Why Wouldn't Everyone Want to be Convicted by the Spirit [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

If someone had perfect love, then nobody would have fear of coming to that person to learn from them, and instead they would throng about them no matter how many failures they'd had in their life, because here is hope in front of my very eyes, and he loves me. That's God. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. 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, 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.

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 that later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. All good teaching and coaching requires that you do point out what is wrong.

Now, let's be very clear about this. That it is important and it is a gift for somebody to tell you what is wrong. My very first kind of big job in a big church, I was interning, first president of Atlanta in seminary and my first summer there, and I was getting to know the staff and I went out with the associate pastor to lunch and I was kind of trying to figure out and I was kind of nervous. I was just like, what am I doing here? And this associate pastor had a lightly kind of scruffy beard. And unfortunately for him, he chose from the salad bar a lot of bean sprouts. So, what began as a scruffy beard became a very full beard by the end of the meal. And I just kept, I don't remember a word he said, but I just kept thinking, do I tell this man that his beard is full of bean sprouts or not? And I didn't tell him. I just couldn't.

I just let him walk right back down Peachtree Street with a full beard of bean sprouts in the first Presbyterian church. And I just trusted somebody else would tell him, but the honest truth about it really is, we ought to tell him, you know, because if I got something on me or something's down that ought to be up or something's up that ought to be down, I want somebody to tell me. It's a gift. I mean, it's a gift if you let, you know, if somebody will let you know what is wrong.

And the crazy thing is that, you know, we will pay somebody to tell us what's wrong. A lady came out of our first service this morning laughing and she said, my daughter's always been disorganized. Her whole life I've been on her about getting organized and how I would help her get organized.

And now she's grown. And she called me up this week and she was all excited. She said, Mom, I'm so excited. She said, I've hired somebody.

I'm paying them $500 to come in and help me organize things in my house. And the mom was like, what? I hear how I've been. You go out and take lessons and pay somebody to tell you what's wrong with your golf swing. If you're going to learn, you've got to find out what you're doing was wrong. I mean, that is not a good teacher that sits down next to the piano student and the piano student just murders the piece and the teacher goes, okay, I don't want to hurt your feelings so I'm not going to tell you anything about that that was wrong. It's not that we don't need to be told what's wrong.

It's how we're told. You ever notice there are some people that you can receive criticism from them, okay. And there are some people, don't you even look at me that way. No, you know what I'm saying. There are some people that there's something about them that you can hear it from them.

And there are other people that you see them walking your way and you're like, oh, what is it now, I'm going to go the other way. What is that difference? Well, part of it is gentleness. I mean, if someone is correcting you harshly, then that wounds us.

And this is why fathers do not treat your children harshly so as to exasperate them. A good teacher, a good mentor has so much more knowledge than the student but is wise enough to know that my role is not to impress you with how much I know. My role is to help you go to the next one percent of improvement. We had a wonderful man, Clark Taylor, an Austrian evangelist here at our church some years ago, and Clark had a regular sermon he preached about improving by one percent.

Anybody remember that? We have a few people in the room. He'd say, you don't have to get everything fixed today. God's working in your life. He said, just let God improve you today one percent. Just one percent? You could improve one percent, couldn't you? I said, well, yeah, I could improve one percent.

He said, good, just do that every day and a year from now you'll be 365 percent better than you are now. You see, a wise teacher does not speak harshly with you. The fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness.

You can be assured of this. If a fruit of the Holy Spirit in dwelling in a believer's life is producing gentleness, the Holy Spirit Himself is gentle. He's not going to produce a fruit that defies His character. He produces fruit that demonstrates His character and His nature is gentleness.

He's a very gentle teacher. So even if God has to show you something that is wrong, He's really showing you in such a gentle way that you're able to receive it. It also is to say that when we are able to receive a sense of correction from someone, it's deeper than just the gentleness or manner in which they bring it. It is in a deeper way related to what we believe is the character and motivation of their heart. I cannot submit to someone and I will not submit to someone that I do not believe has my absolute very best in mind. In other words, if you do not love me, I will not submit easily at all to you. It is where love abounds and you are absolutely positive that that individual is utterly advocating for you and has only your best in mind, that's when you want to learn from them. But if your correction is in any way designed to hurt me, then why would I want to trust that at all?

In other words, our capacity to trust is directly linked to our belief in the advocacy of the one who is correcting us. Do you know that the word parakletos, which is the word that Jesus uses for the Holy Spirit, could and perhaps best should be translated advocate? He's your advocate. You must understand this about God came in Jesus Christ to die for the ungodly while they were still in their sin. A man might lay his life down for a friend, but to lay your life down out of love for those who have hated you and are your enemies, only God could do.

But this is what he did. He hasn't therefore suddenly shifted his nature by imparting the Holy Spirit to us, where now suddenly he's only partially our advocate. He's already died for you. He is interceding for you. And the Holy Spirit, Jesus just doesn't have a name for him, so he just says he's your advocate.

He's your helper. I say this because I so want you to yearn along with me and feel great confidence and freedom to ask God to totally fill you with the Holy Spirit, because he has only your best in mind. And so many people believe that if I truly surrender to God, that he's going to come like a judge, and he's going to point out all my error, and I'm going to find out just more and more about how unworthy I am, and there'll be no hope in that. And so they avoid God, and they have fear of God. But a great teacher is someone that you have no fear of.

Why? Because perfect love casts out fear. If someone had perfect love, then nobody would have fear of coming to that person to learn from them, and instead they would throng about them no matter how many failures they'd had in their life, because here is hope in front of my very eyes, and he loves me. That's God. That's the work of the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is the greatest coach in the world, and he encourages you every step of the way. Isn't that something that you need from a great teacher?

Here you are at this level, and here they are at this level, and you make one percent improvement, and they're like parents with a toddler that's taking five steps, and they're like, yeah. He's an encourager. I decided to get some help starting to get in shape, because a young man in our church who's a professional trainer, he's working with a lot of the Wake Forest athletes, and he said he would train me just as a blessing to me.

It's a mixed blessing. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Thankfully, God has never expected you to live the Christian life by your own strength. He 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.

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. So we got together last week for the first time. He called me a couple days later and said, are you sore? I said, yeah, my legs were really sore and didn't call the next day.

And I'm glad he didn't because it was the next day I couldn't actually basically walk. He's really strong, but he also works with really strong athletes. And here I am, not as young as I once was, not as in good shape as I once was. But he's a good coach because, you know, we started with simple things and, you know, we're not doing a hundred push-ups. We're doing a few push-ups. And we're doing some squats with a ball that's not as heavy as big athletes use, but it's got a little weight to it and doing some squats and things. And he said, that's good.

That's good. He said, you're an athlete. Well, that right there helped me because, yeah, I am an athlete. Used to be. Was once. He didn't say, you used to be an athlete and now you look like a doof. He said, you're an athlete. Okay, let's do one more.

Here we go. I'm just saying is, you can't coach anybody or teach anybody if you don't know how to encourage them. You got to tell them what's wrong, but you got to tell them with gentleness and you got to be their total advocate and then you have to have the capacity to encourage them. And whoever could do that the best would be the best one to have in your life to lead you into change. And what I'm saying is that you have with you, in you, by you, around you, and upon you, the greatest coach in the world, he is the advocate.

Why wouldn't everybody want to be taught, led, and convicted by the Holy Spirit in that way? So this young son has taken his share of the inheritance and he comes to a census. What a great line. What a great non-religious simple line.

He came to a census. It's not a big religious deal. It's just, you know, this is absolutely stupid. I am here amongst the pigs and this hadn't even, this hadn't, this was not fun for very long at all. And now everything is gone and there's no future in this.

And why am I even here? And at the same moment he thought about his father's house. One thing you need to know about the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the conviction, the true leading of the Holy Spirit is not so much convicting you, he's not so much convicting you about your moral depravity as he is convicting you, Christians, about your righteousness. What he's really doing, the Holy Spirit is saying, you know what, you belong in the father's mansion, not in the pig pen.

This is not who you are. And so the thought of woe is me, I'm ruined and I'm amongst the pigs is so quickly joined by the thought, my father has a house and the servants there are eating well. He cannot imagine how exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all he could ever have asked would be done for him. So he is just rehearsing in his mind a little speech that he's going to say that might gain him entrance back into his father's house. But the father runs to meet him and the father is not impressed by the speech. In fact, the father interrupts the speech because he does not need to hear about all of the contrition. He sees the contrition because the son is coming to the father and the whole purpose of the father's prayer and the longing of the father was that the son would come to the father.

There was no other religious necessary ritual that needed to take place. You don't even have to give me the speech. God's not impressed with your righteousness. He's not impressed with your penance. He's not impressed with your speeches.

And none of that is necessary. He wants your heart because He loves you so much. He loves you so much. He loves you. And if you're in a faraway land, He has never stopped loving you.

Come home. You notice the contrast between the younger brother and the older. The younger does not deserve a banquet in his honor. And yet when one is given, he not only has fallen into the father's arms, but he's fallen into the celebration of celebrations. The older brother who believes himself to deserve a banquet because of his slave-like righteousness never enters into his father's arms nor into the celebration in the father's house. So to understand the difference between the voice of the Holy Spirit and the voice of the accuser, when you recognize sin in your life and what is wrong, not only will the Holy Spirit draw you towards the father rather than keeping you a sense of self-disqualification and resentment away from the father, but He will invite you into the joy of the father, the hope of the father, the inheritance of the father. So that as soon as you have the contrition of your heart about the error of your ways when the Holy Spirit is moving, He has no need to let you linger and brood over your moral and spiritual and relational failures. He's too busy drawing you to the bosom of the father and showing you the way back into the celebration where there is exceeding joy. And so the real work of the Holy Spirit is differentiated from the work of the devil in speaking to us in that while there may be two voices that are going to point out your insufficiencies, one voice is always accompanied by a sense of despair. One voice is always accompanied by a sense of I'm doomed because of this, but the other voice is always and immediately accompanied by abounding hope.

The times in which I've been most convicted of the wrongs in my life have been moments where I've never been sorrier for my sin and never more hopeful for my life. That's who God is. He has no interest in you just feeling doomed because He has interest in you coming into the celebration. Eat of the festive table. We don't have an altar anymore.

We don't have an altar that says come and make your sacrifices so that God would be pleased with you instead we have a table that says great is His faithfulness. You, therefore, children of God, can have your fill. Why wouldn't everybody want to have the infilling and convicting and cleansing power of the Holy Spirit in their lives? He's the greatest teacher you'll ever meet.

Allen Wright. In today's teaching, why wouldn't everyone want to be convicted by the Spirit? And Allen is back here in a moment with additional insight on this for your life in our final word today. 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. 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 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. So Allen, if someone's listening right now and they hear the word conviction as, so that's bad news, that's going to be doom and gloom over my life, that's an incomplete sentence. Exactly. People tend to think that if they really get close to God, that God is going to condemn them. If they were to really listen and yield their lives, that somehow they're going to feel worse afterwards.

Where do we get this idea from? The Bible's clear, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. God wants us to see the better way of living at every step of life. He died for you, he prays for you, he is your advocate, he is your intercessor, he is your helper. And so change the way you view the conviction of the Holy Spirit.

The Holy Spirit, he is God in you as your encourager. And to be taught a truth, to be shown a better way is a gift. And so it's changed in my life.

I look on this totally differently. He's not going to condemn you. We may have times where we have real sorrow over our sin, that's okay. But the Holy Spirit won't let you just linger there forever. He's going to move you on. Let the Holy Spirit show you what's wrong and what needs to change. It's a wonderful gift. Today's Good News message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.