Seeing As Jesus Sees [Part 29]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. This practice of pausing and connecting with Christ and looking again at our own lives, and looking at others, and looking at the world, and looking at it all through His eyes, what it leads to is, I think, a great unveiling, because there are wonders to see, there's beauty to see, there's truth to see, and so much of Christian growth is not about us doing something different or better. It's usually just seeing, and that means that there's a veil that is removed.

It's like the lifting of something. That's what Revelation is. It's like you couldn't see it, and now you see it. 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 here with Pastor Alan in the studio today as we are excited about this brand new book that's out now.

It's Seeing as Jesus Sees How a New Perspective Can Defeat the Darkness and Awaken Joy. We're moving into a new section of the book today. Before we get to it, I want to remind you that if you've bought the book, let us know this month only when you let us know that you've already purchased the book somewhere. We'll send you a free video series and a companion daily reading guide, plus a group study guide. All in this bundle is our thank you for supporting the launch of Pastor Alan's new book and the important message here. It's an over $100 value, and it's yours simply when you buy the book at your favorite retailer and then let us know you've done so at seeingasjesussees.org. Sitting today with Pastor Alan Wright, the author of this great new book, Seeing as Jesus Sees, and still excited that the book is out. I know even more so for you, Pastor Alan, you live with this book as an inspiration and as a thought. And then it came out through the typing and the writing, and then it has to go through all the many processes of editors. And I can't remember which author it was that would get irritated at as editors that want to come in and change all the labor that you had put towards it.

I don't know how much of that has happened with this one, but we're grateful for all the labor that went into it. And as we're sitting here today at a plane's coming in for a landing towards the end of this book and our discussions, at least here on the radio. And it's been a delight to turn the pages with you. Well, it's been so wonderful being in studio and to think really down to our last two days of kind of talking through some of the main points of this book.

But we've only done a small portion of this in our discussion. There's so much more in the book, the audiobook available or the Kindle book, but it's been a delight. And as we come towards the end, the last chapter of the book, Daniel, I entitled it Unveiling, Seeing with Unclouded Glory. This prayer, seeing as Jesus sees, Jesus, how do you see this?

This practice of pausing and connecting with Christ and looking again at our own lives and looking at others and looking at the world and looking at all through his eyes. What it leads to is, I think, a great unveiling because there are wonders to see. There's beauty to see. There's truth to see.

And so much of Christian growth is not about us doing something different or better. It is about actually just seeing. And that means that there's a veil that is removed.

It's like the lifting of something. You know, that's what Revelation is. It's like you couldn't see it.

And now you see it. And that's what we'll be talking about. Well, lest it be said that a grace teacher is trying to escape the law. Several times in this book, it seems like you're evading the lawman. There's a few different stories of you and a man of the law. So here we start with this chapter and knock on the door.

And there's a state patrolman or so. I'll never forget. I'll never forget this.

But it has a point to it. But I was leading a new Bible study for young adults in our home in the evening. And at the beginning, I was meeting some of these young adults for the first time. And so halfway through our second meeting, the front doorbell rang and I went, opened the door. It's nighttime. And I opened the door and my heart just nearly stopped.

There's a full uniformed highway patrolman standing at my front door, which is not what you want to see. And my mind's running through my loved ones. Kids were still young at that time, safely nestled in their beds upstairs. Wonderful. And she was happy. She's in the house.

Other family members, parishioners. Was everybody OK? And I'm feeling myself feeling that tense. My tense and my muscles, my throat's dry. You know, and then I wonder, well, what have I done wrong?

You know, and because, you know, when the law rings at your front door, fear comes along, too. And the trooper said, hi. He said, my name's Liam. Not his name, but I changed it.

But Liam. And he says, I'm here for the Bible study. And I said, I'm sorry. Late.

Just finished my shift. Oh, man. I started chugging. I said, great, Liam. I just I'd never met him before. I said, I wasn't sure if you're here to give me bad news or take me to jail. So but come on in. I'm so glad to to have you. And so there he is. But all throughout the evening, you know, I remember it just catching a sight of him in his patrolman uniform.

And I would just freeze momentarily. Right. I mean, we're just sort of conditioned as like and I have to say, that's not the law. That's Liam.

Right. You know, as long as I saw Liam as the law, I couldn't see him as a friend, which. Goes a long way to explain, I think what Jesus meant when he said, I don't call you servants. I call you friends. The servant doesn't know what his master's doing, but I treat you like friends, fearful servants.

Don't draw near harsh masters. And when we are under law, though the law is good and holy and right. But because we don't have power to keep law, what we've been learning all throughout this book is that the law makes us self-focused and our vision turns inward. Am I doing it right?

Am I doing enough? And just imagine if the simple sight of a trooper's uniform could make me blind to see Liam himself. How much more does the fear of God's judgment veil us to the more beautiful things about who he is and the beautiful things that he wants to show us? By the way, the book is seeing as Jesus sees how a new perspective can defeat the darkness and awaken joy. It's written by Pastor Alan Wright. And as we're talking about this, seeing clearly and the law is not the complete story.

It's not the end of the story. And every time you caught the eye of the officer sitting in your Bible study, you know, you could think, oh no, what have I done wrong until you realize, okay, he's here, he's Liam, he's a friend and I'm not in trouble. When Paul called in 2 Corinthians 3, 7, he called the covenant of the law, quote, the ministry of death.

It's such strong words, right? Again, law is good. It's a revelation from God. And it's wonderful that God would say, here's how you should live. It'll go better for you.

All that's good. But he called it a ministry of death because Paul called it a ministry of death because all who rely on personal law keeping efforts in an attempt to find God's acceptance are going to fail and then are going to feel the weight of condemnation. There's no hope.

There's no life. There's no salvation in our attempt to keep that. And what Paul said, though, in 2 Corinthians is that nonetheless, even the old covenant, the covenant of law, when it came, it came with so much glory that the Israelites couldn't even gaze at Moses' face because of its glory. And this whole image from the book of Exodus and Moses would meet with God on Mount Sinai and he'd come down, his face would be so radiant, it would be shining that people were afraid to come near him. And so to calm their fears, Moses started veiling his face before we'd come down and speak to the people.

And this became his practice. Well, Paul takes this metaphor and he sort of adjusts this metaphor of Moses' veil. And he has this to say, let me quote this from 2 Corinthians 3, since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze.

But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, the same veil remains unlifted because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts. So really important piece of scripture here from Paul that where he's not saying, he doesn't mean that reading the Old Testament obscures our vision. He means that any reading of God's word with a performance based kind of what we call that do to be tree, the performance base, I need to do something in order to have God accept me more. Any law based performance based type of reading of God's word, what Paul's saying is it instantly veils our spiritual sight in the same way that seeing Liam's highway patrolman uniform veiled me from seeing Liam. So if you're fearful and you're trying to keep the law, then you're going to miss the stuff that Jesus really wants you to see.

That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Wondering what you need to do to find more freedom, wonder and joy? What if you don't need to do more as much as see more? What if victorious breakthrough and enduring transformation comes not by striving, but by seeing? For years, Pastor Alan Wright has been practicing a new spiritual discipline, simple prayer, Jesus, how do you see this?

It's brief enough for a single breath, but deep enough for lasting life change. It's a prayer Christ loves to honor because the Savior came to open blind and blurred eyes. Jesus is after all the light of the world. In his new groundbreaking book, Seeing as Jesus Sees, Alan Wright leads readers into a fresh kind of Bible study where they're invited in close side by side with the Savior to see themselves, others in the world through Jesus's eyes. There's good news on every page because divine revelation and spirit filled living is a reserve for the spiritually elite.

Every Christian can live with wide-eyed wonder and spirit revealed vision. For a limited time, when you ordered a book from Amazon or your favorite retailer, you'll receive over $100 of bonus resources. To order the book, visit seeingasjesussees.org or come to our website, pastoralan.org, 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.

So place your order today with your favorite online book retailer and visit our website for instructions on receiving all the extra resources. Christ's call to discipleship isn't an invitation to strive to do what Jesus would do, but to come and see what Jesus sees. So pre-order your copy of Alan Wright's newest book and discover and start seeing yourself, others and the world through Jesus's eyes. What you're saying there, even a couple of days ago on this broadcast, I said that how much I'm attracted to the to-do list or the practical chapter of the book that's here that we just talked about the other day, but, and that's a good thing if it's in the right order and for the right reason, but if you stand it alone and say, okay, that's a formula and Seeing as Jesus Sees is a formula to put God in a box, then we've got a problem. Yes.

There could be, I think part of what we've been learning, and this is where I'm saying like the veil, if you're so focused on doing it right in order to please God, then you're probably not going to see. And there's a classic study, Daniel, 20 years ago, these researchers, Christopher Shabrie and Daniel Simons, they made a short film and it featured teams of people moving around passing basketballs. And one teams wore white shirts, the other wore black.

It was produced after it was produced, these research assistants spread across the Harvard campus to run an experiment and it became the most famous of its kind. So the participants were given a straight forward, simple task, count, watch the video and count the number of passes made by players wearing white. Okay. So you're supposed to watch how many times does someone wearing white pass the basketball? Very simple. And they're told to ignore the passes from the players wearing black. And you know, if you're listening to this and you want to, and you want to have some fun, you could stop listening now and go and find the invisible gorilla.com and you can see it yourself.

But if you're listening or you're riding along your car, you're just going to have to suffice to look at it later and let me tell you what happens. So you watch the video, you count the number of times white shirted players pass the basketball, shooting passes in the air and bounce passes. Well, after participants watch the video as maybe some, some of our listeners might even pause and done the same thing, but after, after they did, they were asked for their tally of passes.

How many? Well, the correct answer was 34, but that doesn't matter. That's not the point of it at all. The researchers were testing something else halfway through the video, a girl wearing a full body gorilla costume walked right into the middle of the players face to the camera, beat her chest, and then walked off the gorilla.

This is true. You got to see the video. If you, if you never seen it, you just got to see it to believe it. The gorilla is on camera for nine full seconds.

Okay. The, if you watch this video, that gorilla is there for nine seconds in the middle of people passing basketballs. But after asking participants about their tally of the passage, you know, how many, how many times did white shirted players pass it? After they asked them that, then they, the researchers would say, Oh, did you notice anything other than the players? And if the participants said no, then the researchers asked, did you notice a gorilla and roughly half, and it still works this way, roughly half the people that watch this video do not see the gorilla, the psychologist got a term for this. They call it inattentional blindness. The subjects, in other words, we're concentrating so hard on doing their task, counting the passes that they were blind to the gorilla that's right in front of their eyes, which really makes me think of Jesus when he called the Pharisees blind guides, straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. He didn't mean you're blind to everything, but you're blind to what mattered. They saw the importance of the law, but they missed the matter of justice and mercy and faithfulness. And they were counting out every little spicy to make sure they tithe exactly 10% and straining their wine to make sure they didn't accidentally swallow us ceremonially unclean gnat, but they were missing the affection and the delight of God and the beauty and the wonder of the gospel because they're so busy trying to do it right.

So that's what a big part of the reason I wrote this book is I don't want anybody counting basketballs and missing gorillas. Alan Wright, our good news message today from the pages of the book, Seeing as Jesus Sees, How a New Perspective Can Defeat the Darkness and Awaken Joy. The book is out now. It's available at PastorAlan.org if you'll come to our website or any place where you enjoy shopping for good books online, in a store, audiobook, Kindle, those sorts of things.

It's available. Hey, Pastor Alan is back joining me in the studio sharing his parting good news inspiration to see as Jesus sees in just a moment. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Explore 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. Wondering what you need to do to find more freedom, wonder, and joy? What if you don't need to do more as much as see more? What if victorious breakthrough and enduring transformation comes not by striving, but by seeing? For years, Pastor Alan Wright has been practicing a new spiritual discipline, a simple prayer, Jesus, how do you see this?

It's brief enough for a single breath, but deep enough for lasting life change. It's a prayer Christ loves to honor because the Savior came to open blind and blurred eyes. Jesus is, after all, the light of the world. In his new groundbreaking book, Seeing as Jesus Sees, Alan Wright leads readers into a fresh kind of Bible study where they're invited in close, side by side with the Savior to see themselves, others, and the world through Jesus's eyes. There's good news on every page because divine revelation and spirit-filled living is a reserve for the spiritually elite.

Every Christian can live with wide-eyed wonder and spirit-revealed vision. For a limited time, when you order a book from Amazon or your favorite retailer, you'll receive over $100 of bonus resources. To order the book, visit SeeingAsJesusSees.org or come to our website, PastorAlan.org, 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.

So place your order today with your favorite online book retailer and visit our website for instructions on receiving all the extra resources. Christ's Call to Discipleship isn't an invitation to strive to do what Jesus would do, but to come and see what Jesus sees. So pre-order your copy of Alan Wright's newest book and discover and start seeing yourself, others and the world through Jesus's eyes. Back now with Pastor Alan Wright and some closing inspiration directly from his new book, Seeing as Jesus Sees. Here's Pastor Alan.

Well, it's been a wonderful privilege to spend some time in the studio, Daniel, with you and with our listeners. I like to think of these times as if we were getting to sit around the living room and just talk about some important biblical concepts. It is, I think, the primary call on my life and my main passion in communicating to you, our listeners, as I would any friend or any parishioner, to communicate how the gospel and that means good news, how the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ and of his finished work and of his ongoing advocacy for us, how that gospel and the fullness of that story, how it has power to change our lives. A lot of Christians think that we are changed by, oh, we're saved by grace, but then more or less, it's up to us in the process of sanctification, but it's not so. We are changed by the same grace that saved us and we're on this journey.

So how does that work? How does it work out that if it's not going to be by greater self effort that we're changed, how are we? And what I hope to show in my new book, Seeing as Jesus Sees, is that so much transformation comes by simply connecting with Christ and seeing yourself and others in the world through his eyes. It is the central attack of the enemy to blind us spiritually. So Jesus came promising that his mission was to open the eyes of the blind. He said, I'm the light of the world.

He said, whoever follows after me will not stumble about in the darkness. It is the commitment of Christ himself to open up spiritually blind eyes. It is his delight and it is joy to lead us by the hand and show us what we're not seeing. It's for this reason that Paul prayed the eyes of our heart would be enlightened so that we could see what's the hope of our calling and their inheritance we have in the saints and the power of God at work in us so that we could see what we weren't seeing before. So Christian growth is in large part a matter of seeing day by day, moment by moment, and Jesus is ready to help. So we've been learning and I've been putting into practice now for about four years in my life.

And I tell you, it changes things. And I encourage you to do this all throughout your day moments. Just pray a little prayer. It's brief enough for a single breath, but it's deep enough to change everything in your life. Jesus, how do you see this? When you pray that you're put into process, a spiritual practice, it starts with a pause because if you pause, just take a breath and just pause and pray that prayer, then a lot of the distractions have to be put on pause for a moment so that you can quit the busyness and all the doing.

Sometimes the denying, not being in touch with what you're really frustrated about or what you really need and you just pause. And then it is a connecting. It's a connecting with Christ himself. This is spiritual. It's mystical. It's mysterious. It's powerful. But we abide in him.

He abides in us. And when you pause to connect with him, you're allowing the space spiritually, mentally, to connect with him, to attune with Christ himself, to attach to him. And once you have attached, then you're ready to look again. To say, Jesus, how do you see this is to position yourself spiritually to say, I want to look with new eyes. I don't want to look at this the same old way that I've been looking. Jesus, how do you see it?

I want to see it as you're seeing. And what happens is that the great promise of scripture, that we would have a share in the mind of Christ, it begins to take place in our life. And we begin to have answers.

We begin to have more clarity, but we also have a sense of beauty and wonder that we hadn't seen before. It's been changing my life. And I hope for every one of our listeners, I hope that you've enjoyed this journey with us as we've kind of walked through some pieces of the book, but there's no substitute to Daniel to getting the book itself. And I want to thank you, Daniel, for our time in the studio. It's been a real delight to talk about seeing as Jesus sees. 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 Allen Wright Ministries.