See It to Be It [Part 3]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

There is a higher truth, a greater reality, about who you are than who you might be looking like at any given moment. 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, The Power to Bless, taken from Pastor Alan's book of the same title and as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with this 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 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.

Listen to what Leanne Payne writes about this. The artist then is not creator. He is merely discoverer and servant to the work that is already there. The work says, release me from chaos. Give me my form, my shape, my being. And listening to the work, the artist frees it to become, to be.

She continues, give to me my form. Give to me my being. The soul and chaos cries out. Separate me from the darkness, the stone. I'm here. All of me is here.

Free me. And the spirit, when we invite him, broods over us and the situation and comes into us who are priests of almighty God and he does it. I see, I feel it. So much power in this.

When you're talking to a sales clerk at the cash register and you might say, that's a lovely name. You have looked into a block of stone and seen a soul that is saying, oh, make me, form me, free me for who I really am destined to be. And you have, as an artist, chiseled away a little bit and invited the Holy Spirit to come alongside and make that person into the very one that God has designed her to be.

That's exceedingly powerful. The greatest fundamental of human nature is that you are made in the image of God. It is so hard for the sinful mind to believe this, but beloved, you are very much like God.

You're not God and you have lots of sin and I have lots of sin, but you are made in his own image. And what this means is that though human beings are not creators or gods, we are creative like God. And though all blessing originates with God for every good and perfect gift comes down from heaven. Though all originates with God, we are authorized to bless the creation like God. God's a creator and a blesser.

And you are also designed to be creative. That means shaping and forming the world in collaboration with God. Imagining what can be and having faith that it will come to pass. And then blessing and affirming God's good creation so that it can be released into that destiny. We are, in that sense, makers and blessers and that's who we are. So you are a collaborator with God, a co-laborer with Christ. You are in this with God, doing what God does. So let's just lay out here two radical countercultural foundations of all blessing. If you're going to understand anything about the power of blessing, start with these two basic foundational truths.

And this is the first and it's completely countercultural. We are shaped by formative voices beyond us, not our own inner voice. We contrary to what the spirit of the age says, cannot find ourselves by looking within. We need an external voice of love, authority, discernment, and artistry to see us and call us forth. We need to have a vision that we can see about who we are destined to be. If I only look inside of myself, I'll only find whatever my own sinful nature could ever find to be. I need a revelation. The only way you ever become a Christian is by a light that comes into the darkness and the only way that you're ever shaped into all that you're destined to be is by light of revelation and vision that gets painted in front of you.

It's why we have to help one another to see the highest vision of our lives. One of the fun things in writing a book like this is, of course, just stories that are in our own midst, our own family and our own church. And there's a good number of those in the book. One's about an important leader and good friend, Jeff Deaton, that many of you know. Jeff, if you don't know him, he's a reproductive endocrinologist, which is a fancy way of saying he's a fertility doctor. And Jeff has traveled with me a lot because he has volunteered to direct Alan Wright Ministries for many years. And so Jeff has been quite a servant and he'll often just be there at the book table, you know, getting resources to people and interacting and planning all these. And I'm very appreciative of this, but whenever I introduce him, I always have a fun time saying, this is Jeff Deaton. He is responsible for many women in our city becoming pregnant. So that's just a fun way to introduce him.

And I mean it as a blessing. And so he's an unlikely kid to become a doctor. Grew up in a small Tennessee town. His parents hadn't gone to college. Great parents, but they'd never gone to college. And most of his friends in his town, you know, they would graduate high school and take good, hardworking jobs.

But the idea of going on to college and then medical school, residency and fellowship to get specialty trained and become a pioneer in fertility medicine is not something that he would have envisioned for his own life. But by the providence of God, his mother, Jeff's mother worked for a doctor in the town, Dr. Harrison and his wife. And Jeff was very good at math, sort of a math nerd and did all these math competitions and stuff. And the Harrison's daughter, who was like the cutest girl in town, needed help with her math and they asked Jeff to come tutor her. So not a bad gig, you know, he gets to go over and tutor this cute, popular girl in math. But Jeff said what he was really interested in was not so much the girl, but in the Harrison's.

Because he would over there several times a week, just, you know, got to where he was just spending so much time there, they sort of spiritually adopted him. And he said what happened was that he just heard conversations he'd never heard before. He said, I assumed that learning stopped after high school or maybe after college. He said, but they talked about what they were learning all the time. I never envisioned that, you know, maybe I was good at math or something that that could relate to me going into medicine, but they talked about this all the time. He said, my parents who were such good parents did not have words to articulate what they themselves could not see for my future, but the Harrison's could. I bet you've got a story like that.

I bet you've got a story like that. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by giving design and Act now, support Alan Wright Ministries with your donation and step into the abundant life God has awaiting you as we send you this limited time resource bundle as our thanks this month. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. 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. There's been somebody in your life that God has used to help you have a vision that is much higher than what you would have ever known for yourself. Blessing is built on this principle. Contrary to the spirit of the age which wrongly says don't let anybody tell you who you ought to be. Just look inside yourself and follow your own inner guide and all that mumbo jumbo. So we got parents getting duped into believing that they're not supposed to tell their children anything about who they are.

Parents are scared to tell their child anything about what they think their child's destiny might be or even what they think their gender might be. This is just the spirit of the age. And what the Bible paints a picture of is that there are wiser, discerning, more spiritually mature voices along your path that can recognize and discern real virtue, actual direction, and speak it forth. And you are authorized with the power to bless people in that way. Wow.

I just want to spend my whole life doing that. You're an artist chipping away at stone. And here's the second foundational truth that you've seen from Genesis 1, and we'll let this be enough for today. Blessing comes first, after the chaos has come into beautiful form.

How countercultural is that? Because the way of the world is to withhold blessing like a carrot that's dangled until we've proven ourselves. But with God, blessing doesn't wait until the flower has blossomed before blessing the bud or even the seed that is yet to germinate. With God, the blessing precedes the fruitfulness. So if you want to exercise the power to bless, then you are recognizing that you're blessing people who do not yet manifest all that you're going to speak over their lives. And so there is a higher truth, a greater reality about who you are than who you might be looking like at any given moment.

For the truth about your life is that you are holy and set apart unto God even if you're at your worst moment, you still in Christ are holy unto the Lord. And even if you see a human being who is doing something that is absolutely terrible, it doesn't change the fact that human being was made in the very image of God. That there is a way in which we practice faith for others to flourish and therefore can speak into their lives what we see in faith even though it may not yet have been manifested in their lives. And this is just absolutely foundational to all blessing. God is like this. He looks out where there's nothing and He envisions what can be. He speaks it and the Spirit of God broods over it and brings it into form.

That's what you do with your life. That's the way I looked on it when those little babies were entrusted to us and came into this world and I held my little baby every night and would pray and sing and bless that baby. I'm sitting there looking at this little baby and discerning the mind of Christ for this child's life and speaking it before it's ever come to pass. Doesn't mean that you're controlling or manipulating.

It means you're releasing. It means that your blessing is very much, very much an expression of just how much you're like God. You're not God. I'm not God. He's the creator of the ends of the earth but you sure are creative. You can envision what hasn't existed yet. Imagination.

Wow. That's God-like. And then you can bless in cooperation, collaboration with the Holy Spirit who then broods over that which is formless and brings it into beauty. That's what I mean by the power to bless. You know the good news about all of this? This is part of the reason I wrote the book is that if you've been walking with God for decades and decades and decades, which is kind of what's turning into my life now.

I'm one of those people now. I'm with decades and decades walking with God. I've got so much more to learn. And if you were just today for the first time hearing about the concept of blessing, guess what?

You can start today. It's so simple and endlessly deep. I was talking to my son Bennett. He'd read the book. I said, Bennett, do you like it? He said, yeah, Dad, it's a good book. I said, really, really?

Tell me the truth. Yeah, it's a good book. I said, what would you like about it? He said, well, here's the thing I like about blessing. He said, you know, it's like the game of chess. He said, chess, you can actually learn to play in about 10 to 15 minutes. You can learn what each of the different pieces on the board do, the pawn, and what the rook does in the night. You can learn to play chess in about 10 to 15 minutes.

So you can start playing. And then you could spend the rest of your life learning the intricacies of this amazing game. And that's the way it is with blessing. You could start today by speaking a positive, affirming vision over someone's life in agreement with God's word, spoken with your faith and discernment, and releasing blessing into their life.

And you can spend the rest of your life and all eternity discovering the depths of its power. Every single Christian has been given the authority, the power to bless, and that's the gospel. Allen Wright, today's good news message, See It to Be It, from the series The Power to Bless, also taken from Pastor Alan's book of the same title. Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio sharing his parting good news thought for the day. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace-filled vision for your life by signing up for Allen Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Allen Wright's daily blessing. It's free and just a click away at pastorallen.org. Embark on a journey of transformation with our Free Yourself, Be Yourself resource bundle.

Imagine a shame-free life. No more self-condemnation, no more inward angst, no more wondering if you measure up as you soak in the message of healing grace. This empowering bundle includes Pastor Alan's landmark book, Free Yourself, Be Yourself, plus an accompanying resource guide and access to the exclusive companion video series. Act now, support Allen Wright Ministries with your donation, and step into the abundant life God has awaiting you as we send you this limited-time resource bundle as our thanks this month. The gospel is shared when you give to Allen 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 Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, pastorallen.org. Back in the studio with Pastor Alan and our parting good news thought for the day.

This is something that anybody can do, right? Anybody can learn to bless, and I think that's what's so powerful about this. Daniel, one of the things we want to keep reiterating with our listeners is that blessing, though it is not as familiar to us as fundamentals like prayer or the meditational scripture, that in the worldview of the Bible, it is just as fundamental.

It is something that is absolutely a central part, a daily part of the Christian life. And so, you know, you would never say, well, I'm not going to pray until I can pray with great eloquence and mighty faith. No, you just start praying. You would never say, well, I'm just not going to start loving somebody until I can love them perfectly.

No, just start where you are. It's the same thing with blessing. And it's a very simple process, Daniel, where you simply become a treasure hunter and look for that treasure in others. Do you know someone right now that I'd say to our listener that you see a virtue in that person more clearly than he or she can see themselves?

Well, speak that out. I see this quality in you. Then a second step is attach to that quality something about what that means for their identity. So you don't just say, hey, I saw you being very patient the other day with your little sister, and that's a beautiful quality about you. Then you relate that and say, I think that this is how God has made you and it's who you've become and are becoming, a very patient person. And then you attach to that quality a positive future. People who are able to be patient find that they end up receiving and stepping into many good things because a lot of good things come to those that are able to wait.

And it's a world in which people are generally impatient, but I see you as being patient. You see, you start speaking something like that into a child's life or anyone's life, and it becomes very, very powerful then. Anybody can learn how to do that, and as you have said, the book goes real deep with the concept of blessing, but lots of nourishing stories, and in the end, we actually have a worksheet where you can take a step-by-step approach and learn how to do this, and you could start today. Pastor Alan, I know you're careful to differentiate what a positive faith vision in this teaching See It to Be It is compared to what some may be nervous or afraid as just positive thinking and creating something out of nothing that doesn't have any real basis. Right. One of the things that's very important in the book, towards the end of the book, and please, when you get the book, make sure you make it to this chapter, and really, you got to turn your, like Ann used to say to her kindergarten students, you got to turn your brain up, put your thinking cap on for this one.

Yeah, right. But it is to say that Jesus came full of grace and truth, not that Jesus was sometimes grace and sometimes truth, which is kind of what we are, right? You know, their days as a parent, it was like, I've got a lot of grace. Other days, it's like, it's all truth, you know?

Well, Jesus was 100% gracious, 100% truthful at all times, and I think that blessing, one of the ways to understand blessing is that blessing is grace and truth, and the more that you can have grace and the more you have truth at the same time, the more powerful the blessing, and I really dive deep into this because the opposite of blessing is curse, where there's no grace and there's no truth. The devil wants to lie and bring no grace in your life. That's what curse is all about. Well, but there are other expressions of speech that using the same idea of grace and truth, if you have all grace but no truth, which is something we hear a lot of in culture, I would call that amoralism.

It's like saying there is no right or wrong. That's not a blessing. It's not a blessing to tell somebody something that's false, right? To just magically think I can pull something out of here. I often laugh and say, you know, there were many, many blessings I spoke to my son, but I never said to him, hey, I think you're going to be a great NBA All-Star one day.

No, Bennett's about five, eight and a half, and basketball wasn't his thing. So it would have been ridiculous and wrong to say, I think you'll be a great NBA. That just wouldn't resonate with the truth.

It wouldn't be right. On the other hand, there's a form of speech that I would just call moralism. It's got a lot of truth, but it's got no grace. It's kind of the Pharisees. You know, the Pharisees had a lot of truth, but Jesus says you're like a whitewashed tomb full of dead men's bones. You search the world over for a convert, make him twice the son of hell you are, and it wasn't that the law was bad. It's just there was no grace to accompany the truth they had. So when we bless, we are not talking about magical thinking, and we're not talking about purely just positive thinking, and we're not saying in some cliched way, like, oh, just, you know, vision it, name it, claim it. No, we're talking about something that's rooted in Scripture, has real discernment with it, and is a release of a faith vision that then helps form someone's identity. That's what blessing is all about. Today's good news message is a listener-supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.