Building Hope [Part 3]

Pastor, author and Bible teacher Alan Wright. What we have is that we're in Christ.

We have access to God, our Father and all the riches of heaven because of this great justification that we've been credited with the righteousness of God. You have the hope of heaven. 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 am Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series.

It's All Right Now from Romans chapters 4 through 7 as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. Now, if you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, we sure 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. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. And you can 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 now let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. God can get a great purpose out of all this. And that endurance, he says, produces character. And character means testedness. So endurance is integrally related to the formation of a tested character.

So the aim of growing up in Christ is this character wherein we live in it and we abide in it. It's a beautiful thing to be gifted, but you can be gifted and not have this character. You can have moments of brilliance and creativity and spiritual giftedness and anointed moments in your life and then have no real character that has been tested over time and been forged in the fires of adversity wherein by the grace of God you have endured up underneath it and put muscle down into your soul. That's why very gifted people who haven't had this sort of character emerge can have great falls. And we go, wow, they were so gifted.

How could they be blah, blah, blah? Well, there's not a relationship between the giftedness and the character. This is the aim. This is what God's saying is I want you to have such a rootedness in your justification in Christ so that you always know you have peace with God and therefore intimate access with Father God at all times and that from this flows then the capacity to rejoice not only in the hopes of the glory of God, but to rejoice even when life gets hard because something inside of you has changed and is fundamentally changing as you go through these challenges and bear up underneath them. By the grace of God, spiritual muscle is being formed inside of you and you're changed and you've become a person of godly character. And you can see when this is emerging within you by the nature of your endurance in the hard times. It's like in a marriage, you've got times where it's like, man, we get along great together when everything's going great.

But then you got to work through some difficulty and it feels like everything's falling apart. What you're saying is we haven't learned, hasn't been forged in us yet that part of the character that enables us to instead of having disastrous and catastrophic thoughts about that argument we just had, we're like, okay, we're learning through that, you see. Endurance in character. It's a popularly known book that Daniel Goleman wrote some years ago, Emotional Intelligence. There's a thing called IQ, but there's a thing called EQ.

It's talking about character really. A favorite story in there that I've told before, researchers came into a preschool room and they gave every student in there a marshmallow and said, you can eat the marshmallow now. I'm going to step out of the room and you can eat it. Or if you wait till I come back in a little while, I will come back. And when I come back, if you haven't eaten your marshmallow, I will give you a second marshmallow so you'll have two marshmallows. You can eat the one right away, but that's the only one you'll get.

Or you can have two if you wait. Endure. And they had hidden cameras. They said it was funny to watch. A lot of kids just gobbled up the marshmallow right away. A lot of them did.

A lot of them did. And most people are one marshmallow type people. But there were some of these students that found a way to postpone the pleasure of the marshmallow. Some of them hid their faces. Some of them tried to hide the marshmallow. You know, I mean, kids are just like us. I mean, you know, you just got to tell my wife I have some kind of, you know, treat in the house that we're like, we need to eat that. And I'll look over. She's run water over it. Is it not enough just to throw it in the trash can?

No, I'm putting water on this and down to drink. You know, they found a way. And he came back in, gave those kids a second marshmallow. They followed them all the way through high school. And the two marshmallow kids scored on average 150 points higher on their SAT.

And on most of the emotional and sociological profiles they ran on them were by every standard, more mature and emotionally healthy human beings. There's a relationship between enduring and not just running to immediately find something that will help you escape the difficulty you're in, but walking through it and facing it that is linked in with this character. And Paul saying, there's something God does in the midst of this, that's forming this character within you. And then that character, he said, that character is producing hope. What I think this means is that you grow through this such that you start living with that hope.

It's your default mechanism. It's like, I have such certainty of blessedness in the future that I know that this is difficult now, but I have all of God and the resources of heaven and a future with Him forever. And I know that God does good things out of it. And you think like that, you see, it doesn't make the sufferings fun. It's still hard, but we're like people who just had a big workout and our muscles feel sore and we don't go, Oh no, I'm sore.

I'm dying. We just go, I'm getting stronger. And this, this Paul says in verse five, this kind of hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy spirit. Who's been given to us. It does not put us to shame.

NIV says not disappoint. There's a way in which this God given soul forged endurance trained character rooted hope is so deeply assured of blessedness in Christ that all the disappointments of life cannot shake it. It is to say that this kind of hope silences the mocking voices of hell that want to shame us over every disappointment and failure.

If I could sum up the mission of hell, it is first to lie and deceive, and it is second to taunt and mock and shame over the apparent absence of blessedness in your life. In other words, the person whose soul has been built up with the muscle of hope is able to quench the fiery darts of the enemy of that devil's mocking voice that when something doesn't go like you had hoped it would have gone like you wish it would have gone when a desire has not been met, when a dream seems to be deferred, when you feel like you failed at something, the hope of God quenches the taunt of the enemy that says, look at you, you ought to be ashamed of yourself. The hope of God never shames what Paul is saying. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. In his eye-opening new book, 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 getting your copy of the book right away. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, 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. Let Jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life.

As you learn how to ask Christ for his eyes, you'll start seeing as Jesus sees, and you're going to love the view. 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. Psalm 25 to you, O Lord. I lift up my soul, O my God, in you I trust. Let me not be put to shame. Let not my enemies exalt over me.

Indeed, none who wait for you shall be put to shame. I understood this in the old covenant, that what enemies want to do is when they have apparent victory over you, they want to parade it around. They want to mock you for it. They want to taunt you with it.

They want to put you down with it. Psalm 119, I hate the double-minded, but I love your law. You're my hiding place in my shield. I hope in your word. Depart from me, you evil doers, that I may keep the commandments of my God.

Uphold me according to your promise that I may live and let me not be put to shame in my hope. When Jesus hung on the cross, every demon in hell lined up for a field day to mock the Son of God. The one who had cast out demons had said that he had inaugurated the kingdom of God, wherein by the finger of God he had cast out evil, who had demonstrated absolute authority over demons. And now on the cross as he hung in weakness and bleeding and suffocating, you can see it in the voices of those that gathered around the cross. Look, he saved others.

He can't save himself. If you are the Son of God, come down from there. He bore our shame and derision so that he could accomplish a victory that would assure us that we're victorious in him and that no earthly disappointment, no suffering in this world, no adversity that we face, no dream deferred, no broken relationship, no failure in our life could ever cause us to be the subject of the shame of hell because we have the hope of the glory of God. And absolutely nothing but nothing but nothing can ever change that and nothing can separate you from the love of God and Jesus Christ. We do not have in this world a ticket out of suffering or trouble. We do not have in this world any assurance that we won't mess up, fail, blow it, have all kind of reasons for hell to come and shame and taunt us. But what we have is that we're in Christ.

We have access to God our Father and all the riches of heaven because of this great justification that we've been credited with the righteousness of God. You have the hope of heaven. We're just a little girl who's saying Christmas is coming. We're just the couple who's got a baby and we say the baby's coming so we're doing some sacrificial things now. And sometimes you're just the mother in the pangs of birth who doesn't despair, who hurts and labors but doesn't despair because the intensity of it is just a reminder that the baby's almost here. You can't taunt and mock and shame a mother in labor because she's hurting and say look at you, you're doomed because you're hurting because that is actually the mark, the evidence that the baby's nearly here and we're like that. We're gonna have some disappointments in this world.

It doesn't feel good but if you have the hope of the glory of God it's just a fleeting and temporary disappointment and it is not the focus of shame in your life. I think I've told you before about a dear lady I'll call her Martha that was in my first church, first little church I served. She was nearly 90. She loved Jesus. Oh, she loved Jesus. She was always concerned that others didn't love Jesus enough so she was always she wanted to do a Bible study. I went over and did a Bible study on the Gospel of John and her her apartment, her condominium and she got all the other old ladies to come and she just loved people, loved Jesus.

She was something. One evening her phone rang and my wife answered it was Martha on the phone and she talked to Ann first. I just answered, what? Martha, you're kidding me. I talked a little while, I got off the phone and Ann said, Martha called to say that she has won the sweepstakes. I said, you what? I called her back. I said, Martha, what are you saying? She said, I've won the sweepstakes. I said, well, how much? She said, I don't know for sure the exact amount but it's going to be at least one million dollars and she said, I wanted to call you because you need to know I am going to tie this to the building fund.

I said, Martha, I'm coming over. But I was worried about it because I know what those mailings look like. I know what those mailings look like.

They're rigged to make it look like you've won when you haven't won with the hope that you'll send money and buy things and keep. I was worried about it. I went over. I said, Martha, how do you know you won?

Did they call you? She said, no. And she brought out a folder. She said, but obviously I've won because look at all of this. I said, could I take a look at it, Martha? She said, yeah. And I opened it up and it was nothing but those garbage mailings that say things like you've been qualified to win a million dollars, things that almost, it's almost criminal really, that say you are eligible to claim a million dollars.

And the fine print was the same old fine print that we all get. And I looked through this big folder and I realized she hadn't won. And you know, that was a hard moment of ministry. I've been through some hard moments, but that was a hard one to look at precious 89 year old Saint and I, and say, Martha, you haven't won. She didn't believe me. And the next week she said, I've gotten another communication and they're coming on Tuesday in the morning. She said, I'd really like you and Anne to be here when they come to bring the check. I just said, okay, because I knew the check wasn't coming.

And I thought what she needed was a pastor and she wasn't going to get a check. We went over, knocked on the door at 10. And when we did Martha opened the door with a smile and she had a family member running a video camera behind her. We went in and we sat there for two, two and a half hours with nobody coming.

And when it became apparent, they weren't coming at least that morning. And it was beginning to settle on her that maybe she hadn't won. I finally just said, how about we go and get some barbecue? She loved old North Carolina barbecue restaurant. So we went to her favorite restaurant and we ate barbecue and slaw and hush puppies and drink sweet tea and talked about Jesus. And when I dropped her off back at her apartment, I said, Martha, are you going to be okay?

I hate for you to be so disappointed. And she looked at me and said something I'll never forget. She said, Oh, pastor, I'm old and I've suffered many disappointments, but I have Jesus and I have the glory of God ahead of me and I'll be fine. You couldn't taunt her.

You couldn't shame her. You couldn't mock her in her disappointment because she was wrong. You couldn't mock her in her disappointment because she was rejoicing in the hope of the glory of God.

Why Jesus didn't come down from the cross when he was mocked by hell was a hope that was set before him of the salvation of the world. You are perhaps on a mountain top and everything's going wonderful, or maybe you're in a valley and you've been walking up under a lot of hardship, but you can rejoice in the glories that are yours and God because of hope. And because of hope, you can rejoice even as you go through the difficult things, because in the spirit you're getting younger, you're becoming more vital. You're getting the muscle of hope built up in your soul.

The world's dark, but there is hope. And that's the gospel. Pastor Alan Wright, our Good News message, Building Hope from the series, It's All Right Now from Romans chapters four through seven.

Hey, stay with us. Pastor Alan is back joining me in the studio to share his part in Good News Thought for us all for today in just a moment. What if the secret to personal transformation and victorious living isn't found in doing as much as in seeing?

Anyone who has ever had an aha moment or has suddenly discovered the truth of the situation knows that fresh vision changes everything. In his eye-opening new book, 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 getting your copy of the book right away. When you make a gift to Alan Wright Ministries today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's new beautiful hardcover book. And as an additional thank you for your support, 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. Let Jesus take you by the hand and show you a whole new perspective for your life.

As you learn how to ask Christ for his eyes, you'll start seeing as Jesus sees, and you're going to love the view. 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 in the studio this year, Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day at the conclusion of this teaching, Building Hope.

You have one more thing for us, Pastor Alan. Well, I just think it's so important, returning to the whole idea that hope is not going to put us to shame. God's type of hope does not put us to shame. Hope is not something like this wishful thinking that gets your expectations up and then dashes them.

That God isn't like that. God has deeper assurances and lasting assurances for you. And so there's no such thing as getting your hopes up in God and then being let down. No, we have assurance of a blessed future. No matter what you're going through now, there is an assurance in God that ultimately what He's bought for you, what He has enabled to come to you and the gift of heaven itself is that you are credited with the righteousness of Jesus and you're God's and nothing can ever separate.

That's why hope in the gospel, hope in Jesus can never disappoint, can never put to shame, because for sure we can say, and it's not pie in the sky to say it, the best is yet to come. 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.