Spirit-Led [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. I make so many decisions all the time at work that I go on vacation. I do not want to make any more decisions. Ann likes to make a plan. I don't like to make a plan. We go on vacation.

Vacation for me is not having to make a plan. She'll say, What's the plan tomorrow? I say, There's no plan. She said, But we need to make a plan or else some things will get filled up.

We won't be able to do things we want to do. I said, Well, I just don't even want to make a decision about it until tomorrow. And then we get in the next day, she said, What do you want to do? I said, I want to go out to eat right now. And she says, Well, I think the restaurants are full. So we'll see if we can get a reservation.

So she called. Any reservations? No.

All the reservations have been taken by the decision makers that called us yesterday. 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 Rinaldo 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 offer. Contact us at Pastor Alan.org. That's Pastor Alan.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. Are you ready for some good news? You don't have to figure it all out. Spirit is leading you. Well, there's something difficult that's required of all of us. Absolutely no way to escape it.

It is required of us every day, every hour. You might like to shirk the responsibility, wish that you could. You might try to postpone it in the inevitability of it, but it will happen.

You cannot escape it. What is this responsibility that I'm talking about? Making decisions. And the thing that's hard about it is because we know that our decisions ends up having big consequences. So every day, like it or not, you're going to be making decisions.

It might be as simple as whether to answer a phone call, or it might be as complex as how in the world do you approach that alienated family member. It might be as simple as deciding what you're going to do for lunch today, or it could be as something as big as figuring out what you're going to do for your whole career, what your life is all about. On the one hand, it can be a joy to make a decision and be done with it, but on the other hand, it's kind of scary because we know a wrong decision has consequences, and we don't want to wind up being blamed for making the wrong decision. Anne and I, we've got an ongoing ritual now where neither Anne nor I wants to be the one who actually made the decision about trying to pick out a random movie on Netflix. The chances, listen beloved, the chances of winding up with a good movie that you've picked at random from Netflix is almost nil. There's been very few times we actually pick one out, and yet we still try it, and we look through all these movies and say, well, maybe that's good, maybe that's good, and we get down to making the decision. I'm like, I'm not making the decision, you make the decision because inevitably at the end of the movie when it's been a dud, which it is most of the time, whoever feel like they did not make the decision gets up and points the finger of shame at the other and said, you were the one that made us waste our evening.

The acting was terrible, the plot was predictable, the dialogue was cheesy, and now we've wasted our whole night on it, and it's your fault. Even in the little things of life, we don't really like making a decision for the risk of it being the wrong decision. I make so many decisions all the time at work that I go on vacation, I do not want to make any more decisions. Ann likes to make a plan, I don't like to make a plan, we go on vacation.

Vacation for me is not having to make a plan. She'll say, what's the plan tomorrow? I say, there's no plan. She said, but we need to make a plan or else some things will get filled up, we won't be able to do things we want to do.

I said, well, I just don't even want to make a decision about it until tomorrow. And then we get in the next day, she said, what do you want to do? I said, I want to go out to eat right now. And she says, well, I think the restaurant's full. I said, we'll see if we can get a reservation.

So she called. Any reservations? No. All the reservations have been taken by the decision makers that called us yesterday. We can't avoid making decisions because, as the cliche goes, to not make a decision is to make a decision. And of course it gets really complicated also, doesn't it? Because we have different personality types. I'm well familiar with the Myers-Briggs personality inventory, and I often administer it or a modified form of it in conjunction with premarital counseling. Because one of the sections I like to talk about is how you make decisions. Couples can have conflict over this. In the third category of the Myers-Briggs are either a T or an F, a thinking or a feeling decision maker. You know probably which one you are. The thinking people like to look at the decision logically, write down all the pros and cons, and make a logical decision after the research.

The more feeling-oriented decision maker wants to have a broader sense of the truth and likes to feel it. I remember one time that I put my thinking brain on to buy a car, and I wanted it to be economy. I wanted to not spend much. And so I finally, after searching through consumer reports, decided I was going to get a stripped-down Toyota Corolla. And that was fine, but it was so stripped down it didn't have power windows or power locks.

You roll the window down. I thought, well, that'll be fine. It didn't have a fancy radio. I said, well, that'll be fine because on paper it looked like this was the wisest stewardship choice. I hated that car.

I kept that car the shortest amount of time of any car that I ever kept. I thought, what have I done here? I don't have to have it posh, but I got to have something. It just felt bad, so it was the wrong decision. Decisions have such far-reaching consequences, not just about the bad but about the good. What's the best decision you ever made? Think about it. I'm hoping that there's some husbands going, it was Mary and my wife.

I hope you're giving a little squeeze of the hand right now. When I think about the good decisions that I've made by the grace of God, the beautiful consequences just keep going on and on and on. You can't predict all that's going to come by it. Decision-making is so important because we know that it's far-reaching, and yet we feel uncertain. So we come to this story we're going to read in the book of Acts today, which is full, just chock-full of good news that reminds us how much we can be led by the Spirit. Being led by the Spirit is a beautiful thing, and it's powerful, but it's also, we're going to see, messy and not so clear-cut, and yet in the end it's glory, absolutely glorious. And so let's talk some today about being led by the Spirit as we look at this fascinating story from Acts chapter 16.

We're just going to look at these few verses one by one. Acts chapter 16, Paul and Barnabas have had a parting of ways, and now Paul is with his traveling companions, and Timothy's joined him and they're making their move of where to minister next. At verse 6 of Acts 16 we read, And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. Now let's just pause here and say, we've seen in recent weeks, if you've been with us, how they've ministered in provinces of Asia Minor and Derbe and Lystra and Antioch, Pisidia, and they begin this journey, and it would seem that the obvious route would be to come westward through Laodicea and on towards the sea and the coastal port cities like Ephesus. And so that's where it would seem like that they're going to move.

This is not what we would call Asia today, but that what was known at that time as Asia. So the text is saying they were going to head in that direction, but the Holy Spirit didn't allow them, forbade them to. And then verse 7, And when they came up to Messia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them.

So whatever happened, the Holy Spirit forbade them to go, it said, towards Ephesus. So they say, well, we'll go north up to Bithynia because it only makes sense, right? You've ministered in this area. You either go westward or north because you want to spread the gospel through this area. But whatever happened is they headed north, said the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to go. So ministry had been exciting and glorious, and people were being healed and saved and delivered everywhere they went.

And so it just made sense to continue to cover that area. But this strange, strange thing that we're told the Holy Spirit had forbidden them, and then we're told the Spirit of Jesus didn't allow them to. And I just wish, don't you, that we had more information about what in the world this means.

How did the Holy Spirit prevent them or forbid them or keep them from going to minister in these provinces? That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. 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 PastorAlan.org. God's always been there. In every moment, you narrowly escaped from danger. In every moment, you were surprised by a blessing.

In every moment, you just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace. Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life, but your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart-stirring book, God Moments, that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. 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. There was a phrase, we used to use it more back in the 70s and 80s. I know a number of you will know what I mean when we talk about having a check in my spirit. Sometimes we say, well, we felt like we were hesitant to go in a certain direction or do something because I'd had a check in my spirit. And what we meant by that is that it seemed like that the Holy Spirit was letting us know in our heart that it wasn't the right thing to do. I just felt a check. I didn't feel peace about it.

I didn't feel good about it. And honestly, it is one of the ways that we can be obedient to the promptings of the Lord is learning to pay attention to how we're being prompted inwardly. But I once thought about this idea of having a check in the spirit, and it made me remember my days of playing hockey as a youth, because in hockey, a check is not some mild little prompting in hockey. In fact, this is why I quit playing hockey.

In hockey, it is where you slaughter some guy up against the boards to keep him from moving forward. And I don't know about you, but I mean, I've had some checks in the spirit, but I feel like I've also had something that's been a little bit more like a hockey check from the Holy Spirit where the door just gets slammed in the face. I don't know what happened with Paul and Timothy and the traveling companions as they tried to go towards Asia. I don't know what happened as they were moving towards Ephesus and it says the Holy Spirit had forbidden them. I don't know what happened when they went to Bethany and it says the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them to.

What was going on? Was it just a closed door? It could have been it was just what we mean by God closed the door. And when we say God closed the door, what we mean by that is I tried really hard to do it and it just wouldn't work. You know what this could have been? This could have been the apostle Paul.

Let's be real about this. It could have been the apostle Paul has just picked up the phone and called the local rabbi over at Loud to see you and said, hey, listen, we're going to be traveling in your area, me and my guys. And you know, we've been having some great meetings, people getting real good turnouts for these meetings and we're getting people saved and healed and miraculous things are happening in the name of Jesus. And the local rabbi said, I'm sorry, Wednesday night we've got two bar mitzvahs and then on Thursday that slot's not open either.

We have a rousing choir concert that night. No, no, no availability here. It could have been that, that they're just trying to get in and just can't, or maybe it's not impossible that what it meant, let's be real. This is sometimes the way it happens is that they went and began to try to minister and it just was bearing no fruit.

Nothing was happening. That could be part of the case. It just, or it could be that it was one of those hockey check type things where, you know, it wasn't, wasn't just like, oh, we had a little check in our spirit. It might've been, they went, who knows, it could have been this. They went and there was already an angry crowd waiting on them. You know, we've seen throughout the book of Acts, there were times in which it's just not time for Peter to die.

It's just not time for Paul to die. And so angry mob tries to kill them and they have to slip out and they have to escape and, and, uh, and they go to another place cause they're, they're, they're not foolish. They don't just needlessly stand around. Could be that they came to, came to town and there's already an angry mob waiting on them, ready to throw the rotten tomatoes at them, uh, persecute them. And maybe they just had literally couldn't go because the crowd was there. I don't know. Or, or maybe, maybe, maybe they, they just, they just couldn't find a way to get any important connections there.

Who knows? But the fact of the matter is that a closed door is a closed door and God can close doors in a lot of different ways, including even this sounds strange, but he can close a door even using the sin of other people, even though they're doing something wrong. It might be that God gets us where we're supposed to go anyway. Go back and look at the story of Joseph whose brother sold him into slavery. That was evil.

And he was unjustly accused and falsely accused and unjustly in prison. That was evil. But through all of that, Joseph said, what you meant for harm, God meant for good. So Paul and they came back and they just said, well, we, we tried, but the Holy Spirit didn't allow us. And we think that maybe this was some really spiritual thing, but it could have been, it was much more practical. I don't know. But the fact of the matter is closed doors, let's be honest about it.

Christians, they're not fun at all. I mean, I asked someone who has been looking for a job for a year interview after interview. It doesn't really help. Does it to say, well, whenever God closes a door, he always opens a window. And I'd like to know what these apostles were actually feeling when you were not giving any information about that, but it was frustrating. They, they must've felt the frustrations of it. I wonder what they were all saying to one another.

Who knows? But closed doors do not feel good when you bump up against it. So one of the great closed door stories of this church and really of my life, some of you have heard before, we like to tell some of the stories again and again, because they are part of the history of God's goodness to us. And years and years ago, we had a desire amongst the leadership to be able to secure a piece of property that was at that time in the middle of our other property at the village campus. This historic original campus of Rinaldo church had a house. It was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Harper. The Harper house was right in the middle and we had property on the other side and on the side of the main church buildings. And we really would like to get this house.

Well, Mr. and Mrs. Harper didn't have any intention of selling it. In fact, I don't know over the years there had been even good relations there, but we began as leaders praying about it. And I tried to get to know Mr. and Mrs. Harper and eventually indicated we would be interested in buying it. And at some point they said they were open to it. And we did that sort of conversation where we realized that it was going to take a pretty big price to get it. And we actually went and offered them what I thought was the amount that was needed to purchase that house.

It was a lot of money. And Mr. Harper was very cordial that day and he said, well, thank you, but that's not going to do it. And we left, the elders and I, and were just baffled because we thought he had said we were going to be able to purchase the house for this price and we didn't know what was going on. Within a day or two, we found out that Summit School, the neighbor to the church at the Village Campus, had bought the house at a higher price than what we'd offered.

And we had great friendships and relationship with the leadership at Summit School. And so at first I was just completely undone by this. And I remember talking to one of the elders, Bob Roach, he said, don't fall on your sword yet, young man.

He said, you never know what the Lord's going to do. But everything within me wanted to just go, ah, because that's what closed doors feel like, don't they? They feel like I was going in this direction. It seemed the right thing to do. And all of a sudden the opportunity has been shut off. Well, long story short, part of the folklore of our church is that the reason that Summit School bought it is they wanted to work out a land swap with the church.

We did work out a land swap that enabled them to get some land they needed to create a new parking area and a new drop off area and a land that we didn't need nearly so much as the Harper House. And so we worked out a trade. Alan Wright, our good news message today. Spirit led. It's in the series Unlimited and stay with us. Pastor Alan is joining me in the studio, sharing his parting good news thought for the day in just a moment. 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 dot org. God's always been there in every moment. You narrowly escaped from danger in every moment. You were surprised by a blessing in every moment.

You just knew the direction to take. God was there. Your life is defined by countless moments of God's grace.

Perhaps they've been covered by the sands of time or have just gone unnoticed in the rush of life. But your life is full of God moments. When you make a gift today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's heart stirring book God Moments that will lead you on a spiritual treasure hunt to uncover your God moments. It's Alan Wright's timeless book, God Moments.

Discover your God moments in the past and be filled with fresh faith today. 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, Pastor Alan dot org. Back here now to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day. And you mentioned all of life's instructions are not found in the Bible, which, which sounds a little strange until you really go and unpack that. I think you mentioned, you know, the name of your wife or your spouse is not, it's not outlined specifically in the Bible. What do you mean by that? And where's the good news in that?

Yeah. Well, Daniel, as, as all our listeners know, I love the word of God. I've devoted my life to this one book, really, endless depth and richness and timelessness of the scriptures. So we hold the scriptures in most authority and priority and love the word of God.

But to think that, that God doesn't lead us in accord with the scriptures is to say that we would be left alone. And all of these, the paths of life that we're on. And so as we're going through the book of acts, what we realize is this unveiling of a great story in which God is actively speaking, leading and directing his children. And this is a great news for us that we're sheep and he's a shepherd and he's guiding and he's leading. And as we're learning today, sometimes it comes in a, in a, in a, in a gentle, a gentle nudge. And sometimes it'll come with that door just got slammed shut.

And sometimes you feel like, Oh, that was bad news, but it ends up being good news. If God's getting you where he wants you to go. So it's all about being led by the Holy spirit of the living God. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at Pastor Alan.org or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. If you only caught part of today's teaching, not only can you listen again online, but also get a daily email devotional that matches today's teaching delivered right to your email inbox free. Find out more about these and other resources at pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright ministries.