Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. We shared not only the Gospel of God, but our very lives, our lives, our life we shared with you.
That's what a spiritual parent does. 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 Increase as presented at Rinaldo Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with this throughout the entire program today, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now available to you 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 this 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? If there's something that you've missed from an earthly parent, a mom or a dad who maybe wasn't there or didn't know how to give it to you, there's real good news in the family of God. There's also a spiritual parent, a spiritual mother, a spiritual father that can come investing into your life and God can use in a way that profoundly replenishes and blesses. And for all of us who walk with God, there's a call within us to be that kind of spiritual parent to someone else. And when you find yourself in that kind of relationship where you have something to impart, you find yourself at the most joyful place of your life, the most fulfilling because it's the very thing that you were made to do.
I want to talk about the importance of spiritual mothers and fathers. There's a commercial, a grocery store commercial that's making Ann and me cry. We stop and look at it and cry again when we see it. It's a scene that opens up with a little girl at her birthday party and somebody hands her a present and said, it's from your stepdad, Chris. So it must be like you're thinking it was her first birthday when she has this stepfather there and she opens up the present and she says, thanks, Chris. And Chris takes the hand of his new wife and squeezes it. The next scene is this little girl is a little older. She's in the kitchen and her step-father stepdad's there and she's trying to make something in the kitchen, mixing some things in a bowl and she spills the milk and it goes all over the place.
And, but he's patient and he helps her and they get the recipe done and they develop this meal. And she goes, thanks, Chris. The next scene is she's studying in here. I think they've got flashcards and he's quizzing her and she gets it right and he says, you got this, Grace. And she says, thanks, Chris. The next scene is a graduation party.
It looks like it might be in their backyard under a little tent. And she's, I think, got cap and gown on. And she says, first, I just want to say a big thank you to my mom and to Chris for all they've done in my life. And then the next scene she's older and she is sitting in a kind of a dressing room in her wedding gown and her mom's there behind her helping fix her hair. And then Chris is in the corner of the room. He steps in and he looks at her and he says, wow, you look beautiful.
And she looks up at him and says, thanks, dad. And then we cry. And at a grocery store commercial, I don't know what it has to do with groceries, but anyway, it made its way into a sermon. And why is that so touching? Why is that so touching?
Why a one minute commercial? Why could that make us cry? What's so touching about that?
I would suggest to you it's touching for the same reason that any book or movie that ever makes us cry is touching. It is connecting to one of the deepest longings that we have in our soul. And it's the longing that's reflected, not just that a little girl would grow up and have a dad there, but it's also the longing and even greater so, and this is the power of that little commercial of that stepdad to really be able to be a dad, to really be able to invest the kind of love and nurture and care that would be received and trusted. We're made for this.
And so we long for it. And it's interesting that Paul often speaks of those that he's discipled as being like, as being like spiritual sons. And it's interesting that Paul himself has references that indicates those who have nurtured in his own life, including Rufus's mother, who he says was also like a mother to me. And he says the great need is really for the spiritual parent. 1 Corinthians 4.14, he says, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.
For I became your father in Christ, Jesus, through the gospel. You've got lots of guides, teachers, but you don't have many fathers. And that's what we need. We need spiritual fathers. We need spiritual mothers. We've been speaking about generational blessing.
We've been talking about how you're made for more. And I want to be more explicit today and say that this applies to us, whether we are married or single, whether we have biological or adoptive children or not, because all of us are called to be growing in the Lord and on the lookout for and ready to invest in someone who's younger in their walk with the Lord so that you could help nurture them like a parent nurtures a child. We have missed too much of this, and it is, I think, the thing that more than maybe anything else would change the world. Our preaching and our wonderful church services and all are special. And I devote my life to proclaiming the word but most of us, if we look back in our lives at how we really grew spiritually, somebody did life with us.
Somebody invested with us. When Paul said, we were nurturing among you like a mother and we exhorted you like a father. He had this to say in the middle. He said, we shared not only the gospel of God, but our very lives, our lives, our life we shared with you.
That's what a spiritual parent does. That's Alan Wright, and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. You're made for more than your span of years on this earth. What might happen if you start taking the long view of your impact? We need to know what matters most to us so we can pass down our values on purpose. In Pastor Alan Wright's brand new six-week video series called Made for More, you'll discover the power of your lasting legacy as he leads you through a simple process to clarify your family core values and God-given purpose in the world. Pastor Alan will also help you dream to imagine your 100-year impact.
The video series is accompanied by a practical study guide with templates and worksheets. You'll also receive the full-length preaching series Increase that exposes the biblical principle of generational blessing. Make your gift to the ministry today and get your Made for More audio-video bundle as our thank you for your partnership. Contact us today and discover the power of your lasting legacy. 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. It's not just teaching. It's not just giving tidbits of advice or instruction.
It's where there's life-on-life discipleship and relationship. And this is what changes people. And y'all, our country is in a massive crisis because of the attack against our families. And there's been particularly attack against dads. And the whole attack against the simplicity and beauty of God's design of making us male and female and to put us in homes where there's a mother and father.
The most basic and important thing to all of human health is under attack. Some years ago when we were pastoring our church in Durham, there was a couple there, Ernie and Jenny Ruckert, and they wanted to go to orphanages. That was what they felt like their call was in their retirement was to go to orphanages and just minister and mentor kids and be with them. And they found that the kids were having a hard time opening up to talk to them.
A lot of them were just really clammed up. And so what Ernie and Jenny came upon was to start inviting the kids to write poems and they would write down these poems. And many times those poems were just rich and they would open up some discussions. And then Ernie and Jenny started collecting those poems and they put them into a series of little books. And the most haunting of all of those is a poem I've referenced sometime in the past. It's called The Want of a Mom and Dad.
It was written by Juan. It goes like this, moms and dads are wonderful for those people that has a mom and a dad, parents that guide you and teach you the right way, not the wrong way. As for me, I never knew my mom.
My dad drunk all the time. I don't know what it's like to have a mom and a dad, a dad to wrestle and play with, a mom to tell me everything's okay when something's wrong, parents that really care for me, ones that will help me not abuse me. I wish I had a mom and dad.
Why can't I have a mom and dad like all the other kids? And Juan's poem haunts me because it's I think at the soul of a nation, this longing for a mom and a dad. Isn't that just profound?
A dad to wrestle and play with, a mom to tell me everything's okay. It is touching upon one of the deepest truths, both biblically and philosophically that we could ever understand is that we need both the maternal and the paternal. We need this in the same way that we need grace and truth. We need this in the same way that we need both comfort and exhortation in our lives.
It is the will of the will of God. It is the plan of God that we would have a place of nurture where we have from the time that we emerge from the womb, that we'd have the soft touch of a mother who is comforting and who connects with us and attaches with us and attunes to our deepest needs so that when she says it's going to be okay, that something inside of us is comforted. But Juan's right, we need a dad to wrestle and play with that in the interaction of coming up against paternal strength and masculine encouragement, that there is a push and a pull and there's a calling up. There is a way in which in the life of our family, we could see it so often where there just were things that our kids would go to mom for and then they go to dad for.
And it's so funny because here they are grown and been of course with a baby of his own and they still have different reasons for coming to us. If the phone rings and it's my daughter from Washington DC, it's fairly predictable what it's going to be about. And it might be dad, my car registration I think is going out.
How are we going to get that fixed? Or it might be I've got an important interview coming up and our assignment at work, I wanted to talk about something like that. And if she's going through a sad moment, she's probably calling mom. It just doesn't really change that much because we need so much. And it's not just gender stereotype and say that only moms are nurturing or only dads are strong.
It's not to say that at all. It's to say we need this. We need all of this, y'all. And when we don't have it, there's something that's not nurtured inside of us. Look again at what Paul said in First Thessalonians 2 seven, we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. He's describing spiritual mothering. He's saying that as soon as you come into the kingdom of God as a babe, the first thing that you need and you need it for the rest of your life is you need unconditional love. You need comfort. You need gentleness.
You need those that are patient with you. But he also said just a few verses later, verse 11 and 12, for you know how like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you, encouraged you and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God. You know that there's like, there's this sense in which when you, if you're going to grow up in the Lord, you need both the nurture of grace that says you are safe, you are loved, you are radically accepted and you are forgiven and you can be comforted. But you also need a voice that is saying, and you were made for more and you were made for something. It is to say that there's a way in which there is a really important place for the empathy and the shared tears. But there's also a place where it's really important that there's another voice that says, okay, we've cried long enough and now we've got a mission in front of us.
Let's get up and do it. Gordon Dalby, who I'll mention later, tells a story in Healing the Masculine Soul about a father that he knew that overheard a conversation between his little boy and the mom. Little boy who had some toy trucks and he was in his room and he was going, zoom, zoom, crash, crash, you know, little boy. And the mother went in and said, sweetie, those toys, you need to take care of them and trucks aren't made for crashing.
You know, they need to play nicely next to each other. And the dad overheard this whole conversation and it was a good dad moment. He went in very politely and he said, Johnny, he said, excuse us just a minute. He said, mommy and I need to talk for just a minute. And he stepped out of the room with her and he said, honey, I really appreciate that you want to teach the good stewardship of toys, but I need to explain something to you. With boys, trucks are for crashing.
We need both. And I guess I had a sense of this early on. My dad left home when I was in fourth grade and so I didn't get all of that that I needed from him. So my mother who came to know the Lord shortly thereafter and got invited into a great church, she found the godliest man in that church, he and his wife, the pillars and patriarch of that church. And she would take me and my two older brothers over to him regularly just for him to lay hands on us and bless us and pray. Everybody needs a mom and a dad. And we're the body of Christ and we are full of spiritual moms and dads.
So there's no reason that anybody should go without. Some years ago, we got impacted here and I got impacted by a man named Jack Deere who came and visited our church a number of times, wonderful author and communicator. And so he really helped disciple some. And one time I was asking Jack, I said, well, who's your favorite Bible teacher? And he said, so the top of his list was a man named Dudley Hall.
And I said, well, that's interesting. He said, my mom just had Dudley Hall at her church in Greensboro and loved Dudley Hall so much. And so I got in touch with Dudley Hall. Dudley came over and he spoke at our church. I think we did a men's retreat and I loved Dudley and started getting to know him and he started sharing his wisdom. He was a spiritual mountain of a man, old Baptist revivalist and evangelist, had wonderful encounters with the Holy Spirit, was welcomed by his denomination to leave and start a new ministry. And he understands and articulates the gospel as well as anybody that I know. And Dudley was willing to listen to me and to talk to me on the phone and to give me counsel and come alongside.
We never reached any like an agreement. It's not like you sign up and say, okay, I'll be your spiritual son. You be my spiritual father.
It's not like that. It's just something that can emerge where there's trust and it seems like there's a relationship that developed. And so somewhere along the way, I realized that Dudley had become a spiritual father to me. I didn't even realize how much I would cherish having that kind of fatherly presence in my life until I had one.
And really good fathers, they have a way of not only strengthening you by being there for you, but they have a real way. And I think this is part of what fathers do. They have a way of calling you up, calling you up.
I think this is the big absence we've got in our country today. It's like the spiritual father's calling up the younger man. And Dudley was like this for me, but let me tell you how it happens. This is the way it happens. That it's not this, it's not, let me understand about spiritual parents. It's not like a controlling type relationship. Are you giving somebody things they ought to do?
It's not that sort of accountability. It's a relationship. This is the way it happens. Alan Reich, today's good news message titled the importance of spiritual mothers and fathers in our series Increase. Pastor Alan is back with us in the studio as he shares his parting good news thought for the day.
Just a moment. You're made for more than your span of years on this earth. What might happen if you start taking the long view of your impact? We need to know what matters most to us so we can pass down our values on purpose. In Pastor Alan Wright's brand new six-week video series called Made for More, you'll discover the power of your lasting legacy as he leads you through a simple process to clarify your family core values and God-given purpose in the world. Pastor Alan will also help you dream to imagine your 100-year impact.
The video series is accompanied by a practical study guide with templates and worksheets. You'll also receive the full length preaching series Increase that exposes the biblical principle of generational blessing. Make your gift to the ministry today and get your Made for More audio video bundle as our thank you for your partnership. Contact us today and discover the power of your lasting legacy. 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 now in the studio to share Pastor Alan's parting good news thought for the day. And in our series here, we've been talking about generational blessing.
We've been talking about being made for more, being made for increase, and that is our overall theme. This is the importance of spiritual mothers and fathers. And I think you're very quick here to say this isn't just limited to biological mothers and fathers.
Yeah, I think that we all are called to be making a generational impact. And for some, that comes through the gift of bearing and rearing children. For others who aren't called to that, or perhaps have longed to be parents biologically, but aren't.
All of that. There's a very important word here and that whether single or married, whether a parent in a natural sense or not, every Christian has an impact spiritually in our everyday lives. But there's some particular individuals that come into your life. God brings them there that are meant for you to, if you're a woman, to mother them spiritually or a father them if you're a man.
And it is to say that you are, you have something that you are putting into them. It means that you have a special role in their life. And I think all of us need a spiritual mother or father, and we all need to be a spiritual mother or father. And the impact that you make is something that can grow exponentially. There's nothing greater than someone who's invested in our life spiritually, because it changes who we are. And then every bit of impact in our life is shaped by that.
Well, we want to be that to someone else. And so that's what we're talking about, the importance of spiritual mothers and spiritual fathers. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.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 pastorallen.org. That's pastorallen.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.
