How the Spirit Heightens the Intellect [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Please remember, Jesus Christ did not come to bring shame upon people. He came to bear our shame.

Why would God want to put His people to shame when He has explicitly promised that they will have no more shame? 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. I used to be scared of the Holy Spirit, and yet I so wanted the presence of the Holy Spirit. And last week I spoke to the subject of why wouldn't everybody want to be filled with the Holy Spirit? If you think about who He is, He is the giver of life. He is God, the third person of the trinity. He has all understanding and knowledge, the most marvelous teacher, utterly creative. He has joy and love and peace in the essence of who He is and imparts that to all who receive Him.

He is the presence of Jesus to us, to disciple us. Who wouldn't want to be totally filled with the Holy Spirit? And we spoke about that last week, setting aside some of our apprehensions and some of the things we might fear about receiving the fullness of the Holy Spirit. Well, there's one other thing that should be mentioned and which I devote today's message to, and that is that many people, and I was one of them, was concerned that to be fully surrendered to the Holy Spirit, that somehow it would make me shut off my brain and the intellect and creativity and all those things that I had valued would somehow be greatly diminished. And today I have good news.

Just the opposite is true. Father, we pray that you would open up the eyes of our hearts and show us wondrous things from your Word, that you would let there be the very illumining power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ so the words from these pages would come alive to us and that by this Word and by our joint testimony that we would find new victory and that we would find today, Lord, that we are being freshly empowered and filled with every grace from the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. So we just devote our time to you and I ask to be a mouthpiece, a vessel for you. I love you in Jesus' name.

Amen. I want to read two texts, Luke chapter 24 and then John 16. Luke chapter 24 gives us the account of Jesus, resurrected Jesus encountering two disciples who are on their way to the village of Emmaus which was some seven miles from Jerusalem and an incredibly fascinating conversation ensues and a transformation takes place in the minds and hearts of these disciples.

It's Luke chapter 24 verse 14. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened and as they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus Himself came up and walked along with them but they were kept from recognizing them. He asked them, what are you discussing together as you walk along? And they stood still, their faces downcast. One of them named Cleopas asked him, are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened in these days?

What things? He asked. About Jesus of Nazareth, they replied, He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people and the chief priests and our rulers handed Him over to be sentenced to death and they crucified Him but we had hoped that He was the one who was going to redeem Israel.

And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find His body. They came and told us that they'd seen a vision of angels who said He was alive.

Then some of our companions went to the tube and found it just as the women had said but Him they did not see. And He said to them, how foolish you are and how so of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter His glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning Himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if He were going further but they urged Him strongly, stay with us for it's nearly evening, the day is almost over.

So He went in to stay with them. And when He was at the table with them, He took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. And then their eyes were opened and they recognized Him and He disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, were not our hearts burning within us while He talked with us on the road and opened the scriptures to us? They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem and there they found the eleven and those with them assembled together saying it's true, the Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.

Then the two told what had happened on the way and how Jesus was recognized by them when He broke the bread. And I read the text to highlight the transformation that took place in their understanding because of this encounter with the risen Lord Jesus. Now in John chapter 16, it's part of a beautiful discourse that Jesus shares in the Gospel of John 14 through 17 that Jesus is telling the disciples about the fact that He will go away but it is much better that He goes because the Helper, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit who in our text today He refers to as the Spirit of Truth will come. And I just want to read this small section in John 16 verse 12 where Jesus says, I have much more to say to you more than you can now bear but when He the Spirit of Truth comes He will guide you into all truth. When He the Spirit of Truth comes He will guide you into all truth. He'll not speak on His own, He'll speak only what He hears and He will tell you what is yet to come. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you. All that belongs to the Father is mine. That is why I said the Spirit will take from what is mine and make it known to you.

In a little while you'll see me no more and then after a little while you'll see me. I grew up in a family that valued the intellect. That was apparent to me as a child. My dad was a newsman and so he would come home each day usually a different story or something he'd been working on and it was always fascinating to hear what dad was talking about with all the politics and government actions and things happening around the world. But I was the baby in the family, the youngest of three boys and most of the time I basically did not understand what anybody was talking about. And I remember I wanted to know what they were talking about. I just didn't know what they were talking about.

And I just wish that just once I knew some political figure's name or something that was in the current events that I could join in the conversation. But when I did it was kind of pathetic and so I learned early on that sometimes it's best to just sit there and look smart. But I knew that there was, that the value of the mind was an important value in our home. We also liked sports. I liked sports a lot. And so I played most all the sports and I was like every kid. I wanted to be accepted by my peers and I wanted to have approval from parents and teachers and coaches and all.

And so I decided that it would be wise to try hard and do well. Now you must understand that when there is any root of shame, the simple sense that says I'm not sure that I really measure up, that as soon as a child has that feeling that I don't think I measure up and there's probably something I need to do to measure up so that people then I'll really be accepted. Well as soon as that little seed is there it can go one or two directions can't it?

And they're almost equal in opposite direction. One direction is to say well I don't think I can measure up so why try? I might as well not try. And that's one way of escaping isn't it? Is just to rebel and if you just act in such a way that nobody should like you well then you'll never be disappointed that people don't like you because you weren't acting like they'd like you anyway.

It can be a real you know nobody thinks it through consciously like that but that's what happens. 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 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. You can go another direction and say I'm gonna try to just be as perfect as I can possibly be so everybody will accept me. Well I chose that route. Now society applauds people that go that route. Parents like them, teachers like them, coaches like them, and so forth.

So I decided to go that. And here were the things I was focusing on where I would stretch and train my body physically for sports and I'd try to stretch and train my mind for academia. And in sports, I wasn't always the best. I was a pretty good little athlete in some things. I got pretty good at tennis and soccer. But I played bunches of the sports. And you imagine me as a football running back?

I was, I was for a while. And but imagine me as on an ice hockey rink. We had ice hockey in Greensboro.

I actually loved hockey. And I never got the trophy for the most valuable player on the team. But three different times, I got a trophy for Mr. Hustle. I was Mr. Hustle.

Mr. Hustle is code language for you're not that good but you try hard so we're gonna give you something. And so I thought I'd try hard at sports and I would try hard in the classroom. And I found out I could do well in the classroom. That was something I could do. I never really thought I was necessarily smarter about people but I kind of figured out how to take tests and all like that.

And I'd love to make those A's. And so I wasn't really unlike other kids in the sense that in our culture we really emphasize sports and we really also emphasize who can do well intellectually. And those are the things we get trained in. But as Christians we understand that we are spiritual beings. And we're not really trained much spiritually, are we? I mean even if you're in a good church. There are a lot of good churches and it still seemed that the training up and the familiarity and the ways of God moving in our midst. And what it is like to be in the presence of God and how one releases their spirit into true worship and communion with God.

And how in the world we have an experience with an invisible creator that we can't see or touch. And all of that, we're not trained in that. We focus on training right here. So you go to school as required by the government and all your training is focused right here.

And even if you're in a good church you go to school for eight hours a day and then you go to church for one hour. We are focused on the intellect. And I grew up in a home that valued the intellect. Well as I grew up when our family was besieged by divorce and the pain of that and my mom met Christ and she introduced us to Christ.

So really as a little fourth grader I accepted Christ. But I didn't have a sense of knowing him. I wanted to know him, I wanted. I remember longing as a kid. I just had a longing, I always had a longing. I want to experience God. For some reason, do you have these kind of rogue, vague, just rogue memories that still live vividly to you? One of them for me is I remember as a child being in the ocean jumping waves by myself.

Just, I'd go out there and just jump waves and just stay in the ocean. And I can remember, I couldn't have been more in about fourth grade and I can remember just being out there and just talking to God and singing little songs to God. And yet I didn't feel like he was talking back to me.

And I so wanted him to talk back to me but I was talking to him. So I remember I would do things like, Lord, if you're really there, then just don't let this next wave hit me when it comes by. And I'd have little moments and I'd think, that must be God.

But don't you just sometimes wonder, is there not some better way to encounter God than having a wave not hit you because you laid out a fleece or something. So I grew and then in high school, through young life, I really, it was cultivating me how you can have a personal walk with Christ. And it just made me hungrier. And I liked to sing and I liked to worship.

I always wondered though if there were more to the encounter of God than what I'd experienced. And I got off to college. And for those who go to college, many people find it to be this way. Well, in the first place, you can't believe how much reading they're asking you to do. But in addition to that, many, and especially in the secular university where I went, the professors have a sense that it's part of my job to stretch you intellectually.

And that is part of their job. And some want to stretch you in a way to make you rethink everything that you have ever believed. And that's not really in and of itself bad either to rethink everything that you ever believe. But it's a painful thing to do.

It's a very painful thing to do. And what happened to me as I'm in this intellectual pursuit in college, I went through a process where at the same time I was yearning for God, but my mind's being stretched. And I did start reconsidering everything. I never had a time in which I just didn't believe in God anymore, I never had a time like that. But by the time that I was a senior in college, I had become oppressed by thoughts, doubts, wonder if it's all a fable that we've made up to soothe ourselves. Or wonder if, wonder if it's just I grew up in America and I happen to be around Christians.

So that's, otherwise I'd be a Muslim. And so how could any of it be? Wonder if it's, how can God love people and there's so much stuff? I was just asking all those questions. I had all those thoughts. And it began to be oppressive to me. And I was, my senior year, I had been dating a girl for a long, long time and I knew that I needed to end that relationship, but it was traumatic for both of us because people, everybody including us thought we'd probably get married and we weren't supposed to, I did know that.

That was painful. And in the midst of all of this, I've got these kind of oppressive thoughts, I began to have headaches, I couldn't sleep well. And yet there was another part of me that was just like yearning to know if God is real.

Both things going on at the same time. And it became my concern as one who had valued thinking my whole life. It became my concern that when I read some of the accounts from the Pentecostals and others about supernatural things that would happen, it was part of my concern that it looked like that this was anti-intellectual stuff.

And that was kind of scary to me. In fact, I would have not come across as an intellectual snob. And now Anne, who knew me during this time and we began dating that year, but she never called me an intellectual snob, but I was. What she laughs about to this day is I started trying to learn about the Holy Spirit and I'd pick up a book and she'd say, well, what about reading this book? And the first thing I'd do is I'd turn it over and I'd look on the back to see the credentials of the person who had written it.

And if they were non-credentialed, meaning there's no post-graduate degree there, I'd say, well, I'm not reading that thing. What could that person know? So she was very patient with me.

You remember, honey, those times. We'll walk over to the Arboretum and I just, I fell in love with Anne and she didn't have all the answers. Nobody, who's gonna give you an answer about why they're suffering in the world? I mean, you could read every philosophy book. You're not gonna get an intellectual satisfaction of that, really, but I would go over and I would ply her with questions. We'd talk.

She had peace. Well, if she couldn't answer the question or didn't try to answer the question, but it didn't mean that she started wavering on whether she believed in God. And that was attractive to me. Sometimes that happens, doesn't it? You just are around other people and you realize they know something in a way that I don't know it. And if you're hungry, you get attracted to be around people like that.

And we spend a lot of time together. But this is what had happened to me. I had a false dichotomy that had developed in me. I came to the assumption, wrongly, of course, that things of the Spirit were in conflict with things of the mind. And that if one is to be fully yielded to the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, that you're gonna have to turn off your brain.

In fact, some of the things that I had heard people say sounded sort of like that. You know, your problem is you're just too intellectual and you need to shut off your brain and then God can really do something in you. Alan Wright, and I've heard this before and I agree it's a big problem, a big myth to overcome. And it's our teaching today, how the Spirit heightens the intellect, the series filled.

Alan is in the studio and we're back in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. 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, for someone listening right now and they really have believed that they've gotta turn their mind off, is this simply a moment to remember that God created our minds? It is, and it is really, I think, one of the most important messages in this series and a really important message just in general because there are a lot of people, I think, that are in the very position I was in. And I wanted to have the deepening experience of God's grace and the power of his Spirit.

I really was afraid that somehow I was going to have to cut off my intellect and it was going to diminish. And what I realized, of course, is the maker of the universe who made your mind, the more of him you have in your life, the sharper your mind's gonna be. There are times that the Spirit might transcend what the mind can comprehend. But even in so doing, the mind gains understandings and peace that wasn't there before. Don't ever be afraid of the Holy Spirit. He will not turn your brain off, he will turn it on.