Risking Love [Part 2]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

If you love someone, I wish I could explain this mystery. If you love someone, the blessing is not what you get because you love them. The blessing is loving them. 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 offer. 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. I feel bad sometimes because I get a little emotional sometimes when I preach, especially I start talking about the love of God and I might start crying. It sounds like Paul cried every time he preached.

That's what he's saying. Every time he preached, he cried because he can't help it. His heart's so soft before the Lord. And then verse 31, here's how the account is remembered by Luke.

Paul said, I'm sorry, verse 37, it was remembered by Luke this way, there was much weeping on the part of all and they embraced Paul and they kissed him. I love more of the Hebrew and Mid-Eastern culture where men hug each other and cry and kiss each other on the cheek. Affection. We're made for affection. Children in our homes are made for affection.

They need it. Social distancing has been necessary, but awful because we need affection. Verse 38, being sorrowful most of all because the word he spoke and they never see his face again. It was an emotional goodbye. Now, it was not an emotional goodbye that was just maudlin. It wasn't just emotionalism. There is a way in which we become too emotional. Emotions aren't what we go on. They are more like indicators of what we're going on. Emotions are like the dashboard of your car. They're reliable indicators of what's going on in your heart, but emotionalism is not helpful.

Sometimes, you know, you'd be watching a movie and you're like, you know what? This is not authentically sad. This is just a tear jerker.

They just set this up and they're just jerking the tears out of my eyes. And sometimes ministry situation, we can do that too. I remember my first ministry goodbye.

It became over emotional. I had been the youth pastor for two years in a small startup church with a small youth group. My wife served alongside of me for two years. Every week, a small youth group, we spent time with them. We loved those kids day in, day out for two years. And it was time for me to go to seminary.

And so on the last Sunday, we arranged for the service to be mainly student led that day. And it became so emotional. It was like, well, the kids shared some stories and they were sweet. And then, but we did the thing that was like, oh man, why did we, why, why, why did we even do it? We showed a slide show and it had all the best memories of the thing. And so, you know, the slide show itself was emotional, but then we made the classic tear jerking mistake. In the eighties, almost every youth slide show was accompanied by the words, by the song from Michael W. Smith, Friends.

Packing up the dreams God planted in the fertile soil of you. I can't believe the hopes he's granted means a chapter of your life is through. You can't get through the first verse. By the time you get to the chorus and friends are friends forever.

If the Lord's the Lord and friends will not say never. And we're playing the song and they're saying, all the kids are crying. I'm crying. My wife's crying. We're like, you know, that's just, we're just lost in emotion there.

That's not, emotionalism where it is extending beyond the extent of the occasion. That's not what's going on with Paul. Paul had spent his life with them and he's never going to see them again. I love Paul's words where he shared how his heart felt towards the body and Thessalonica.

The first Thessalonians 2, I love this verse. When Paul said, being affectionately desirous of you, affectionately desirous of you. That's, we wouldn't use our terms like that. We would just say, I just have so much love and affection for you. I just long to always be with you. That's what it would mean. We were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God, but also our own selves because you've become so very dear to us.

I like the NIV translation better. We shared not only the gospel of God, but our very lives with you. He was here in his life.

Our lives, he's saying, our lives, he's saying we had a love attachment that ran so deep. And he affirms this back in our chapter, verse 18. You yourselves know I lived among you from the time. This is not a preacher who's just there to kind of teach them some truths and dog.

He said, lived amongst you. He said, verse 20, teaching you in public and from house to house. Remember Christians, remember as wonderful as our big buildings are, as wonderful as it is to gather in huge gatherings for great worship with great bands and great video and great sound and have the inspiring experience.

Please never forget this, especially during a global pandemic. The church of Jesus Christ has never been about all that. The church of Jesus Christ has been about discipling life on life relationships from house to house to house. It's always been about relationships. And he just spent his time with them and he just loved them. That's what this was. To try to understand what this goodbye was like, it wasn't playing friends under a slide show.

It's much deeper than that. I'm trying to think of the goodbyes that have been tough. I mean, the toughest probably ever was the day that we took our firstborn to college. We'd homeschooled all the way through and little Bennett, now grown up enough, he said, going to Baylor a thousand miles away in Waco, Texas. And he only knew one other person in the school.

He knew who would be his roommate. And they had what they called a banana split party. They had gotten the parents and they said, now listen, don't linger around here and make it harder on everybody.

We're going to have a thing where then it's time for you to leave and don't be rushing back in, you know, and it's just, we got to have a thing and we're going to take them out into the big quad and we'll start doing some activities with them and we're going to start getting them oriented. And so they had a banana split party. You're supposed to make a banana split, eat it, and then the parents split. Ann and I and Abby are there to say goodbye to Bennett. Well, Bennett's roommate, the only other person he knew in the incoming class of 3,000 freshmen had gone out to dinner with this. They didn't go to the banana split party.

So, Bennett didn't know anybody. And it came time, we're supposed to go fix some ice cream. And, you know, I don't even think we had any ice cream. I think somebody said, anybody feel like ice cream?

No. I think it might've been Bennett finally who just, we're just kind of sitting there and he just said, well, let's just get this over with, you know, and I'll never, I'll never forget hugging that, hugging that boy. And, and then watching him start walking to that quad with 3,000 students and he didn't know a single one of them. And we're supposed to walk out and fly and come back to, to drive back to North Carolina. That's a tough goodbye, but it's not even like this because actually I had a conference three weeks later in Texas. I was going to go see him, you know, and Paul, it's just, it's just like when you, when you have been, when you have been in the trenches of spiritual warfare with someone, when you have been, when you have been showing love to people and pouring out your heart, and you've been caring for people, a bond, an attachment forms. And to say goodbye from that attachment is one of the hardest things you'll ever do in your life. And a lot of people don't risk deep love because they're afraid of having to say goodbye. And the fact of the matter is in one way or another on this earth, we will say goodbye to every person we've loved, no matter how deeply.

Now we will, for those that are in the Lord, we'll see them and we'll spend eternity with them. So goodbye for us, even when I'm saying goodbye to someone that's graduating to heaven, it really is for me, it's goodbye, I'll see you after a bit, but it's still a goodbye. And what happens in life is our heart can get, can get hurt. A lot of people in this room right now, you know what it is to have loved deeply and for the love to either have been betrayed, mistreated, mishandled, or not returned, and it hurts. And you got to come out of the comfort zone to love like this. To love like this.

And when it hurts, it's proof that your heart is soft. 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. Ezekiel prophesied a hugely important word about the new covenant. In Ezekiel 36, verse 26, the Lord said, I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I'll put within you, and I'll remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. In the new covenant, a covenant of grace, not of law, Ezekiel was prophesying as Jeremiah did in Jeremiah 31. God said, I'll put a new heart into you. And instead of your life being about, here's a set of laws, and you try in a detached way to match up to those laws, he said, I'm going to do something much greater than that. I'm going to put love and my will down into your heart by means of relational attachment to me, God says.

And that's messy. And that heart won't be a heart of stone. You could say all the right things, believe all the right things, quote all the right scriptures, and have a heart of stone. But in the new covenant of God's grace, if you really become a child of that grace and a child of the Father, it's impossible for that heart to stay stony because the love of God starts melting away the calcification. It's tempting to want to put walls around one's heart, especially when you've been hurt. It's tempting to say, I'll just leave my heart like stone because you can hit against it and it won't hurt.

You can hit your fist against a rock and the rock won't hurt, but nothing gets inside it. The walls that keep the hurt out also keep the love out. And Paul is showing you, along with these Ephesian elders, what love, what a heart of flesh, what Christian relationship looks like.

It's messy, risky, vulnerable, and full of unspeakable affection. When my sweet sister-in-law Mary died years ago and I was grieving so heavy, I think the single most comforting thing anybody told me was Pastor Hank Keating. I was on the phone and I was just weeping and I was just saying, I'm just grieving so deeply. And he said, well, those that love deeply grieve deeply. And it helped me because it meant that every pang of grief was a testimony of my love. It's a beautiful scene of great passion, isn't it? That's the first mark, the A of the ABCs of authentic gospel love, affection.

And the second, I would say, if I give a word to the B, it would be blessing. It would mean to say, that when you love someone, you just want the best for them. Listen to Paul's language at verse 20, I did not shrink from declaring to you anything that was profitable. I did not shrink, even though the Jews would persecute me.

The more that he preached the good news of Jesus, the more he was persecuted. But he said, I am willing to put my comfort on hold and at risk because I loved you. And I didn't want to withhold any good thing from you. Let me just tell you, that is the definition of the heart of blessing. I want it to go well for you. Can I just tell you just supernaturally, before I even met a single person at this church 24 years ago, and I feel the exact same thing to this day.

I feel the exact same thing to this day. I may not be perfect, and I have messed up plenty, but I want to say this. There's never been a person in this congregation, and there's never a person in this congregation today that I can't say this of, I want it to go well for you. I want you to be healthy. I want your life to prosper.

I want your children to prosper. I want your relationships to be happy. I want you to be able to fulfill all God's purposes. I want you to have love and joy and peace in your life. I want your life to be full of an identity that is secure in the love of God.

I only want what's good for you. That's what love does. Love blesses, blesses. I didn't shrink back, Paul says, from holding back something good from you because I was afraid of what might happen to me. When a parent loves a child, you don't shrink back from giving something good to the child for fear of something bad happening to the parent. You want good so much that you, if you could, if you could, I've felt this. I feel this as a pastor, and I feel this as a parent. If I could just somehow physically, just somehow just take it, everything could happen to me, everything good that I know, and just give it to you. That's what I want.

That's what I always wanted for my kids, even to this very moment. It's the only explanation of how someone could ever lay their life down for someone else, is where you want what is good for them more than what you would care for your own life. That's what Paul's saying.

When he says, I didn't count my life of value compared... This is not Paul having a poor self-esteem. This is Paul saying, compared to the love that I feel for you, I didn't care what happened to me.

That's Christian love. He said in verse 27, I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God. This text often, I think, gets quoted and used in ways that's not exactly the meaning. Some people say, this is the text that means declare the whole counsel. Almost as if they're saying, don't hold back the hard things, also give them the hard things, pastor.

I've heard people use this text as most like, almost like they're saying, don't just give them the good news, give them the bad news. No, the whole counsel of God, the whole counsel of God is good news. There's not a part of the counsel that's bad news.

There's not a part of the counsel that's not loving. For us within charismatic tradition, often we'll say, well, this means don't withhold speaking about the Holy Spirit. Well, we're sure we should speak about the Holy Spirit, speak about everything Jesus spoke about.

Actually, the word counsel here, it literally means plan. He's saying, I didn't shrink back from telling you God's whole plan. In other words, for whatever reason, God chose to put Paul in Ephesus way longer than other places.

Some of you have been walking through this study of Acts with me. You remember a text some weeks back in which Paul tried to go towards Ephesus, tried to go towards Asia Minor and the Holy Spirit wouldn't let him. We don't know how the Holy Spirit didn't let him, but then eventually saw a man and a vision, a man in Macedonia saying, come here. And that's why they went to Europe. And now we find out it just wasn't the right time.

That's all we can say. It wasn't the right time. He did want him to go to Asia and he spent over two years in Ephesus and he spent house to house and in the local gathering place, he spent time teaching them the whole plan of God. You know what he was doing? He was showing them Jesus on every page of the Hebrew scriptures. He was showing them in all the law and all the prophets and all the wisdom and all the Psalms. He was showing them this has always been about Jesus.

And the more he talked about how Jesus was the fulfillment of all the promises of God in the Hebrew scriptures, the more the Jews leaders despised him, the more they felt threatened except for those who came to faith. And he said, but I didn't hold back from that. If it was good, I wanted you to have it.

If it's good, I want you to know about it. I didn't care what happened to me. It's all about the grace of God. Verse 24, if only I may finish my course in the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus. This is all I cared about in your midst. To testify to the gospel of the grace of God.

I like that phrase. The gospel of the grace of God. The good news of the grace of God.

Alan Wright. Good news message today, risking love from the series unlimited. I encourage you to stick around. Pastor Alan is back joining us in the studio and sharing a parting good news thought for the day for you in just a moment. 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. Back here sharing Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day. And you say, we'll have to say goodbye, even if just temporarily to everyone that we love. And well, we're here to share a parting good news thought for the day.

That sounds painful to me, but there's good news. Well, as you know, Daniel, we have said goodbye temporarily to a great spirit, pastor, and mentor, and friend, and colleague for the better part of 25 years, who would have been 92 if he'd lived another month. And Pastor Hank, we just had a great tribute at his service and we're sad about that. But he is the one who told me many years ago when I was in such grief over the death of Ann's younger sister, who was like a sister to me.

And I was grieving. And I'll never forget Pastor Hank Keating, who said to me, Alan, those who love deeply grieve deeply. And what it did for me and for the rest of my life, and I've told countless other people in grief that same thing, is it not only validated the grief because we're going to grieve, but it also said that when I'm grieving, it is a mark of love. And therefore there's something that is to be cherished about the very grief itself, because it's like love itself.

So we're learning about the ABCs of risky gospel type love that Paul had as he's given to these Ephesian elders his goodbye, the ABCs affection and blessing and care. And it's really a beautiful portrait. It's not sad in the end.

It's just tender. And it's beautiful. It's the real love of a real Christian. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at PastorAlan.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 PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.