You're an Heir [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. So you might have some orphaned mentalities if you find yourself more concerned about being right than you are being in relationship. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong, but what lasts and what matters is relationship, love.

Orphans have a hard time with relationships. 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 Ephesians as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program today, 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. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news? Wrap your mind around this. You are heirs together with one another and with Christ Himself. You have a glorious inheritance and it can never be taken away from you.

Boy, you don't seem that excited, but I'll tell you in a little while why you should be. There's a clock that nobody in here can see except for me and the band that's up here. It's over here hidden behind a little wall up here in the chancel. It's not an expensive clock. It's just a simple clock, but it's special to me because I inherited that clock. It was my grandmother's and every time that I see that clock, I think of my grandmother and of her unconditional love and the unmerited favor that she lavished on me and my two older brothers. So every time I see that clock, I can just hear my grandmother saying, Alan, you're wonderful. I love you.

Preach as long as you want to and don't worry about what this clock says. I can just hear that. We actually got some other really neat furniture from my grandmother. What happened was my granddaddy had been sick for a long time with Alzheimer's and so his death was not unexpected.

We were newlyweds, but what was unexpected was my grandmother, who was younger than he and who was in good health, died just a few months after, just suddenly. And so we were just wracked with the sorrow of that and she always had beautiful furniture, loved it, and she wanted her grandchildren to have her furniture and we knew that. And so it came to a time when my brothers and I met to talk about the furniture.

And we were newlyweds. We had a tiny little apartment and no room for any of this furniture. And my grandmother had all this beautiful stuff that we really had no place for. And so we were just, you know, taking very little of it. And it actually came down to, there was this beautiful corner cupboard she had in the dining room and my wife loved it and wanted it, but we really had no place for it.

My brother said they really didn't, couldn't have it either. And we said, well, we have to keep this in the family. So we literally, we flipped a coin on who would take the corner cupboard and it fell upon us.

And we actually managed to get in our little apartment. And now here we are all these years later, decades later, and we cherish it, we cherish it. And we have also the chandelier, she had a formal chandelier and that hangs in our dining room. And so every time that we have a meal together, we have memories, we have thoughts of the love of my grandparents that are there. And there's something just unique about that, right? Because what that means is we're heirs. We received this simply because we were her grandchildren. There is no other reason that we have that. And so it means something.

Now, when you are an heir, it means, and to get this straight, right from the beginning that by the very definition of being an heir, it's something that you did not deserve or earn or merit, but you got it because you were the designated recipient of whatever manner of wealth it was, whether it be of monetary value, of sentimental value, you receive it because in most cases, your family. Ephesians chapter three, Paul has been building up to this picture of the church of Jesus Christ. And this is a text that could warrant a whole sermon series in and of itself because he's speaking now of us, the church, he's speaking of who we are individually and who we are together as the church. And he speaks of this as the unveiling of a mystery of something that has been long hidden, that even the angels stooped to see into this, that all of the heavenly principalities were baffled. And then suddenly the revelation came forth and how God's redemptive plan was unveiled was it was unveiled in you and in me.

And this is what Paul is saying at Ephesians three verse one. For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, on behalf of you Gentiles, assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God's grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation as I have written briefly. When you read this, you can perceive my insight into the mystery of Christ, which was not made to the sons of men and other generations as it has now been revealed to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit.

This mystery, here it is, is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Of this gospel, I was made a minister according to the gift of God's grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I'm very least of the saints, this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things. So that through the church, the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. This is according to the eternal purpose that he has realized in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in him. So I ask you not to lose heart over what I'm suffering for you, which is for your glory. Here's our focus today of all of this majestic text.

I'm just coming in like a laser beam on verse 6 that the mystery is this. Here's what the mystery that was hidden for the ages is that the Gentiles, that's you and me, we are fellow heirs that we have, instead of being left as orphans and slaves, we have been made into the heirs of God. If you ever want to understand what it is to be an heir, it starts with understanding what it means to have been an orphan and then to be adopted. We have a member of our family, she's named Sasha, and she's just a little bit older than our daughter Abigail that we love very much. And she has a very special story. On September 11th, while all of the hideous terrorism was taking place, there was something also lovely taking place those years ago, because in the air also that day was my cousin Jan coming back from Russia with little Sasha, who was maybe three and a half or maybe just turned four. She had lived her life thus far in a Russian orphanage, and after the long and arduous process of adoption, my cousin Jan had gone and she picked up this little girl, this little beautiful Russian girl who didn't speak any English and didn't know where she was going, but she had a mom.

And they were actually headed to the United States, had to get rerouted on that day, spend some days in Europe before finally they were allowed to come into the United States. And after they got settled over in their home in Greensboro, we invited them to come over and we wanted to meet Sasha. We wanted to introduce her to little Abby, who was three at the time. And we knew they would of course be wonderful friends, these new cousins.

And so it was a day I'll never forget. Jan comes over with Sasha and there's Sasha, doesn't speak any of our language, doesn't know who we are and doesn't understand anything that's going on. And we decided the first thing we wanted to do to welcome her to the family, we had some presents for her. And we had several different presents, I think a doll and a couple toys and they were wrapped up.

And so the first thing we had to explain by just gesturing and so forth was that you're supposed to open these up. She'd never opened up a present before. And so finally she figured out that you take the wrapping paper off and you open it up and there's something inside. And then we had to try to explain to her that the thing that was inside, it was hers. And so she began to realize this and I think it was a little doll of something and the doll did some things and she was holding the little doll. And she didn't know how to work it.

She didn't know there were some things about it. And so little Abby went over to show her about this toy or this doll and how it was supposed to work. And as Abby went over to try to touch the toy so she could demonstrate, Sasha just reared back, recoiled like this and held onto it and wouldn't let her touch it. And so we realized that Sasha was grabbing at all of her stuff actually and there was no way to communicate with her. We weren't going to take this from her. And Jan said, well, you must understand, Sid, the orphanage said no child had any of their own possessions.

If there were any toys at all, they were just shared amongst people. So this is the first time she's ever owned anything. And so she's not about to let anybody touch it right now.

She's just grabbing hold of it. Because as far as she knows, she'll never get another toy. After this, they went into the backyard to play. And this is an exciting sight to see a four-year-old girl who's never really had a place to play before to go into a backyard with a new friend and just play. And we had a swing set and it was really fun to watch some little girl just learn to swing for the first time, never been on a swing set before. And she was swinging and we have a sandbox and we got a little trampoline and they played around in the backyard.

And this went on, the most delightful time for an hour or two in the backyard. And then it came time for them to leave. And Jan called Sasha and said, you know, we need to leave now. And Sasha wouldn't come. And she called Sasha and Sasha wouldn't come.

And then proceeded about 30 to 45 minutes of trying to get away to get Sasha to go get in the car and leave. I said, Jan, what is going on? She said, well, I guess this is the most fun she's ever had. And I have no way to explain to her that this is the way it's going to be from now on. I don't have language and she can't understand that now you're no longer an orphan, you're an heir. And this is just the beginning of a life that you would have never been able to dream of as a four-year-old girl in a pretty stale Russian orphanage.

Isn't it time to finally find out who you really are? 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. Today's teaching now continues.

Here once again is Allen Wright. In the natural, as people have studied what's happened with orphans, there are similar patterns like this. I've talked to some parents who have adopted orphans before and some of the transitions that they would go through. I mean, one parent who had adopted an orphan and for a long time, a little boy at nighttime, every little possession he had and every little toy he had, he would take it in the bed with him and put it under the sheets with him.

It took a long time before he realized, you know, I can just leave this sitting out on a desk or on a dresser or something because nobody's going to come here in the middle of the night and steal this. But when the heart spiritually is orphaned, there are dynamics that take place. If you were to describe what it's like for us, now I'm speaking figuratively, spiritually of the heart that doesn't really know God, that orphaned heart.

There are certain characteristics. We could speak of many of them, but if I were to sum up in a word what would be the characteristic of the orphaned heart, I would say the word would be insecure, right? Insecure. You know, sometimes we'll talk about somebody and we'll say, well, that person's so, you know, insecure.

Well, insecure is something that is a result of not having been shown security, right? So it's not something that it's not something that you can just will yourself out of. You can't just cast out an orphan heart. You can't just reject an orphaned spirit.

Something else has to happen. There has to be a transformation where you understand that you are secure. So the orphaned heart is insecure. It is uncertain, unsure, unsure of who to trust, unsure of love, unsure of relationships. And so the insecure heart, another word for that, is an anxious heart.

If you were to just begin to list what are the some specific manifestations of this, I'd start with this. The orphan never feels quite at home. I just don't feel quite like I belong or are never quite fitting in. Never being able just to have that feeling of just relaxing, like I'm home.

I'm home. You know what feeling I'm talking about? I mean, no matter where we are, you know, there's a little bit of a sense in which, you know, you're on, right? And then, but if you've got a good home, a healthy home where there's not shame and there is acceptance and there's love, you come in your home and you just relax. I'm just, I'm home, right? I just, this is the place where I'm accepted no matter what.

And all right, well, right now I'm just going to relax in this. The orphan never feels that. Always having a sense that I need to do something to fit in. The second thing is that the orphan heart is prone to have trouble because of this insecurity, trouble in relationships, hard to give or receive love. It's hard to have intimate relationships, intimacy. Like one person put it this way, into me see.

If you're going to have intimacy, I'm going to let you see into me. But see, if the heart is insecure, if the heart isn't assured of ultimate acceptance and we're not sure if we fit in or we belong, then what we do is we try to cover ourselves and don't allow people to see all the way in because we're fearful that we might lose whatever manner of acceptance we do have. And so your heart becomes more focused on doing things right rather than just being in the relationship. So you might have some orphaned mentalities if you find yourself more concerned about being right than you are being in relationship.

Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong, but what lasts and what matters is relationship, love. Orphans have a hard time with relationships. And the third manifestation of all this is that if you are thinking, feeling like an orphan, then you're always either trying to prove something to someone or demonstrating that you just don't care by rebelling against everything, but in either event it is an expression of thinking about ourselves most of the time. So if I'm thinking about what you think about me or if I'm even thinking about how I don't care about what you think because I'm just going to rebel because I can't be good anyway, in either event I'm always on my own mind. You know, the father who had two sons and one went away to a faraway land and spent it all on riotous living had an older brother who was back at the house who said he was slaving for his father.

But either way, whether it was a younger brother who was squandering his inheritance, he was just thinking about himself, or an older brother who was trying to prove himself at home and then said to his father, you never gave me even a young goat. Either way, it's a form of self-absorption because the orphan, unsure of love and unsure of the future, is always in one way or another having to wrangle or connive, deceive, or something to make sure that I feel some sense of security. And a fourth thing to mention is that because of all of this insecurity, because of the anxiety of the heart, the orphaned heart is beset by greater vulnerability to temptation. Because there's nothing that feels worse than the feeling of I'm not really at home, I don't know if I'm really accepted, I don't know if people really love me, I'm not sure about my relationships.

There's nothing worse than that anxiety and everything within the soul can be tempted with a vulnerable appetite for something to mask that pain. And in other words, the orphan's always looking for love in all the wrong places, something to cover anxiety and mask the pain. Years ago, we had a fellow here who became a dear friend. He's in heaven now. He came here and ministered in our midst and his name was Jack Frost. Yes, that's his actual name, Jack Frost. And he's written two wonderful, wonderful books. And Jack Frost had had a revelation about the move from being like an orphan to being like an heir.

And he wrote about this and he taught about this and we all learned a lot from him. But this story of his was at the centerpiece of his life and was a story that helped explain the orphan mentality as well as any. Jack grew up in a very high performance home, which is a sure way to produce an orphan mentality.

Because if you are treated as a human doing rather than a human being and as measured as how worthy you are based on your accomplishments, then you'll begin to feel as though I'm not sure about love. And Jack grew up in a home like that. His dad wanted him to be a great professional tennis player and Jack played a lot of tennis, but he didn't want to do that. His real love was fishing and he wanted to captain a deep sea fishing boat. That's what he wanted to do. And so he began to go down by the docks and just watch. And eventually he got a job on one of the fishing vessels and he would be a hard worker. He'd be incredibly conscientious. But what he wanted more than anything was he wanted one of these captains to take him under his wing and teach him about all the secrets of the fishing industry.

Where to catch the best schools of mahi-mahi and tona and how to manipulate the nets and how to care for the engines and all of the secret. And he said, but what he learned was that all the captains, they really only shared their inmost secrets with their sons. And that the others were just hired hands and they didn't teach them everything. And he just longed to have somebody that would be like a father to him. And he came upon a man named Captain Klein.

And that's Alan Wright and Wyclef Hanger with today's teaching. You're an heir from the series Ephesians. Stay with us. Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. How you see yourself determines how you live. In an 11 message series, Pastor Alan Wright takes you on a thrilling journey through the letter to the Ephesians. It'll flood your soul with good news and empower you to discover who you are in Christ. When you make your donation to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll not only send you the digital downloads of the entire transformational Ephesians series, but we'll also send you a printable copy of Pastor Alan's booklet, highlighting the most important scriptures about your identity in Christ. Make your gift today and discover a whole new way of seeing your life.

Isn't it time to finally find out who you really are? 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. Well, Alan, as we are hearing the example of the fishermen and the sons who learn all the secrets, there really is an important distinction to be made for an heir and that we are declared an heir of God.

Amen. Well, you have to tune back in just to hear the conclusion of the Captain Klein story, because it is a story of someone acting like an orphan instead of an heir. And until you understand yourself to be an heir, as long as you are thinking, I am on my own and I have to make it on my own, then you will miss the good gifts that are being handed down. That is what Jack, who I am telling the story about, that is what he experienced.

It was such a learning experience for me the first time I heard him tell that story. We sometimes act more like orphans and slaves, even though we have been called by God and made by God into co-heirs with Christ Himself. So a lot more to learn about this, but it is to say this to anybody who is struggling right now, so often it is the sense of insecurity that leads us into not only our discouragement, but also our besetting sinful behaviors. But when you begin to see yourself as a child and an heir and a co-heir with Christ, then you begin to see a hope that is set before you, and it changes every part of your thinking and your behaviors. A lot more on this, but it is a powerful power. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.