Seeing the Victory That Jesus Sees [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. And when you see the spiritual battle as he does, it changes everything. Wouldn't life be altogether different if we could live it with a sure and certain knowledge of the victory at the end?

It changes everything. 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, You'll See, 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 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. More on that 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? The devil is more defeated than it seems. And you, child of God, have more authority than you've ever dreamed. I come today from Command Central with an announcement of victory.

We are in a series called You'll See. It is about a whole new way of thinking about your spiritual growth and a new simple spiritual practice. To simply ask the Lord, what do you see? To pause in the midst of our busy day and say, Jesus, how do you see this? To look at people differently and say, how do you see this person?

How do you see the crowds? How do you see this predicament? And what I think many people have been discovering, as I have been practicing this over the last year, is that God's quite eager to give you a new perspective. And when you see others and yourself in a whole new light, when you see everything through the eyes of Jesus, it changes the way you think. Our problem is not so much our inability to corral our thoughts or manage our behaviors. It's in what we're actually seeing.

Because when you see it differently, it'll change everything. And today we come to a marvelous story about the perspective that Jesus has in the spiritual battle. And this is set in Luke Chapter 10, where Jesus had sent out 70 or 72 disciples and had authorized them to go and preach the kingdom. And what's so remarkable is this is a story before the cross, before the work of Jesus has been finished, but he delegates this authority to them.

And this isn't just his close-knit 12. This is going out in pairs by 72 of them to share the gospel and pray for the sick. They come back with this incredible ecstatic report at Luke 10, verse 17. The 72 returned with joy saying, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in your name. And he said to them, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven. Behold, I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, which is a symbol for the demonic principalities and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall hurt you.

Referring to in the spiritual battle, you will not be hurt. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven. And then that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit. And this word by the name of Jesus is written in the Greek.

And this word, by the way, the Greek, uh, the English translation does not do justice to what this word is in that same hour. He rejoiced. It means he exalted overjoyed spilling over celebrating.

He is very happy about this. He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, I thank you father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you've hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children. Revelation is a word about seeing about what you see. Yes, father, for such was your gracious will.

All things have been handed over to me by my father. No one knows who's the, who the son is except the father or who the father is except to the son and anyone to whom the son chooses to reveal him. So it's all about revelation and what you see. And then turning to the disciples, he said privately, blessed are the eyes that see what you see is referring to seeing the kingdom of God inaugurated in your midst.

I tell you, many prophets and kings desired to see what you see and did not see it and hear what you hear and did not hear it. In December of 1944, Japanese intelligence officer Hiro Onoda was sent by his commanding officer to the Philippines, to the island of Lubang. His mission was to do all he could to hamper allied attempts to take over the island. He was instructed that he was to sabotage the airstrip, to destroy docks and piers at the harbor and, uh, to lead the men there.

He was unsuccessful in that. And just a couple of months later in February, allied forces, United States soldiers invaded and very quickly very quickly overtook the island. And within a month or so, every Japanese soldier had either been killed or captured except for Onoda and three others.

Well, those three and Onoda fled to the hills in Lubang. And from there, they staged skirmishes, guerrilla style, attempting to do their part in the war. What they didn't realize was that by August, the war was over and Japan had surrendered and they didn't know it. They did things like go into villages and, um, take all of the rice supply and burn it up because they thought that they were stopping the allied food chain supply.

They had skirmishes with police, um, and it went on month after month. They did see, um, in late 1945, a flyer that they found that said the war is over. Um, but they figured that it was allied propaganda. Later, uh, flyers were dropped from air crew that were announcing from General Yamashita that Japan has surrendered. The war is over. Anyone who's still in the hills to come and, um, cease military activity. They studied on it and they thought it was also propaganda.

This went on and on and on. Seven years later, in 1952, finally, air crew dropped flyers that had photos and letters from family members that said the war is over. It's safe to stop military activity.

They studied it carefully and decided that it was a scam. Eventually, one of the four surrendered himself and two of them were killed in skirmishes with police, leaving only Hiro Onoda fighting and hiding. It went on for 29 years. Through a liaison, he agreed that the only way he would stop would be if his commanding officer gave him a cease and desist order. And so they went and found his old commanding officer, who by this time was a bookseller in Japan, who flew to the little island of Lubang and they arranged a meeting.

And here came Onoda with his still working rifle, 500 rounds of ammunition, a couple of grenades. And he was given the order by his old commanding officer, now a book retailer, that he could stop fighting. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Clear away confusion, win over the darkness, and open your heart to wonder and joy by pre-ordering the book today. Though the book releases October 10th, if you pre-order now, you'll receive over $100 of bonus resources. Simply pre-order the book at Amazon or your favorite online bookseller.

Visit SeeingAsJesusSeas.org or come to our website, PastorAlan.org. Give us confirmation that you've pre-ordered the book. And when the book releases, you'll be given a free audio book from the publisher, and you'll also receive a free six-week Seeing As Jesus Sees companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan. All these valuable bonus gifts are only for those who pre-order the book.

So place your order today with your favorite online book retailer and visit our website for instructions on receiving all the extra resources. Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. Noble, but what a waste of time. Brave, but completely off base.

To spend 29 years fighting in World War II when it had been over all that time. I think that the Christian has so much more authority when we understand just how decisively Christ has already defeated Satan. And this is what today's text is.

It's like this text is the air crew is dropped to the flyer down to say, here it is. You need to understand Jesus has already won this war. In whatever skirmishes in the spiritual battle that we still face, they are not attempts to win a war.

They are more like enforcing the victory that has already been accomplished. And so I have come from command central to tell you the devil's more defeated than we realize, and you have more authority than you've probably ever imagined. And Jesus rejoices greatly when you get a revelation of your position in Christ over evil. Let's see what Jesus sees. And when you see the spiritual battle as he does, it changes everything. Wouldn't life be altogether different if we could live it with a sure and certain knowledge of the victory at the end?

It changes everything. It's been a hard year on us Carolina fans. I'm just going to go ahead and admit it. It's been a hard year for us. There haven't been much basketball illustrations this year at all in the sermons, and it's just been a tough year. And so I adopted a practice of my father-in-laws, which for many years I scoffed at because he's convinced if he watches it that he curses the team and, you know, I said, no, that's not possible, but it's also so nerve wracking to watch.

And he has his beloved Duke Blue Devils. And so what he often do is just not watch the game and wait and see if they win. And if they win, then go back and watch it.

I thought that's ridiculous until this year. Somewhere in the middle of the season, I said, I'm not going to watch the Tar Heels unless they win. My heart can not take it anymore.

I can't take it anymore. And so I just taped the game and if they win, then I'll watch it. And I had a huge violation of this a couple of weeks ago in the Carolina Duke game.

It was on while I was preaching on Saturday night and I got done preaching and our sound tech and producer, who I won't, I'll just give you his initials, Jared Gomez. He said, pastor, he said, Carolina's up by 13 points with three minutes left over Duke. He said he can't lose. And I thought, you know, even Carolina can't lose that. So I violated my principle and I cut the radio on as I drove home. And by the time I got home, they'd lost the 13 point lead.

It was the listener's curse I put on him, you know, and I just said, I can't, I can't. But I'll tell you one thing, when you watch a game that you already know that your team won, it's pretty fun. It's pretty fun. You still get frustrated at sloppy ball handling or poor shot choice, or when people are not moving around, you still get upset when they miss free throws. But you say to yourself, well, all right, that's all right. We win this game anyway. And if the game kind of goes through a slump and you're going through a dry spell and you're shooting and it looks like the thing's going in the wrong direction, you don't worry about it. You just go, well, they can play better than that, but don't worry about it. We win this game in the end.

It's a, you don't get nervous. You don't, you don't get upset. You just, you just, you just go right on through it. I kind of like it.

I think I'm going to start doing it more. I was thinking back to one of the, you know, we all have seasons in our lives. You go, this boy, these are hard seasons. And one of those seasons back in 07 and 08, our church was in a lawsuit. We were in a building campaign. Neighbors around us became fearful that we were going to ruin the neighborhood. We, we had all of the property that we have. We had a rightful deed and, and a lot of the Reynolds heirs had given us this land. We had written releases on it. We had this property been ours for a hundred years.

And, uh, but you know, the legal system, uh, you can drum up as much as you want. And, and, uh, boy, I tell you, they made it complicated real quick, disputing little items and different parcels of land and whether we had the right to do it and so forth. So anyway, long story short, we had to defend ourselves and it was very, very costly. Uh, we ended up spending $600,000 defending ourselves at a time in which we were trying to pay for a building.

We were building and, uh, we're, didn't realize that getting ready to head into a tough economic times in this country. And every month that we thought we need, um, some more staff here and we couldn't do it because we're sending out $50,000 a month through the lawyer. I come up, put my arm around the lawyer.

I'd say, how you doing associate? Um, I might, I might need you to visit the hospital for me too, you know? And, uh, but that was, that was that way I got deposed for three days every single day. You know, you're trying to live in faith, right? You know what this is like, you want to live in faith, but there's that little part of your heart that's just going, is this going to financially shipwreck the church? Is this going to undo everything we've been building? What is this going to do?

And what does this mean? And how long is this going to go on? And it went on for over a year and a half. I don't have time to tell you, some of you don't know the story, but after that lawsuit was settled by a judge who gave a consent order and we ended that whole lawsuit, um, within a year by a completely different means, the Lord restored to us every bit of that $600,000 that we'd spent and our giving increased because you know what happened? Our unity increased. We all said, you know what?

You start attacking the church of Jesus Christ. We're going to come together on this. Our church began a season of unprecedented growth that has not stopped since that time. And everything's been the better for it. Hallelujah. And what I'm just saying is wouldn't it have been nice if I had been able to just tape that thing and just watch it knowing we're going to get all this money back and the church is going to be better for it.

And when everything built the building, some of them, they were afraid we were going to build because we became multi-site anyway. Wouldn't it be nice to live as you could see the ending from the beginning? What I'm saying is Jesus is inviting you when it comes to the spiritual battle to have his eyesight. And they come back and they are excited that they see the demons are subject to them. He said, oh, I want you to see something that I've seen. I've seen Satan, the general, the commanding leader of all the forces of evil. I've already seen him fall like lightning from heaven.

He is saying, I've already seen the defeat. I saw him thrown out of heaven in the first place. And I've seen what's happened now that the kingdom of God is being ushered in by my presence. I'm seeing that even in delegating my authority to you, that that the kingdom of God is displacing the kingdom of darkness. And I have seen in advance what will happen through the cross and the finished work that I have come to accomplish on your behalf. I have seen that Satan has been completely dethroned and I have seen that he is weak and impotent compared to the mightiness of God and that the grace of God has come. I've seen Satan fall like lightning. That's what I want you to see something bigger than you have seen.

It's just incredible. See what the disciples had experienced was Jesus sent them out to go and preach the gospel and heal the sick in Luke 10 verse 8. Here's what we read. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what's set before you and heal the sick in it and say to them, the kingdom of God has come near you. That's what they were sent out to do. And evidently what happened was they got out there where they're preaching the gospel. Jesus had delegated this authority to them. And so they began speaking about the kingdom of God and they began praying for the sick and somewhere along the line, some pair of disciples confronted someone who was clearly afflicted by a demonic spirit. And they must have said to one another, well, do you think we could just cast it out the way we've seen Jesus? And they said, well, he said to heal the sick and this is part of it, I think. And someone just must have spoken boldly and said, I command you to come out in the name of Jesus. And the spirit left and a person was set gloriously free and word spread to the other disciples. And next thing you know, it was part of their arsenal that they were delivering people from the captivity and bondage that comes to those that have been afflicted by evil spirits. And they came back and they were just overjoyed by this. And it's a powerful and wonderful thing when you discover that the power of God in your midst is conquering evil.

It's a powerful thing. I never planned to get involved in any sort of thing like that. I went to a nice Presbyterian seminary and we didn't talk about that.

There was no, there was no course on this. And so in my first year of ministry, I'm a young man. I must have been 27 years old, my first year of ministry, solo pastor in Durham. And after church one day, this is a true story, the way it happened. A woman walked out of that little church and she waited for everybody else to leave. And she said, pastor, she said, I have a problem.

I said, what is it? She said, I, I am afflicted by a demon. And today I felt that the Lord said, you are the one to cast it out. And I thought, well, I, I think we got an ice cream social this afternoon. I don't know we can do that, but everything within me said, come on, Alan, you're the pastor.

And this woman has requested your services. So, um, I said, okay, oh, what time you want me to come over? I said, I'll come over and I'll come over. And, uh, we said, okay, come over three o'clock. So I said, all right, we'll do it. And I went home and, uh, and it was saying church was good today.

Yeah. There was some new people there today. Yeah, there was, it was good. I said, oh, by the way, I said, uh, I'm gonna need you on a pastoral visit today. She said, what, who's in the hospital? I said, well, it's not a hospital visit. She said, what is it? I said, we need to go cast out a demon. I need you to come with me. She said, what are you talking about?

I told her the story and she said, uh, I got to do the laundry this afternoon. It's today's good news message. It's titled seeing the victory that Jesus sees from our series.

You'll see. And coming up, Pastor Alan is back in the studio here with us today in our parting good news. Seeing as Jesus sees, it's the title of Pastor Alan's newest book soon to be released.

And it's the giant secret of real transformation. Alan Wright invites readers into a new, simple spiritual practice, a little breath prayer that can be prayed throughout the day. Jesus, how do you see this? It's a prayer that the savior loves to answer because after all Christ came to be the light of the world, clear away confusion, win over the darkness and open your heart to wonder and joy by pre-ordering the book today. Though the book releases October 10th, if you pre-order now you'll receive over a hundred dollars of bonus resources. Simply pre-order the book at Amazon or your favorite online bookseller visit seeing as Jesus sees.org or come to our website, Pastor Alan.org. Give us confirmation that you've pre-ordered the book. And when the book releases, you'll be given a free audio book from the publisher and you'll also receive a free six week seeing as Jesus sees companion video series from Pastor Alan, along with a study guide and a daily reading plan. All these valuable bonus gifts are only for those who pre-order the book.

So place your order today with your favorite online book retailer and visit our website for instructions on receiving all the extra resources. Back now in the studio with Pastor Alan and I can't wait to hear the rest of the story of this teaching, seeing the victory that Jesus sees. You know Daniel we're in a spiritual battle and I think that so often what happens is that our eyes get set on all the obstacles and our eyes get set on the battle itself. But what does Jesus see? And what we're going to see is this powerful image where Jesus says to the disciples, I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.

Behold I've given you authority. So in the spiritual battle, and by this we mean getting up every day, putting on the whole armor of God, facing those temptations in life, dealing with spiritual conflict that is taking place all around us in invisible ways. That all of this Jesus wants us to know the ultimate victory that is ours because of what he's done. So when it comes to the battle ground, which we're all, if you're a Christian, you're in a battle ground. And how different it all would be if you really knew for sure, you know that you know you know, Jesus wins. And you have been given Jesus's own victory. Well it changes everything. Changes your confidence and it changes your strength. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Alan Wright Ministries.