Totally Detoxed: How God Makes You Clean [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

Everybody in this world is either fearful and trying to prove themselves, or secure and using their faith to make a difference. 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 Unlimited, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I'm going 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. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special author. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Now, more on this later in the program. But right now, let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Alan Wright. He just said, I can't lie, I can't lie, everything that kills me makes me feel alive, and wasted his entire fortune on prostitutes and wound up destitute with the pigs until he said, I'd rather be a slave in my father's house than this. When he came home and the father was so excited that he threw a huge party and killed the fatted calf, the older brother was out in the field working. He was a worker. He was a conformist. He always was the guy people were approving of. He was the straight A student. He was the guy who never had to be told to work harder than everybody else.

He already did it. But when he came and the father said, come into the party, the older brother was angry and smug and prideful and resentful. And he said, I've been slaving for you for all these years, and you never killed a young goat for me.

And he refused to go into the celebration. There are two equal and opposite ways to miss the father's heart, rebellion and religion. You can be just as far from God as a religious person in your pride as you could be a rebellious person in a faraway land.

It's the same quest, the same deception, and it just shows up in different directions. But there is no life in rebellion or religion. There's only life in the father's heart in relationship with him. Relationship with Jesus is what Saul of Tarsus discovered on that day on the Damascus road. He had been on the right hand side of that chart religion all his life, the straight A student, the prized pupil of Gamaliel, the most respected Pharisee, the traveling rabbi, the one with authorities to persecute the Christians.

He felt alive the more he proved himself to be the best. In other words, he was just prideful because of his smug attitude. Look at it this way on a chart, rebellion and religion. Rebellion essentially says I can't measure up, so why try to be affirmed?

You know, I remember one time talking to a dad, he said, I understand my teenage daughter said she either makes a hundred on an assignment or she doesn't turn it in at all. It's because if you think the only way I can feel good about myself is do it perfectly, then when you're convinced you can't do it perfectly, you just don't do it at all. But religion says when I prove to everybody that I do measure up, I know I'll be affirmed, so I just keep on going in that direction. So in other words, rebellion is essentially saying quit trying to be good, there's no point in it, and religion on the other hand is saying just keep on trying harder to be good. Rebellion therefore rejects others' expectations, I don't want anybody telling me what I ought to do, and religion does the opposite and always conforms to everybody's expectations.

Both are ways of death, right? Rebellion says fleeting energy comes to me, I get energized through pleasure, religion gets energy through pride. There is in rebellion a sense of there's no such thing as right or wrong, no righteousness with rebellion, there's no righteousness with religion, it's self-righteousness. And this might be the most interesting point of all, rebellion assumes the only alternative to this is religion, and I don't want that.

And religion assumes the only alternative to this is rebellion, and I don't want that, but there is an answer, and it's Jesus. So what happened to Saul Tarsus on Damascus Road was when he met Jesus, and then he was filled with the Holy Spirit, his whole premise about what makes me feel alive was gone. After you've been blind and starved and led by the hand for three days in front of the people that you had gone to arrest, and when you've been that humbled and all of a sudden everything you built your life on is gone, when that's happened, and yet you've met Jesus, how can you be energized in this new zeal that he has to proclaim the gospel? It's simple, he shows up all of his writings later. His religious pursuit was to try harder to be the best so that he would know that he felt accepted, but when he met Christ he was accepted not because of anything he'd done, in fact he was accepted despite all of his failures and wickedness. And when he discovered the love of God, that's when he felt alive. When he felt that he couldn't be accepted unless he was perfect, he had nothing but the stress of living that life and, beloved, there are more than one way to be isolated. You can be isolated in rebellion. I have walked with far too many people who opted for rebellion and gave up everything they had for the pursuit of a particular lust, a toxic attraction, an ongoing addiction that allured them with life and in the end left them with nothing but isolation. Listen, one time I was talking to a brother that I loved very much who had struggled with cocaine addiction and the first time that he began to get to the point where he began to get some actual real help that could lead to recovery.

I said, what's changing? He said, somebody has taught me to learn to play the mental tape all the way to the end. He said, I never did that.

I would just think about the thrill from the drug and play that in my mind, but I would never play to the end, losing my house, losing my wife, losing my vocation. I didn't play that part. But you understand that religion, everybody applauds it. The superficial life of the prideful and smug who think they're better than others and think that real life is only found by pleasing everybody, those people, and I confess that too much of my life was, always become pretenders. Because if you think the way you're going to find energy is by being good enough for everybody to approve of you, you don't want anybody to know about your problems, and there's nothing more lonely than to have problems that you can't even talk to anybody about. My point is, whether rebellion or religion, it's loneliness.

Whether rebellion or religion, it's fear based. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Would you love a better marriage? You don't need more good advice you need more good news. Marriages, like people, aren't changed by human effort or even by applying principles. Marriages are changed by the gospel of grace. In six video sessions, Pastor Alan and his wife, Anne, lead you and your spouse into a fresh encounter with the God of grace. You'll learn a simple grace-filled process that makes great communication easy. You'll discover the freedom of forgiveness and the power of celebration. You'll also learn how to pray for your spouse and how to bless one another with a faith-filled vision for the future.

To help you grow, when you order the video series, we'll also send you two copies of the accompanying study guide. Whether your marriage is going through some special challenges or your marriage is in a season of health, you'll find powerful, transformational truth in good news for your marriage. Make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today and fill your marriage with the grace of God. 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. Saul of Tarsus was the greatest relief a soul can ever feel. He experienced the love of Jesus that had nothing to do with his past sin or his past successes. It had to do with the prevailing love of God that had come to him when he didn't deserve it. And so he just, the rest of his life, was fueled by that amazing acceptance in the beloved.

That's what he wrote about. Ephesians chapter one is all about it. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. In other words, he's saying the Christian life is not about you performing well enough religiously so that you can be blessed.

Instead, the Christian life is about you discovering yourself blessed so that then you're energized to do the work of God. Even as he said in verse four, he chose us in him before the foundation that we should be blameless and holy before him. I'm not blameless and holy before God, Paul said, because I've been a Pharisee. I'm blameless and holy before God because Jesus died in my place and has forgiven me. That's what's made me holy.

And that's the greatest news the world could ever hear. Romans chapter eight is all about this. It is the joy of the epistle to the Romans in chapter eight, in which he says in verse 15, you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, have a father. That it's in recognizing that you're a child of God, an heir with Christ, a co-heir with Christ, seated already in the heavenlies with Christ, one who could never, ever, ever be separated from God. This is the crescendo of Romans chapter eight in verse 38. I am sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present nor things to come nor powers nor height nor depth nor anything else in all of creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

If you want to know the summing, the summation of the statement of how a life is vitalized, of how we're energized, of what the source of life is, here it is right here in Romans chapter eight. I am convinced that I'm loved by God. Security in Christ energizes. Insecurity deadens. Security as an adopted child of God lifts the burdens of this world instead of working in order to get God to love you.

When you know God loves you, you'll want to work. It's kind of a little sentimental for me as a dad this week. My son Bennett has finished his academic career.

He's, I mean, you know, it's weird. You raise a kid, I mean, we homeschool them all the way, and then he goes three or four years of college and three years of law school, and last week he took the bar exam. I'd heard it was hard, but I didn't know how hard.

It's two days, 11 hours each day. Had to show up 6 45 a.m. into a convention hall at the state fairgrounds in Raleigh and wear a mask for 11 hours doing all essay the first day, be back there at 6 45 the next day for all multiple choice. He'd been doing an internship with a law firm this summer and studying every night and every weekend for the bar leading up to it, and he sent us a text at the end of it, and he said, well, I felt okay about it until 4 p.m. on the second day, and he said, here's what happened to me, and he sent a video from one of our favorite animated Pixar films called Cars, and it was a scene in which this car named McQueen comes near the finish line, but the tires all rupture on the car, boom, boom, boom, and it limps across on the hubs of the wheels across the finish line. He said, that's what happened to me at 4 p.m., and he's got a laughing face emoji with it. Let me tell you what blessed me about that was this is the bar exam. You got to pass this thing in order to be a lawyer, and he had just had his brain freeze up at 4 p.m. and couldn't think anymore, and he's laughing about it. I bet you he passed it. He always does good on stuff, but guess what? If he didn't, so what? Take it again.

Who wants to do that? But this started very early with this kid. We started in second grade homeschooling Bennett for a lot of reason, including the fact that I realized I work on Saturday and Sunday, and I wasn't going to see my children if they're in school all week, so we started, and one of the things we realized in homeschooling was we didn't have tests, but it's required in North Carolina at the end of the school year, you have to have some sort of standardized test. That's a good idea.

Make sure your kid's on track. So he didn't ever take any tests, and the night before, we had hired a guy who was going to come administer the test, and the night before I said, tomorrow this man's going to come. He knew his was coming. He's going to give you these tests and spend a few hours with you, and we're going to see all that you've learned, and so that night, the night before the man was coming for the test the next morning, we were doing our two blessings for the night. I said, well, you're thankful for Bennett, and he listed something from the day. I was thankful he got to play in a backyard or something, and then he was racking his brain. He said, oh, the other thing, he said, I'm thankful tomorrow that man comes, and I get to take those tests. I started laughing.

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry for joy. My whole life, I'd been a grade monger. My whole life, I hated tests. My stomach would churn with anxiety over the tests, but I was going to make an A, because if I'd make that A, it was like a drug.

I felt like, okay, I feel better about myself now. I made A. I did my whole life like that. I never looked on a test as an opportunity to show what I'd learned. I look on the test as an opportunity to do better than somebody else and feel better about myself, and here was my second grader looking forward to taking tests, and do you know that kid? I said, you know, and I said, listen, we're just going to do an experiment and raise these kids in the environment of grace and see what happens, so instead of pressuring them to excel, we spoke to them about their identity in Christ and told them what good brains they had and blessed them without pressuring, and you know what it produced?

Bennett liked taking tests the rest of his life. One time, he was at school at Baylor, and he said he was taking a circuit test as part of his engineering degree. He was taking a course on circuits, electrical and stuff, and it was a Friday afternoon, and he said, all of a sudden, in the middle of the class, one of the other students said, is somebody humming? And he realized he was taking the test and humming. He got real quiet. I said, well, how are you humming? He said, well, he said, I looked through the exam, and there was some circuits we had to write out the formula or whatever, so I realized I knew how to do them all. It was a real pretty Friday afternoon. I was thinking about what I was going to do with my girlfriend later that day, and I was just like. He kind of liked taking tests through law school.

I think he kind of liked the bar exam up until 4 p.m. on the second day. Why? How could you possibly feel that way?

Only if you were secure already. Wouldn't it be nice to live your life? That's what I want. I want to live my life, and in all honesty, I don't always do it that way. I want to live my life not searching for significance. I want to live my life knowing I'm significant.

I don't want to live my life working for approval. I want to know myself approved through the shed blood of the Lord Jesus and therefore eager to make a difference. Everybody in this world is either fearful and trying to prove themselves or secure and using their faith to make a difference, and that's what happened to Saul of Tarsus. His life, though it looked like he had everything, was a stress-based isolated life of a Pharisee who found energy only in his pride until the day he met Jesus, and he found out and God loved him. God loves you infinitely, so no matter how hard the task, you might as well hum through it because in the end with Christ you win. In the end, you triumph with him, and no matter what, nothing but nothing can separate you from the love of God in Jesus Christ. When you know Jesus, you have the opportunity to never be alone and never be afraid. What's making us tired?

Loneliness and stress. So what gives us energy and life? Communion with God and others, fellowship, and security of being accepted in the beloved. That's how we're energized, and that's the gospel. Alan Wright, today's teaching, Totally Detoxed, How God Makes You Clean. It's from the series Unlimited, and we've come towards the end here of this teaching. We've got Pastor Alan back in the studio here in just a moment with our parting good news thought.

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It's free and just a click away at pastoralan.org. Would you love a better marriage? You don't need more good advice.

You need more good news. Marriages, like people, aren't changed by human effort or even by applying principles. Marriages are changed by the gospel of grace. In six video sessions, Pastor Alan and his wife, Ann, lead you and your spouse into a fresh encounter with the God of grace. You'll learn a simple, grace-filled process that makes great communication easy. You'll discover the freedom of forgiveness and the power of celebration. You'll also learn how to pray for your spouse and how to bless one another with a faith-filled vision for the future.

To help you grow, when you order the video series, we'll also send you two copies of the accompanying study guide. Whether your marriage is going through some special challenges or your marriage is in a season of health, you'll find powerful, transformational truth and good news for your marriage. Make your gift to Alan Wright Ministries today and fill your marriage with the grace of God. 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. Back here now with Pastor Alan, and this is it.

This is the end of the series Unlimited. But what a great, and what a great title, I got to say, Totally Detoxed. That's a great word picture. God making us one. Totally Detoxed. I think people today know what we mean by detox, something that has felt like it was unclean and then it becomes clean. And a lot of Christians have thought that the way to be clean is primarily by their own behaviors and attitudes. And there is such a thing as holy living that is living in accord with God's Word. But to be holy, to be clean is not something you accomplish for yourself. It is something that is accomplished through Christ. And I want to say to our listeners what Paul would write and say to almost everybody that he wrote in his congregations. He would say, to the saints, which means literally the holy ones.

You will get much further in your Christian growth if instead of waking up in the morning and saying, I'm such a sinner, I hope that maybe I'll have some moments of grace today. Wake up in the morning and say, I'm a saint of God. I'm holy. I'm set apart. I've been cleansed by Him. I think if you start seeing yourself that way and you speak of yourself that way, what's going to happen is you'll start living more and more that way. In Jesus Christ, we are totally detoxed. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.