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

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Allen Wright. You've been watching any of the cross-country skiing. Those guys are skiing uphill. And the coaches come running alongside of them to give them food, and they're talking to them, and you can see them as they're running alongside them. And I don't know what they're saying, but I know what they're not saying.

They're not saying, Oh, you look bad, man. I don't think you're going to make it. That's not exhortation.

Exhortation is where like, you can do this. You've been training for this. All right, your pace is about right. Pick it up just a little bit now.

You can make it. 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 Allen Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at Pastor Alan dot org. That's Pastor Alan dot 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 Allen Wright. Sometimes there are instances in the scripture that catch my attention. And I want to just I want to just don't you sometimes in the Bible just say, tell me a little bit more about that. But God didn't. And one such instance is in Acts Chapter 16. I love this little story here because it's so down to earth.

This is like real life. Acts 16. Paul's traveling companions are looking for the next place to preach the gospel. And verse six of Acts 16 says, Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. And when they came to the border of Messia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Messia and went down to Troas. And during the night, Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, come over to Macedonia and help us. And after Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel.

I like this in the first place because it admits that the first couple of times they missed it. They weren't really hearing from God. I don't know what this means when it says they were kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. I asked my son on the way home from birds last night, what do you think that means? He said, I think it just means it didn't work. They tried and it just wasn't working.

That could be it. What does it mean? The spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. The language we use for this, a lot of us use this language, is getting a check from the Holy Spirit. And what we mean when we say that is that you get ready to step forward with something you think maybe God's leading you to. You just feel a little check. It means you don't have peace about it.

It doesn't seem right. Something in your discerner is going this and right, a little check. So that's what you hear with somebody with a check in the spirit. As far as I know, there's no scripture that talks about a check in the spirit. But this here, they were checked in the spirit. And I think about that check in the spirit, which normally means it's a little still quiet voice.

It's saying, go this way instead. But I've been watching all this Olympic hockey, you know, and that's a different image of checking, isn't it? It's just like, bam! I've been checked by the Lord like that too. Some of you have been checked by the Lord like, you're going that this way.

Uh-uh, son, bam! You're going the wrong way. He's very gracious. He wants to get us on the right path. But it's not spelled out for us. It's really, it's more, it's more that it's a relationship with our Father through the presence of the Holy Spirit. And so, this is the way to understand, how does a child get led by his Father?

That's the picture. And you grow in this, the depth to which you can be led. One of my many unfinished books, I stumbled on having actually forgotten about it, and was flipping through a file and saw, oh yeah. I was writing letters to my kids about fatherhood so that they could see the fatherhood of God. And this was the first, this was the first one. I hadn't even shown it to Bennett. One day I was going to let him read it, and so I showed it to Bennett for the first time this weekend.

And I just, I caught my attention. I want to read you the first little bit of the first letter that I wrote. It says, Dear Bennett, when I called on the way home yesterday, you answered the phone. I'm pretty sure it was the first time in your three and a half years of life that you answered the phone by yourself. Your mom might have put you up to it. She had probably seen the caller ID flash on the phone indicating it was me calling. Still, it was a thrill to call home and hear your little voice chirping on the other end. I exclaimed, Hi, it's dad. What would you say?

I wondered. Perhaps you would comment on your telephone answering prowess. Maybe you'd give me the highlight of your day. Possibly you would bless me with hurry home, dad.

Can't wait to see you. Think of it. The first time you answered my call. Pretty momentous occasion, wasn't it?

Let's record it for all time. Here's exactly what your words were. Why is a Hornet another name for a bee? Why is a Hornet another name for a bee? I'd had a busy day studying, counseling, appointments, meetings, phone calls, an afternoon funeral. I'm in the rush traffic.

I'm winding down, getting hungry for dinner. I'm excited you've answered the phone and you want to know why a Hornet's another name for a bee? Well, that's just the way it is, I answered eloquently.

That's just the names they've given them. I shouldn't have been surprised that you'd answer the phone with a question. In fact, as you're about to finish up your third year of life, I'd like to call year three the year of the great questions.

You haven't stopped asking questions all year. You want to know why the sky is blue, why bugs die, why some people are poor, why some people were mean to Jesus, and why you can't jump on the top of your new bunk beds. Most of your questions are why questions, but sometimes you ask where questions, like where is our new baby? Sometimes we can't answer your questions precisely.

The answers must be simplified without distorting the truth. We told you simply the baby is in mommy's tummy, but of course the baby's not in your mother's stomach. She's in an incredible organ called a uterus, but that's a subject for later on. The point being, what three-year-olds do with their daddies when they call, is they ask them why is a Hornet another name for a bee? And why is the sky blue? And what are we eating for lunch?

And what do we do next? And as you grow, your questions get deeper, and your conversations become more intelligent, and the relationship grows. That's the way it is with God. Ask God. If you are on the edge of a relationship with Jesus, and you have questions, ask God. If you've just begun a relationship with Jesus, you have many questions. Ask Him.

Trust Him. And if you've walked with Him for years, ask God what to do today. 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 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. 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. I've thought a lot about, is there a way to talk about the skill of discerning the leading of the Holy Spirit, and there is no outline in the Scriptures. And it seems to me that the principle of the Scripture is that healthy things grow. And God is committed to making us healthy. It's almost like if you can remove the obstacles to growth, growth and increase is the way of the kingdom. In a sense, we're like farmers, that we don't make something grow, but we do have to pull some weeds.

We have to water some things and create the conditions for growth. And I think it's that way with discerning the leading of the Holy Spirit. So I'd like to mention some of the obstacles to the discernment of the Holy Spirit's voice. The first of which I don't speak long about because I think we know that it is true that we are too busy to listen well. If we live a distracted life rather than a reflective life, we cannot expect intimate communication with God. This is the very nature of relationship, isn't it? In 25 years of marriage, Ann and I have slowly learned that there are many different forms of communication that are essential.

There is the day-by-day, moment-by-moment communication of practical things that must get done. Are you taking Bennett to golf practice? Are you picking up Abby from dance? Has the dog been taken outside yet? Did you really buy this?

Should this be on our credit card bill? These are the things. But there's something, of course, we want much beyond that. And we realize that if we want to know what are your longings, how is your soul, what's in your heart, where have you been disappointed? What do you dream of?

What do you need? Where do we need to forgive these things? We don't get that running around the house, taking care of children, dog, and telephone. We have to pull away.

We have to get a little dinner together, a little walk around the block at least, but better yet, some focused time. And we know that is true of any relationship. It is absolutely true of our relationship with God. God is committed to leading His people. And it doesn't mean that we're supposed to be monks in a monastery or that you sit there all day and meditate.

No, we need to be doing some things. But we are called to come apart and be with God and listen to God. And whether that means that you structure a certain time each day or whether it means that you get a rhythm in your daily life in which you're able to be with God, whether it means that you just learn to even cultivate the times when you are able to be alone and maybe just driving somewhere, that you're able to cultivate your spiritual life with God, all of these things, but the bottom line is it's about the heart's affection.

The reason I want to have a date with my wife is because I love her and I want to know her. And that's what moves us to do the work that is necessary to get a little bit of time. Do that with God and prosper. The second obstacle is probably the greatest obstacle to hearing accurately the voice of God. And this is a wrong view of God. A distorted theology will result in a distorted perception of the voice of God. In other words, the way that you view God will predispose you for what you interpret to be God's voice.

This is huge. If you think that God is primarily a judge eager to condemn you, then every time you hear something that is judgmental, you'll think it's God. There was a man who I didn't know until a year or two later this story was in this congregation. And when I came here 13 and a half years ago, I was not aware of this, but he could not stand what I was saying about the love of God and the grace of God. He hated it, he said.

He left within six months of my coming here. It literally, it was like he said it made his skin crawl. It's like that preacher is not telling the truth.

It's the way he felt. And he left. And sometime after he was sitting in a real law preaching kind of more harsh mentality church, and he was sitting there, after I had been sitting there week after week, and he said one day he was sitting there and it was about 30 minutes into a message, and the preacher was just angry and was preaching about judgment and about what sinners everybody was and just yelling at them. And he said, I was sitting there with this man yelling at me. And he said something just turned in his heart and he said, why am I doing this? Why am I here?

Why would I want to sit and listen to a person yell at me and tell me how bad I am for 45 minutes? And something just, a light just turned on and he just saw himself back as a little boy. When he would disobey, his mother would say, go to your room and you wait until your father gets home.

And sometimes it would be hours and his father would come home and yell at him and then beat him. And he said, I realize on that day that's who I thought God must be. And he'd been missing the voice of the gospel because of a distorted image of God. This is why I'm staking my life and will not stop proclaiming the gospel of the love of God the Father in Jesus Christ for the world. Because God is love. His mercy is new every morning.

His steadfast love endures forevermore. And he so loved the world that he sent Jesus Christ to die in your place. And Jesus so finished the work that not only did he declare it was finished, but for anyone who is in Christ Jesus, there is a Sabbath rest from all of our labor because it is no longer up to us. God is not angry at his children. His wrath has been satisfied on the cross.

Not a harsh judge eager to judge the world. Jesus came not to condemn, but to save. So the gospel proclaimed to us and our minds transformed with a proper theology of who God really is enables us to discern the character of God's voice.

The third obstacle is closely related to this. And that is that we can not only have a distorted image of God, but we can have a distorted image of ourselves. Calvin was right in the beginning of his theological treatise when he said, All true Christianity begins with knowledge of God and knowledge of self. And we do need to know that we are sinners in the sight of God, justly deserving his displeasure and without hope except in his sovereign mercy.

That is true. But it is not true to say that in as much as we do not measure up, that there is some flaw within us that we must correct. For the whole gospel announces to us that it is not in our own righteousness, lest we boast, but it is in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, such that when you are in Christ, you are no longer labeled by God as this miserable sinner. You're called a saint.

Well, if our minds have a filter of distorted thinking about our life, our destiny, about our past, about our place in the world, then we will distort what we hear. And as I've spoken so many times about the way shame works with this, saying there's something in me that doesn't quite measure up. I need to do more. I'm not quite good enough yet. And so I'd always need to do something a little bit more instead of resting in the finished work of Jesus and knowing myself to be so clean and so free that though, yes, I stumble and, yo, I need to grow, then I am accepted in the beloved and living out of that assurance.

That's a vast difference, isn't it? And I've laughed with you before, early in our marriage especially, I would misinterpret something Ann would say. So it's my job to take the trash out and she'd say the trash needs to go out.

But my filter, especially if it was on a stressful day or something, my filter is like, doesn't hear the trash needs to go out. I would hear, you hadn't done enough. Translated, you're not done enough to be a good husband yet. Translated, you're not a good husband. That is a bad situation. If one person says something innocently and the other person is ready to fight you over it. You see?

That's a predicament. You know what I'm talking about, it's like the wounds that we have make us misinterpret what people are saying. And it's only heightened in our relationship with God. So people that have a shame filter, they read the Bible and you know what they do? They read every page as if it's about you're not good enough yet.

They go to church and they hear every word about you're not good enough yet. And totally miss the gospel. So let's rightly learn who God really is and let's get our wounds healed. Because the more that we're healed, the more we'll discern the leading of the Spirit. Alan Wright, this hit home for you today. It's in the series Filled, why wouldn't everyone want to be led by the Spirit? Alan is back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word.

Please stay with us. 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 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. Alan, if I were to ask the question after hearing this, well, how do I convince my brain to trust? Am I asking the wrong question? Probably.

Probably. Because really following God is not so much about forcing yourself into mental assent to truths as it is an actual relationship. And I think that's so much of what we're wanting to say about being led by the Spirit is it's not a technique. And it's not something that you convince yourself of. It really is something that grows like any trust relationship. Trust grows.

So you walk with Him. You learn. You grow. You pray. You worship. You abide in the community of Christ.

You do the things that Christians do. And through that, we grow. And as we grow, we're growing in the knowledge of God. And I think so much, Daniel, what we're trying to say today especially is as your thought life is healed from old shame-based thinking, you'll be able to more clearly hear what the voice of grace really sounds like. So you grow in your ability to hear God's voice.