The Whether Man [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. The greatest gift from God is not the calming of your storm.

The greatest gift is having peace whether or not He rebukes the wind and the waves. 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.

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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. Okay, are you ready for some good news? We can have joy and peace in stormy times whether God calms the waves or not. Whether the circumstances work out like we hope or not. Whether we get all of the things we want or not.

Whether people around us are doing what they ought to do or not. We can have in all circumstances the joy and the peace of the Lord. I find it a fitting conclusion to 26 weeks or so in the book of Acts to come today to a narrative that we're going to be walking through.

It's a long story and it's a story of Paul being shipwrecked. When we know God could have just calmed the storm, but instead he let the storm go on and then did some wonderful things in the midst of it. You know, I just love it when God kind of winks at you. You know the one I'm talking about where it's not like, oh, it's some massive miracle that you spend the rest of your life telling a testimony of, but it's just like, oh, that's got to be God. It's just one of those little winks from heaven and oftentimes to come through prophetic people. Can I give you one of those little stories?

Maybe you'll think as cute as I do that happened this week. In addition to my regular pastoral duties and preaching, if you were to say what has been occupying my attention over the last several weeks, it's two things in addition to my pastoral work. The first is that we are getting everything in order for a book launch. The launch of a book that I've worked very hard on, The Power to Bless, and there's going to be, there's so many things going on. The way you get books launched these days, you get a launch team together.

The launch team helps, you know, tell everybody about the book, you know, and you like to get things going early before the book even comes out in February. So that's been going on. So that's an additional thing we got going on. The other thing that's been going on in our lives is I've been giving you the ongoing saga of why it is Groundhog Day at the Wright household. We have been trying to catch these groundhogs that have started digging up under our back porch. And as I've shared with you, my wife was pretty sure our house is going to fall down if we don't get the groundhogs. And so I called the wildlife man.

He's been helping to trap. And for a long time, we didn't trap any groundhogs. We did get two skunks and two raccoons, but no groundhogs until recently. I showed you that we did get Mr. Groundhog. The problem is now Mr. Groundhogs going out to a very happy place in the country, but Groundhog has a friend who is now roaming around our traps and sniffing at them and never going in them.

So we still have at least one groundhog that we know of that is digging at the porch and never minding our traps. So these two things have been going on, getting ready for book launch and Groundhog Day at the Wright. Well, so this past week, some ladies that are with our awakening ministry are praying and my wife sent them things, you know, please pray about this, this, this, and this. And one of the things they said to please pray about was pray about getting ready for this book launch.

And so they're praying about that. Well, one of those ladies is Leah Wheeler. Leah, you know, if you don't know Leah, she's just a vivacious lady. And so like when you text with Leah, it's going to be kind of way my wife's texts are, it'll be more emojis than it is actual words there, you know, and just like that and just like fully alive. Well, during the, all the tales of the groundhog saga, Leah had been texting me because she had a great stories from years ago about catching groundhogs.

Turns out a lot of people got groundhog stories. So we've been texting back and forth. That was, she's one of the prayer warriors and she gets the note to pray about the book launch in February. And she sends me this hilarious text back and she says, you have got to be kidding me.

Are you serious? Your book is being launched on groundhog day. February 2nd is groundhog day is the day that the power to bless is going to come out.

So we're just laughing about this. I'm like, Lord, it's just one of those little God wings. Like what are the chances of that? So then I go by and I'm telling this story to Laura, my assistant, who is a wonderfully gifted prophetic person. And she gets, and she gets not only images from the Lord, but she gets these delightful, well, really they're puns and she just gets it all the time from the Lord. Just like that.

What it would be is it'd be like a play on words. I mean, I, there's probably at least a hundred times since I've known Laura that just in a flash, she was like, Oh, the Lord just shows her something. And so I go by and I'm telling her about groundhog day. And I said, you know, and the whole thing, it makes you think of the old movie of Bill Murray, who gets trapped living the same day over and over again, the movie is called groundhog day. Cause that was on groundhog day.

And then Laura just looked at me just like that. And she said, wasn't your father a newsman? I said, yeah, but was he, did, was he a weatherman? I said, actually he was, my dad started out his career as the weatherman.

Now TV news had barely gotten going when my dad was starting this. So he was one of the, one of the early ones I was, he was the Atlantic weatherman. I try to find a picture of, I found all I could find was some old newspaper clippings, but this was when he, this was when he was young and he started doing the weather, but Atlantic company sponsored the weather.

So he was the Atlantic weatherman. And he ended every night by saying, this is Dave Wright, good night. And so everybody, I was trying to explain to my kids why my dad was so famous in Greensboro. I said, the reason is we only got three channels and only one of those had a clear picture. So if you lived in Greensboro, you basically only got one channel, channel two. And so if you had the TV on at 11 o'clock at night, you saw Dave Wright.

So everybody knew Dave Wright and everywhere I go, they find that I say, Oh, Dave Wright, good night. So he was the weatherman. The weather, I think only lasted five minutes. I think it was at 11, 10 every night. And that's what the weather was at that time.

I did find one clipping I thought was cute because they said, here was an advertisement. They called it the environmental report. Dave Wright reports, weather in general, environmental news. I don't know what other environmental news, all they did was they, they got up and said, tomorrow, it's going to be sunshiny and 70 degrees.

And that took about five minutes. So my dad was a weatherman. And so we, I was talking about Laura about, you know, my dad was a weatherman and she just looked right at me and she said, I just heard the Lord say that he's made you to be a weatherman, but not a w-e-a-t-h-e-r man, but a weather man.

And I thought that's really, that's really neat. But then as I got further into the sermon this week, I realized it was the word from the Lord for us today and an invitation to all of us. All of us. I'm inviting you to be also a weatherman, whether we live or whether we die, we belong to the Lord. Whether it rains or whether the sun shines, we belong to the Lord. Whether there is a stormy sea or smooth sailing, we belong to the Lord. Whether or not things go the way we hope day by day, we still praise his name.

And that is in a sense what this incredible story is about. The greatest gift from God is not the calming of your storm. The greatest gift is having peace, whether or not he rebukes the wind and the waves. The greatest gift isn't untroubled waters. The greatest gift is an untroubled soul. The greatest gift isn't smooth sailing.

The greatest gift is certainty that you will arrive at your destination because God has assigned it and he is on his throne. We are in Acts chapter 27 and I'm going to go section by section through this incredible drama and then we're going to see some principles emerge for us about, well, being a weatherman. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series.

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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. Acts 27 verse 6. There the centurion found a ship of Alexandria sailing for Italy and put us on board.

Let me just pause here to say what's happened is Paul is a prisoner and he is on his way to Rome where he is eventually to make his case before the emperor. And what happened is that they transferred ships. This would be a grain ship.

It was a big deal. The grains that would come from Egypt would go to Rome. They needed definitely the food. So on this grain ship, they put Paul and some other prisoners on it to make their way to Rome. We sailed slowly for a number of days and arrived with difficulty off of Knitis. And as the wind did not allow us to go further, we sailed under the lee of Crete off of Salmonee. Coasting along it with difficulty, we came to a place called Fair Havens near which was the city of La Silla. So Paul's on this grain ship and in order for safety, they start going under the south part of Crete. So in the eastern Mediterranean island of Crete, they come down, they're sailing close to the coast and they come to a little harbor called Fair Havens near the town of La Silla. Fair Havens, we have a picture of, is a beautiful harbor and it actually, Fair Havens, it's literally in the Greek good harbor. So they come in here to this good harbor and Paul who has been shipwrecked three times in his life just in the natural knows a good bit about sailing because of his experiences. And here he advises them, let's stay here at Fair Havens.

But they're going to ignore him. We pick up at verse nine, since much time had passed, it's getting later towards winter time. And the voyage was now dangerous because even the fast was already over. Speaking of the Day of Atonement, the fall festival, they called it the fast and it would have been on October 5th, I think it was, 59 AD. So we can pretty well date when these events are taking place.

So it's past that time on up into October. Paul advised them saying, verse 10, Sirs, I perceive, this is not a word from the Lord. This is Paul in the natural giving wise counsel. I perceive that the voyage will be with injury and much loss, not only of the cargo and the ship, but also our lives. So they're at this place called Good Harbor.

He advises, let's just stay here. We've gotten past the season. Generally after September, people hesitated to sail in the Eastern Mediterranean.

By mid-November, nobody did. It was just too unfavorable in terms of the way the winds and the nor'easters would blow. So sometimes in life, you get a good harbor and there's a temptation to think I need to press on and get a little bit more. And that's what they were going to do.

They're going to have to stay in Crete during those early winter months until the sailing conditions are better. But what they wanted to do was press on. It just is a story, therefore, that starts with the temptation to just be a little greedy for a little more progress when you've already had a spot that would have been a good place to stay. And that a big part of the secret of life is knowing when to be content with what you've got for the moment. I've messed up a lot in my life when it's like, you know, this is good enough right here. But to just feel like I need to just do that little bit more, get a little bit more, and then everything falls apart.

That's what's going to happen. Verse 11, but the centurion, remember this is a Roman official centurion from the fact of overseeing 100 troops, paid more attention to the pilot and to the owner of the ship than to what Paul said. So you can see the scene here, the owner of the ship and the pilot are like, no, we need to press on more.

We want to make more progress. Paul's saying it's ill advised to go on. Note well that it's Paul who is a prisoner who is in the conversation.

That's pretty amazing. They paid more attention to the pilot, the owner of the ship, and because the harbor was not suitable to spend the winter in, the majority decided to put out to see from there on the chance that somehow they could reach Phoenix, a harbor of Crete, facing both Southwest and Northwest and spend the winter there. The reason that they didn't want to stay here at Fair Havens is that the closest town was La Silla, and it wasn't a big town.

And they thought it'd be much better to stay in a bigger town during the wintertime. But what happens is an unexpected and yet unsurprising storm arises. Remember, this is the season in which these types of nor'easters can just come up and they know it. And it's why sailors didn't sail during this time of year. So on the one hand, this is a huge surprise. And on the other hand, well, of course, this is the kind of thing that happens this time of year.

Verse 13, when the south wind blew gently, supposing that they'd obtained their purpose, they wade anchor and sailed along Crete close to the shore. It started out well enough, but soon a tempestuous wind called the Northeaster struck down from the land. Who of us have not experienced the suddenness of a storm in life? We've experienced them literally like you might just be driving down the road and suddenly a storm out of nowhere, but when it happens figuratively in life.

And it's interesting when the storms come and they surprise us, and yet sometimes we look back and go, well, it was to be expected. You don't almost feel that whole way about this whole pandemic, because I can remember, I guess it was in January when we were seeing images in images in China of people walking around with masks on. And I literally remember having this thought go through my head.

That is so far away. It would never, I could never in a million years imagine that being here. And I remember thinking, could you imagine Americans walking around with masks on? It's like it was just a scene from some other world. And yet there it was, how could we be so surprised that it came? But storms are like that.

They still catch you by surprise. And you feel like you're just sailing along smoothly and all of a sudden this Northeaster starts blowing. Verse 15, and when the ship was caught and could not face the wind, so now they're just being blown. We gave way to it and we were driven along. Sometime when you're sailing, if you just can't navigate into the wind, you have to just go with it.

And now you're really no longer in control. And running under the lee of a small island called Caoda, we managed with difficulty to secure the ship's boat, the lifeboat. They secured it. After hoisting it up, they used supports to undergird the ship. Then fearing that they would run aground on the Sirtis, they lowered the gear and thus they were driven along. Since we were violently storm tossed, they began the next day to jettison the cargo. And on the third day, they threw the ship's tackle overboard with their own hands. And when neither sun nor stars appeared for many days and no tempest and no small tempest lay on us, all hope of being saved was at last abandoned. Get this picture because this is a picture of what a storm will do to somebody in life. They lost the sense of being able to be in control.

And what happened then was when you realize that I could perish and I don't have control anymore, you start getting rid of what is nowhere near as important as your own salvation. Alan Wright and our Good News message, the weatherman. Now that's W-H-E-T-H-E-R. From the series Unlimited. Hey, stick with us. Pastor Alan is back joining us 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.

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That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Back here now with Pastor Alan, our parting good news thought for the day. And because this is radio and we don't have words on the screen, the weatherman is spelled W-H-E-T-H-E-R. I know you were talking about storms, but there's a lot of play on words here, Pastor Alan. And is it like weather or not? And you would fill in the blank.

And the answer here is you are still God's chosen and therefore you are still blessed. My father was, I started out in the TV and TV news as the weatherman, the one who tells, predicts the weather. They didn't know much about the weather back in that day.

And they did, when he first started, there was no, they didn't even have radar, Doppler radar and all of that. I think they said that they would just look and see what it was doing in Birmingham, Alabama, about 48 hours before. And then they say, that's probably what it's going to do here in North Carolina. So that was kind of the way they did the weather. And, but in talking about this, this text and talking about how we can trust God, whether life's going well or whether life is difficult at the time. And really it was Laura who is my assistant works and runs our office and now write ministries, who gets these beautiful word pictures from the Lord like that. And she said, well, it's like, you're a weather man, W H E T H E R. And what a good thing to be that sort of weather man, whether, whether I'm in the mountaintop or whether I'm in the valley, I'm okay, because I'm with God.

That's where we get the title. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860.

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