? And he looked closer and realized that Sammy had swallowed not one but two pennies and they were just so neatly stacked that you couldn't tell and so they went back and repeated the procedure and pulled out the second penny that surely would have cost Sammy his life had it not been for just a moment of thinking, I want to get another x-ray and say goodbye to that little boy because sometimes when God puts something in your heart of I'd like to just give that kid a hug, it actually was for more than that, it was to save his life and so when you walk with a sense of your steps being ordered, you begin to realize that there is a cosmic level of beauty and wonder and power that's at work in making all these appointments. God moments and God winks and God appointments. It's the stuff that happens when your steps are ordered of the Lord. So next time it happens, just be like Anne, call out to somebody, my steps are ordered.

All right, sweet baby, what happened today? And then tell somebody, your steps are ordered of the Lord. That's providence and that's the gospel. Alan Wright, our good news message. My steps are ordered.

It's from the series providence. I encourage you to stay with us. Pastor Alan is back here in just a moment with a parting good news thought for today based on this teaching. 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 love, you've heard about it with your ears.

You've believed it in your mind. Now experience it in your heart with Alan Wright's beloved book, Lover of My Soul. The Bible is a love story from beginning to end. You are the spiritual bride of Christ, the perfect bridegroom. The Bible tells about a God who has gone to unimaginable lengths to woo you, to win you and to walk with you hand in hand. For any man who has fallen in love with a woman, you've tasted the sweetness of what God's love for you is like. For any woman who has searched for true love, what you long for can only be found fully in God. Gary Chapman, renowned author of the five love languages says, the incredible reality that God pursues us in love comes to life in Lover of My Soul. Ancient biblical accounts explode in the heart. Accept Christ's proposal and joy his embrace, revel in his love.

After all, it's a match made in heaven. It's Lover of My Soul by Alan Wright. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here in the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thoughts for the day. And on that line, my steps were ordered. Another practical thing probably we could, and I think what we're teaching here is it's the perspective of just starting to recognize it and walk with that attitude.

It is. I mean, so, so I think so much of our faith we forfeit when we don't rejoice and revel in all of these little God moments, um, that are taking place. I think the Lord's intention is to build our faith. I think his intention is to have us live with purpose and expectancy, which is when we say we live in faith, that's what we're saying is I'm expecting good things of God. I'm expecting to be used of God.

And it's revolutionary. So the idea of God ordering your steps is to say that God cares about others and about you and about his purposes. And he is delighted to arrange in surprising ways to bless you and bless others through you by arranging circumstances that you could not have arranged yourself.

And this is happening every day, I think. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at Pastor Alan dot 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.