Hope for the Unblessed Soul [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

This is a dysfunctional situation, y'all, but I bring this story up primarily for you to understand the meaning behind it of Jacob loved Joseph. 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 Power to Bless, taken from Pastor Alan's book of the same title and 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 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 today's special offer. Contact us at pastoralan.org, or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. Are you ready for some good news? If your soul hasn't been blessed and affirmed, it's never too late.

It's never too late. I want to introduce you to Parson Patterson. He is one of Tom Clark's figurines. Tom Clark, who made famous little figurines of gnomes that became very popular, and they would be retired after a period of time such that they became collector's items. We have a few of those gnomes. And then I think my wife gave me Parson Patterson many years ago. Most of his creations are not more like realistic.

They're these little gnome characters. But Parson Patterson, leaning on his pulpit, looking joyful and looking like he really knows the Lord well. And so Parson Patterson, who might have cost $70 or so when he was first bought. And years ago, I was in a store at the beach, a collectibles type place, and there was a glass case.

And some of the Tom Clark retired figurines were in the glass case. And I looked and there was Parson Patterson, this was years ago, sitting there prominently, priced at $450. I said, honey, don't I have one of those at home somewhere? She said, yes. I said, where is that thing?

She said, I'm not sure. So I had to come home and do a search for Parson Patterson. I found him, dusted him off and put him in a prominent place.

I was thinking of Parson Patterson this week, because that was years ago. And I went and got him and sort of dusted him off, made sure he was looking good. And I thought, I wonder what he might be worth now. Went to eBay, I could not believe it.

$37 or best offer. Parson Patterson, sit under there. He's been in sermon illustrations before, and one time he just sat behind the pulpit for a long time lying next to the trash can.

That's where you're going to stay if you just watch over there. How much is somebody worth? Is it what the world says? You know, one kid who grows up in an environment where the child is treasured and told every day of his great worth, and another kid grows up in an environment where there's no one to tell him of his worth, and instead just speaking curse over his life and saying over and over how little he's worth. Does any of that determine what someone's worth?

Of course not. It's a God who determines the worth of a person. And our lives are just too much like Parson Patterson, a sense of our worth ebbing and flowing to the latest praise or shame of the people or the culture around us. We're on a rollercoaster, too many of us, because there's not something deep enough inside of us that has been authentically blessed. The powerful expression of grace that paints a positive vision over our lives in accord with God's Word.

So what happens when we hadn't been blessed, and how can we be really restored and filled? I think the best places in Scripture to look is in one family, one patriarchal family that in many ways provides the substance of the narrative of the Old Testament, because in this one family there's one boy who's blessed by his father and others who are not. So if you want to see a place in Scripture where there's a contrast between the soul that's been blessed and the souls that have not, then it's a good place to look in Jacob's family.

Jacob's 12 sons comprise the tribes of Israel who get the promised land and become foundational to the whole narrative. And I want to take us there and look at the contrast and point to the answer to what do you do if you have a deficit of blessing and affirmation in your life? We're going to talk about hope for the unblessed soul. On her rare visits home, the foster child spent most of her time hiding in the closet so she wouldn't be bothering her mother, but sometimes she'd sneak out and stare at a single frame on the wall. I'd stand looking at this photograph and hold my breath for fear she would order me to stop looking, she said. It was a picture of the dad she'd never met. It felt so good to have a father to be able to look at this picture and know I belong to him, but it was just a picture and she never belonged to him. This little girl loved a picture in place of a real person. The night I met his picture I dreamed of it when I fell asleep, she said, and I dreamed of it a thousand times afterwards during a childhood stay in the hospital for a tonsillectomy. She imagined every day that her father would suddenly mysteriously appear. I kept bringing my father into the hospital ward in my mind and walking him to my bed and I kept bending him over my bed and having him kiss my forehead and I gave him dialogue too.

He said, you'll be well in a few days. I'm very proud of the way you're behaving. The father, of course, never visited, never kissed her forehead. Maybe that's why this little girl emerged from her foster homes in orphanages to spend her life acting out a role rather than being real. Her real hair wasn't blonde, her real chin wasn't so angled, her real nose wasn't so rounded, her real intellect wasn't so empty and her real name was not Marilyn Monroe. Norma Jean Mortensen was like every child. What she wanted was a mother and a father to bless her but her mother was mentally ill and had no blessing to give and her father's identity was never known. So little Norma decided she would just have to invent a father to bless her and she daydreamed.

And books have been written about Marilyn Monroe's suicidal overdose at age 36 and psychiatrists have theorized about the sources of her crippling anxiety and depression but one thing is certain, the unblessed soul never finds true peace or joy. And what a picture of this you get in this formative narrative of the Old Testament. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. With God, blessing isn't a reward for productivity, it is the fuel for it. Blessing is a positive vision spoken in faith in accord with God's word that helps instill true identity and release destiny. We all need to bless and we can all learn how to bless others. If you'd like to replace every curse with blessing and discover the power to bless others, contact us today and get Alan Wright's newest book, The Power to Bless.

And when you contact us for a very limited time, we want to send you a bundle of related resources that will nourish and empower you. We'll send you Pastor Alan's video masterclass called Speak Life along with its study guide and we'll send you his brand new video course, The Power to Bless and its corresponding study guide. The Power to Bless video course is perfect for small groups or individual growth. It's like bringing Pastor Alan into your living room for an up-close discussion of the powerful principles of blessing. With warmth, humor, and power, Pastor Alan shares personally and practically how you can receive God's blessing and be used by God to bless others. Contact us today and get your beautiful hardcover copy of The Power to Bless and receive four additional resources that will empower you to change the world God's way by the power of blessing. Learn more at pastoralan.org. That's pastoralan.org or call 877-544-4860.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. In the book of Genesis at chapter 37, where we see the beginnings of the story of Joseph, but it's not just the story of Joseph. It's a story of a family's dysfunction of a dad who didn't know how to bless all of his sons, a story of sons who grew up without their father's affirmation, love, and blessing, and the havoc that it wreaked into their lives and the damage that it brought, not just to a family, but to their brother. And yet in contrast, Joseph, who was so blessed of his father and knew the great dreams of God in his life that was able to withstand horrors.

What a contrast. I think that's worth looking at if you want to understand the dynamics of those who've been blessed versus those who have not. And I'd like for you to be thinking not just about your own soul, start there, but I'd like you also to be thinking about other people that you may know and maybe people you don't know that you're wondering how did they wind up in prison or how did they wind up in so much trouble or well, this will explain a whole lot. Genesis 37 verse two. These are the generations of Jacob. Joseph being 17 years old was pasturing the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father's wives, his father's wives. And Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. This might be one of the only places in scripture where there's something that sounds a little negative about Joseph.

I'm not even sure this was negative. I grew up the youngest of three boys. And sometimes you just got to tell your parents that they're picking on you.

You just sometimes got to, I don't know. I feel for Joseph. This is an important verse of scripture because of the mention of the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah. Jacob struggled in life, always wanting to find a way to be blessed, conniving, stealing, doing whatever kind of things he could, cheating, deceiving. And he struggled in love too. He fell in love at first sight with Rachel.

Really love at first sight. He fell in love with an image of what he thought would be the answer to his problems. But by some kind of trickery from Rachel's father, he was given Leah, the other sister in marriage instead. And he didn't love Leah. And he told Laban that not only had he agreed to work for seven years for Rachel, that after the trickery, Laban said, you'll need to work seven more years for me. And then you'll have Rachel. And he agreed. And so Leah had a servant and Rachel had a servant. And what happened here was just so dysfunctional. And I mean, if it wasn't so sad, it'd be, it'd be funny to see the contest to see who could, who could give Jacob baby. So here, here's the way it works. Leah, Jacob's first wife, had a maid servant named Zilpah.

All right. And Rachel, who then second wife of Jacob has a maid servant named Bilhah. And the Bible says that when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he gave her a son, he gave her a son, Reuben. And then another son by Leah, Simeon.

I want to show you a list of these. And then another, another son is born to her named Levi. And she has a son named Judah. Well, Rachel becomes intensely jealous of the fact that her sister is having these sons with Jacob, and she can't seem to conceive. And so in something that's hard to wrap your mind around, she calls in her maid servant Bilhah to be a surrogate mother and to, on her behalf, see if she could have children.

And indeed, this, this happens. And so Dan is born by Bilhah, who's Rachel's maid servant. So it's kind of like Rachel's claiming credit for this son being born. And then Naphtali is born by Bilhah. Now Leah, who has evidently quit conceiving children, she gets upset. And so she calls in her maid servant Zilpah.

And Jacob's a very busy man, isn't he? And, and so she, Zilpah has Gad and then Zilpah has Asher. And after this transpires, there are more that are born to Leah. Issachar and Zebulun, both born to Leah. And finally, finally, after all those years, Rachel has a child. His name is Joseph.

Benjamin comes later. I say all this for two reasons. Well, just, just show the family tree.

I don't say this all for, for two reasons. One, notice that though Jacob loved at first sight Rachel, she, she had two children. Her maid servant had two. Leah had six children. Her maid servant had, had two. Most of the family tree really came through, through Leah. I once preached a message just on this family dysfunction. I think it was my favorite sermon title ever. I called it Desperate Housewives. Anyway, I, this is a dysfunctional situation.

Y'all is the least, very little, at least you could say about it. And, but I, I bring this story up primarily for you to understand the meaning behind it of Jacob loved Joseph. Why was he, why did he show so much favoritism to Joseph? It was because Rachel was his love and Joseph, after all those years, was born to Rachel. And so Jacob just started blessing Joseph. And here's what we read at verse three. Israel, that's another name for Jacob, loved Joseph more than any other of his sons because he was the son of his old age and gave him a robe of many colors.

I mean, you just can't mess up more as a dad in terms of favoritism than to just give one son an obvious sign of your blessing that you don't give to the others. Jacob just didn't even try to hide the fact and the brothers saw it plainly. Verse four, when the brothers saw that their father loved him more, loved Joseph more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peacefully to him. We're going to see today some great evil in these older brothers, problem after problem, and not one bit of it is excused. The problems and dysfunction and hatred and hurt that are happening in people all around us and ourselves and in this culture, every bit of that sin, the people themselves are 100% culpable for their own sin.

There is no excuse from the biblical framework for sin, despite what we've been through. But I wanted you to see the source behind it. I wanted you to see that these boys unloved by their father, unblessed by the most important person in the world to them.

I want you to see the consequences of that. The bottom line is that you can drink in and need the blessing of as many godly people who know how to speak life to you in accord with God's word. Every bit of it's fantastic for you. But the blessing you need the most is from the most important person in your life.

And if you don't get it, it's especially hard on your soul. Alan Wright, today's good news message, Hope for the Unblessed Soul. It's from our teaching, The Power to Bless, which incidentally is from Pastor Alan's book of the same title. And Pastor Alan is back with us here in the studio in just a moment with a parting good news thought for the day. With God, blessing isn't a reward for productivity.

It is the fuel for it. Blessing is a positive vision spoken in faith and accord with God's word that helps instill true identity and release destiny. We all need to bless and we can all learn how to bless others. If you'd like to replace every curse with blessing and discover the power to bless others, contact us today and get Alan Wright's newest book, The Power to Bless.

And when you contact us for a very limited time, we want to send you a bundle of related resources that will nourish and empower you. We'll send you Pastor Alan's video masterclass called Speak Life along with its study guide. And we'll send you his brand new video course, The Power to Bless and its corresponding study guide.

The Power to Bless video course is perfect for small groups or individual growth. It's like bringing Pastor Alan into your living room for an up-close discussion of the powerful principles of blessing. With warmth, humor, and power, Pastor Alan shares personally and practically how you can receive God's blessing and be used by God to bless others. Contact us today and get your beautiful hardcover copy of The Power to Bless and receive four additional resources that will empower you to change the world God's way by the power of blessing. Learn more at pastoralan.org.

That's pastoralan.org or call 877-544-4860. Back now in the studio with Pastor Alan and Hope for the Unblessed Souls, we place a bookmark here and come back with more from this teaching. If you have grown up and some of this talk of blessing seems so foreign to you, what you're saying is there is hope, right? So many of our listeners I'm sure can identify with some of my own experiences in life where the blessing that you crave, that positive vision spoken in faith, someone that says not just I'm proud of you and I love you, but here's what I see in you and here's what a difference I believe you can make in this world and that kind of affirmation, that deep spiritual affirmation and you've missed it. And what we're seeing in today's broadcast and tomorrow as we revisit this is that there's hope because it can start today and it's never too late, never too late, never too late to start a life of blessing. And the more that we receive, the more that we'll have to give to others as well. Are there real troubles, you know, Daniel, for the Unblessed Soul?

Yes, as we've been starting to learn about some of those symptoms that we see in Joseph's brothers. But the hope of the Gospel is so powerful and so wonderful and God wants us to receive blessing and to know that we've been given the power to bless. If we have recognized in someone that maybe they are struggling, they are the Unblessed Soul in our lives, what are some ways that we could start to speak life into them? Well, you know, we all know someone that's been in that position and and I think the first is alongside of them, I think it's really important, Daniel, that we admit what we've missed.

And something that's not easy, it wasn't easy in my own life to look and go, here's what I needed from my dad and I didn't get it. And I think we need to have empathy for people. So that's, I think that's a beginning point is when you recognize what someone has missed and you can have a genuine empathy.

That doesn't mean, oh, I'm just feeling sorry for that person. It means that you have an understanding that some of the ways that they may be acting, that it's because of a deficit of blessing in their life. And I think when you see it, and I think that the other thing then that follows right after that is you begin to be a treasure hunter where you're looking into their life and recognizing virtue and gifts and possibilities for the future in them that maybe they don't recognize. And that's part of what happens to us is we don't see sometimes the treasure that God's deposited in us and we don't see ourselves accurately.

So you want to see them accurately and call it forth. And when you do that, you can attach a hope to their future. And that's really how the power of blessing works. The Unblessed Soul. And by the way, this comes from the book by Pastor Alan, The Power to Bless, which I've made no bones about saying that this is, there's so much practicality here. It's very much, I feel like a how to book of learning all about blessing and the power to bless. But maybe the secret in this book or the surprise, I would say, of this book is that you will find a blessing by reading the book. If you, whether you are an Unblessed Soul or a perfectly healthy blessed person, you will come away also hearing and reading a blessing from Pastor Alan to you. And that was by design in the book there, wasn't it, Alan?

Absolutely. It's meant to be really an experience of blessing. Like I've invited the reader to take a journey with me. And I think that's the way it feels. You know, it's people tell me, Daniel, they read the book.

I've talked to so many. It said that I had to stop an opening chapter because I had tears in my eyes. And, and I was like, they're not, are they tears of joy or are they tears of some kind? I said, well, I think sometimes it's a blend because when our souls haven't been nourished with blessing and then it begins to receive blessing, it's like water to parched ground and it starts, something starts springing up. And I think that's the way the book feels. I think that's what I want to take the reader on. And then, Daniel, it really moves towards not only these pinnacles of glorious revelation about the love of God, but it also just moves into this really practical, here's how you can do this. And anyone can learn how to bless. So it's a journey to blessing. And it's a journey also to discovering how to bless others. And people are given the real tools to do that, including even a blessing worksheet. So it's something that's so simple. You could start today and it's something that's so deep and rich. You can spend the rest of your life learning its depths. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.