Why Wouldn't Everyone Want the Freedom of the Spirit? [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

You don't need to be scared of God. He is your advocate, your hero, your rescuer, your savior, your lover, your covering, and your king. 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 this series filled 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 today. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

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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. My niece is now a grown married woman, but when she was little, little Courtney, she was home, just her babysitter, a little girl, and they played hide and go seek. And Courtney got into a really good hiding place and she decided she wouldn't go come out. Until finally the babysitter started panicking and called Courtney's mom. And Courtney's mom said, well, here's what I'll do.

I'm going to call the neighbor. And so she called the next door neighbor and the woman came over and she called into the air of the house, Courtney, this is Lisa's mom. And I know you're hiding somewhere and I just want you to know, you're not going to get in trouble, but I really do need you to come on out now. Now comes little Courtney.

And I just know what Courtney was thinking. The longer she hid, the harder it was to quit hiding. You ever felt like that before? It's like if I'd never started hiding in the first place, then I wouldn't have to hide.

But since I started, I'm going to have to keep this going for a long time. But when the Holy Spirit comes into your life and assures you that you're a child of God in a co-heir with Jesus Christ and there's no condemnation for you in Christ, and you're acceptable not because of what you've done but because of what Jesus has done, it becomes safe. And you can talk about things. It doesn't mean you have to blab all of your problems to everybody, but you can become free. To have to hide is bondage. When Bennett was little, we'd play hide and seek. And just a two-year-old, they're not very skilled at hiding.

They tend to giggle a little bit while they're hiding. Plus, I knew all of his hiding places. One little place kind of behind the corner of the couch, behind the end table he'd always go to.

But I'd play along with it. Where's Bennett? I'd hear a little snickering going on, a little grumbling behind the end table. Where's Bennett? Does anybody know where Bennett is? And do you know where Bennett is?

No. Does anybody know where Bennett is? And one day a little voice said, nobody. There you are, you rascal.

Get out here and tickle him a little bit and kiss on his face. And you realize that the hiding is not the fun part. It's the being found that's the fun part.

Let God find you. The Son of Man came not to condemn, but to save. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit to assure you of the saving work of Jesus so that you could be free with an unveiled face to behold the glory of God.

People that are full of the Spirit are able to be free and open and transparent and tell the truth. And right alongside of this comes another beautiful, beautiful gift from the Spirit, and that is if we can be open, if we can be free enough to be transparent, if we can understand that we're not condemned because we're not perfect, then we can also ask for help. This is one of the great changes that I notice in the empowering work of the Holy Spirit in someone's life is that they begin to acknowledge that they have need and that they are able to ask for help. There are people that, you know the same sense of this, we all feel a little bit, it's like as soon as you, as soon as there's an opportunity to pray, somebody could pray for you. And it's a hesitation to even ask for prayer or much less be seen receiving prayer as if people are sitting around going, oh man, they may have a problem in their lives. What an unusual person, they have a problem. Nobody's sitting around going wondering why they're going for prayer.

You know what they're doing? They're sitting there going, wish I had courage to let somebody pray for me, but I'm going to, I'm going to pray for them. What happens when the Holy Spirit fills your life is just this glorious revelation that Paul had and he said, I was trying to realize by the power of the Spirit that God's strength is perfected in my weakness. So I'll just boast in my weaknesses because it seems like the more that I acknowledge my need for God, the more the Holy Spirit fills my life. This does not mean that I'm going to start asking for directions.

I got my GPS though, I'm not going to. The Holy Spirit comes into your life, you not only have a new openness that comes, a freedom like that and a freedom to ask for help, but it's also one of the most beautiful things that can possibly happen, especially to somebody like me who struggles so much with perfectionism, is just the freedom to try something and fail and not worry about it. I hate that idol of perfectionism, it ruled too much in my life and it still crouches at the door.

Don't try something if it might not. But you know when the Spirit comes, the more the Spirit convinces us of our joint airship with Christ, the more we become like little children. The thing about little children that makes them so close to the stuff of the kingdom is that little children know that they're not in charge, they know that they don't know that many things and they know they're likely to fail the first time they try something. They don't wait until they're positive they can get it right before they start trying something. Wouldn't it be a glorious freedom that could come in the body of Christ and in your life if you realize there's no condemnation for you if you fall down, it's gonna pick you back up and you're gonna learn and you're going to grow.

Freedom also comes in this lavish sense of generosity of heart and mind and soul and body and resources because the more the Spirit fills you, the more that you are aware of the unsearchable riches you have in Christ, the more the Holy Spirit fills you, the more you are convinced of who He is as a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance in the saints and when you know yourself to be spiritually rich, when you know yourself to be an heir, you don't have to be so reserved about giving your life away because you're not gonna run out. It's bondage when you can't even give. Some people can't even give somebody a compliment. They can't even compliment somebody.

What are you gonna lose by complimenting somebody else? I mean, what are we so afraid of? Where there's no condemnation though, where the power of the Holy Spirit flows, encouragement just flows and flows because we have generous souls. Freedom of the Spirit gives us freedom to celebrate. That's one of the biggest marks of the presence of the Holy Spirit. I tell you, I get under the unction of the Holy Spirit. That's when I start acting like a drunk person.

I'm just like, because you know what happens? You're made to celebrate God. You're made to praise God. It doesn't mean you need to run around the church. It doesn't mean you have to, but it's a thing of the heart and man, people that get filled with the Spirit, they're free to celebrate. Celebrate God, celebrate life, celebrate goodness. Laughter does good like a medicine. Why wouldn't everybody want to have the freedom of the Holy Spirit? Why would anybody want to choose a life of crimped up, locked down, held back, heavy chained bondage? And yet we do.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Can anyone produce peace that passes understanding by mental discipline? Can anyone heal depression by just trying harder to be happy? Of course not. In fact, almost everything about New Testament Christianity is impossible by human power alone. Thankfully, God has never expected you to live the Christian life by your own strength. He has sent a helper, and every single Christian is invited to live a supernaturally empowered life through the continual infilling of the Holy Spirit. In a special bundle alongside the audio teaching, Pastor Alan has also written a booklet. Both the audio and the booklet not only explain the infilling of the Holy Spirit, but will nourish, inspire, and draw you nearer to the God who longs to immerse you in His love and power.

Discover how to be filled with the Spirit and get ready for your life to be filled with fresh love, joy, and power. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

Now we are in our final days of offering this special product. 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. What's Paul doing with this image? It's kind of a complicated metaphor. And in some ways, he turns the metaphor a little bit. But it seems that two things were happening with Moses in this veil.

We're not exactly sure. On the one hand, his face was so radiant with the glory of God that people were afraid to get near Moses. And it seemed like initially that was part of the reason for the veil. But then what we see is that he would go into the presence of God, remove the veil.

But then when you come back out, he would proclaim the word of God. And then as before the glory would fade off his face, then he would put the veil back down. So both images are at work here.

But in both images, the same thing is being demonstrated. The veil marked and symbolized the separation of the people from the glory of God. The veil obscured or hindered people from seeing the glory of God. And the glory of God, as we read in Exodus chapter 34, is revealed in God when he passes by Moses and proclaims himself as the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate, the merciful. The goodness of God is the glory of God. And the veil, therefore, is not just hindering people from seeing the awesome splendor of God.

It is hindering people from seeing the goodness of God. In other words, it is to say the veil obscures the glory of the gospel. And what Paul is saying is in the same way that the veil symbolized the obscuring or hindering or clouding over of the glory of the gospel, of the good news of who God really is, so it is that when the law is read, when Moses is read, when you put yourself back up under a system of the law, what happens is that a veil immediately covers the heart. And all of life works like this. That as soon as you mix in a little bit of the law, as soon as you mix a little bit in, a veil comes right back over the heart. And you can't see the glory of the gospel.

The Holy Spirit is so committed to revealing the gospel to us in ever-increasing measure, so that we will, with unveiled faces, encounter God up close intimately, the glorious God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. See, isn't it true that as soon as you introduce law into a relationship, you have not just contaminated what could have been perfect love, but you have introduced unlimited possibility for fear. The smallest amount of law injected into a relationship opens the door to unlimited amounts of fear. Because as soon as you're in a love relationship, but it gets established, even in a small way, I love you more if you will be this, and I'll love you less if you'll be this, even if it is implied, even if the smallest bit of the letter of the law gets introduced into that relationship, there is an unlimited potential for fear to develop in that relationship. That's the way relationship works. That's why people that have wonderful marriages are in marriages in which they have such a sense of covenant that though they make mistakes and say things they shouldn't say, that there is a sense of, I'm not going to ever leave you or forsake you though.

And in the context of faithful love, of unconditional love, intimacy grows. So what happens, Paul says, when you're a Christian and you've been filled with the Holy Spirit, and you have the Holy Spirit because every Christian receives the Holy Spirit, but you continue to go back up under the law, every time that you put yourself back up under the law, what you're doing is by your own choice, you're introducing into your relationship with God an imperfection to what he has meant to be perfect. You are taking the perfect love of God and you are choosing yourself to put it back up under the letter of the law and therefore you introduce to your relationship with God, you introduced an unlimited potential for fear and avoidance of God.

Why would anybody do that? It is perhaps the same reason that the people of God, when Moses was away on Mount Sinai, threw their earrings into a pot and Aaron said, and out came this calf. It was not because they no longer believed in Jehovah God.

In fact, the scripture says they were having a festival to the Lord when they made the golden calf. It is not that we disbelieve in God when we put ourselves under the law. Instead, it is when we put ourselves under the law, we create a more distant and safe God. People often put God in the distance by the veil of the law because they are concerned that this glorious God would be too dangerous, too passionate, too consuming, and we are more comfortable with a veil. Put the veil on, Moses. We don't want to meet with God. You meet with God and veil the glory and then just tell us what to do. And Paul is saying, you got to understand if that's going to be your attitude about this, the letter is going to kill you and the veil is going to cloud you and you are not going to be able to even see the glory of the gospel. But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. It's the story of humanity. Adam and Eve, they're in paradise. There's glory.

They have an uninterrupted fellowship in the glory of God. And the serpent, so clever, says what about the tree in the middle, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Just plant the thought that maybe this whole thing is not about you just being in relationship with God. Maybe you need to do something that you're not doing now in order to become more like God. And so the serpent is introducing the possibility of the letter, of the law, of here's what you've not done. You've not eaten of the tree in the middle. That's your problem.

You didn't do something that you could do. And they eat of the due to be tree. And the veil covers their hearts. And their boys, Cain and Abel, make an offering to the Lord. God doesn't reject Cain. He just says, I like Abel's offering. It's the surest sign that you're not full of the Holy Spirit and you don't have the mind of Christ. Just because someone else gets approval and you don't, that suddenly your heart is all wrecked with jealous thoughts. Because an heir wouldn't think like that.

It was a demonstration, wasn't it, of Cain's, of the very fact that he saw himself in a system of the law. Well what did he do that I didn't do? Maybe I should do it a different. Why do you like his better? I thought I did something good too.

Why are you? As soon as he put himself up under the letter, he killed his brother. Abraham and Sarah, the people of the promise. God gave them a promise of a son. When the promise tarried, just momentarily they, well maybe we need to do something. Put ourselves up under the system of the law. Put ourselves up under, what do we need to do? Call in Hagar. Call in something other than promise.

Call in something that we can do. How can we help this thing along and you wind up with Ishmael? Jacob, I love Jacob. Jacob who is a conniver and a deceiver and he finally meets with God. He gets this vision of a staircase and angels ascending and descending on it and he sees God and he says, surely God was in this place and I didn't know it. And he's so excited about his vision of God that he doesn't know what to do with himself. So he just starts a religion and grabs a couple of stones, piles them up and takes himself, just had just been in the glory of God and steps right over here and says, well I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Put himself under the law and says I'm going to make a vow and if God will take care of me and my family, then I'll come back to this spot and this will be an altar to God and I'll call it Bethel, the house of God and I'll give a tenth of everything that I make to God. Why would you want to encounter the glory of God and then make up your own law and put yourself under it?

Generation after generation after generation and even Jesus comes and he's spending all his three years with these twelve men and he's been relating to them. If anybody should know about a relationship, it should be Peter making up his own laws. I'll never leave you. I'll never desert you. I'll never betray you. I'll never speak against you. I'll never. He said, Peter, he said, you're not going to make it through the night. You can't keep your own law for one night.

You denied me three times before the cock crows. Right. And I can identify there.

Maybe you do. It's today's teaching in the series filled. Why wouldn't everyone want the freedom of the spirit? And Alan is back here in just a moment with additional insight on this teaching for your life and our 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 want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Alan Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at pastor Alan.org. Someone once said, doing your will by your power is humanism. Doing God's will by your power is religion, but doing God's will by God's power, that's Christianity. Can anyone love his enemy just by deciding to be nice? Can anyone produce peace that passes understanding by mental discipline?

Can anyone heal depression by just trying harder to be happy? Of course not. In fact, almost everything about New Testament Christianity is impossible by human power alone. Thankfully, God has never expected you to live the Christian life by your own strength. He has sent a helper and every single Christian is invited to live a supernaturally empowered life through the continual infilling of the Holy Spirit.

Discover how to be filled with the Spirit and get ready for your life to be filled with fresh love, joy, and power. 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 pastorallen.org. today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.