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It's free and just a click away at PastorAlan.org. Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. Jesus did not lead people to repentance by any form of judgment. He led people to repentance by his unquenchable love and kindness. It is the kindness of God that leads people to repentance.
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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. They know they're likely to fail the first time they try something. They don't wait until they're positive they can get it right before they start trying something. Wouldn't it be a glorious freedom that could come in the body of Christ and in your life if you realize there's no condemnation for you if you fall down? He's going to pick you back up and you're going to learn and you're going to grow. Freedom also comes in this lavish sense of generosity of heart and mind and soul and body and resources because the more the Spirit fills you the more that you are aware of the are aware of the unsearchable riches you have in Christ the more the Holy Spirit fills you the more you are convinced of who he is as a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance in the saints.
And when you know yourselves to be spiritually rich when you know yourself to be an heir you don't have to be so reserved about giving your life away because you're not going to run out. It's bondage when you can't even give. Some people can't even give somebody a compliment.
They've been around some like that. They can't even compliment somebody. What are you going to lose by complimenting somebody else? I mean what are we so afraid of where there's no condemnation though where the power of the Holy Spirit flows encouragement just flows and flows because we have generous souls. Freedom of the Spirit gives us freedom to celebrate. That's one of the biggest marks of the presence of the Holy Spirit. I tell you I get under the unction of the Holy Spirit. That's when I start acting like a drunk person.
I'm just like because you know what happens? You're made to celebrate God. You're made to praise God. You're made to praise God.
It doesn't mean you need to run around the church. It doesn't mean yet but it's a thing of the heart and man people that get filled with the Spirit they're free to celebrate. Celebrate God. Celebrate life. Celebrate goodness.
Laughter does good like a medicine. Why wouldn't everybody want to have the freedom of the Holy Spirit? Why would anybody want to choose a life of crimped up, locked down, held back, heavy chained bondage? And yet we do.
And yet we do. What's Paul doing with this image? It's a kind of a complicated metaphor and in some ways he turns the metaphor a little bit but it seems that two things were happening with Moses in this veil.
We're not exactly sure. On the one hand his face was so radiant with the glory of God that people were afraid to get near Moses and it seemed like initially that was part of the reason for the veil but then what we see is that he would go into the presence of God, remove the veil, but then when you come back out he would proclaim the word of God and then as before the glory would fade off his face then he would put the veil back down. So both images are at work here but in both images the same thing is being demonstrated. The veil marked and symbolized the separation of the people from the glory of God. The veil obscured or hindered people from seeing the glory of God and the glory of God as we read in Exodus chapter 34 is revealed in God when he passes by Moses and proclaims himself as the Lord, the Lord, the compassionate, the merciful. The goodness of God is the glory of God and the veil therefore is not just hindering people from seeing the awesome splendor of God, it is hindering people from seeing the goodness of God. In other words it is to say the veil obscures the glory of the gospel and what Paul is saying is in the same way that the veil symbolized the obscuring or hindering or clouding over of the glory of the gospel of the good news of who God really is, so it is that when the law is read, when Moses is read, when you put yourself back up under a system of the law what happens is that a veil immediately covers the heart and all of life works like this, that as soon as you mix in a little bit of the law, as soon as you mix a little bit in, a veil comes right back over the heart and you can't see the glory of the gospel.
The Holy Spirit is so committed to revealing the gospel to us in ever-increasing measure so that we will with unveiled faces encounter God up close intimately, the glorious God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. See isn't it true that as soon as you introduce law into a relationship, you have not just contaminated what could have been perfect love what could have been perfect love, but you have introduced unlimited possibility for fear. The smallest amount of law injected into a relationship opens the door to unlimited amounts of fear. Because as soon as you're in a love relationship, but it gets established even in a small way, I love you more if you will be this and I'll love you less if you'll be this. Even if it is implied, even if the smallest bit of the letter of the law gets introduced into that relationship, there is an unlimited potential for fear to develop in that relationship. That's the way relationship works. That's why people that have wonderful marriages are marriages in which they have such a sense of covenant that though they make mistakes and say things they shouldn't say, that there's a sense of I'm not going to ever leave you or forsake you though.
And in the context of faithful love, of unconditional love, intimacy grows. So what happens Paul says when you're a Christian and you've been filled with the Holy Spirit and you have the Holy Spirit and you have the Holy Spirit because every Christian receives the Holy Spirit, but you continue to go back up under the law. Every time that you put yourself back up under the law, what you're doing is by your own choice you're introducing into your relationship with God an imperfection to what he has meant to be perfect. You are taking the perfect love of God and you are choosing yourself to put it back up under the letter of the law and therefore you introduce to your relationship with God, you introduced an unlimited potential for fear and avoidance of God.
Why would anybody do that? It is perhaps the same reason that the people of God when Moses was away on Mount Sinai threw their earrings into a pot and Aaron said and out came this calf. It was not because they no longer believed in Jehovah God.
In fact the scripture says they were having a festival to the Lord when they made the golden calf. It is not that we disbelieve in God when we put ourselves under the law instead it is when we put ourselves under the law we create a more distant and safe God. That's Alan Wright and we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover 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. Why does prayer seem to be a struggle? Many people recognize the importance of prayer in their lives yet struggle with feelings of powerlessness and disconnect in their prayer practices.
Why do so many Christians feel their prayers are powerless? This common challenge leaves many wondering how to cultivate a more meaningful and impactful prayer experience. This month's featured resource from Pastor Alan is a digital bundle including an ebook Great Prayers from the Bible along with six audio messages on spiritual prayer guiding you toward a deeper understanding of what it means to pray in the spirit. Drawing from biblical insights Pastor Alan offers practical steps to enrich your own prayer life making it a source of strength and joy rather than a struggle.
Deepen your connection with God and experience the profound impact of prayer in your life today. 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. People often put God in the distance by the veil of the law because they are concerned that this glorious God would be too dangerous, too passionate, too consuming, and we are more comfortable with a veil. Put the veil on Moses. We don't want to meet with God. You meet with God and veil the glory and then just tell us what to do. And Paul is saying you got to understand if that's going to be your attitude about this, the letter is going to kill you and the veil is going to cloud you and you are not going to be able to even see the glory of the gospel. But where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. It's the story of humanity. Adam and Eve, they're in paradise. It's glory.
They have an uninterrupted fellowship in the glory of God. And the serpent, so clever, says what about the tree in the middle, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil? Just plant the thought that maybe this whole thing is not about you just being in relationship with God.
Maybe you need to do something that you're not doing now in order to become more like God. And so the serpent is introducing the possibility of the letter of the law, of here's what you've not done. You've not eaten of the tree in the middle. That's your problem.
You didn't do something that you could do. And they eat of the do to be tree. And the veil covers their hearts. And their boys, Cain and Abel, make an offering to the Lord. God doesn't reject Cain. He just says, I like Abel's offering. It's the surest sign that you're not full of the Holy Spirit and you don't have the mind of Christ. It's just because someone else gets approval and you don't, that suddenly your heart is all wrecked with jealous thoughts. Because an heir wouldn't think like that.
It was a demonstration, wasn't it, of Cain's, of the very fact that he saw himself in a system of the law. Well, what did he do that I didn't do? Maybe I should do it a different way. Why do you like his better? I thought I did something good too.
Why are you? As soon as he put himself up under the letter, he killed his brother. Abraham and Sarah, the people of the promise, God gave him a promise of a son. When the promise tarried, just momentarily they said, well, maybe we need to do something. Put ourselves up under the system of the law. Put ourselves up under, what do we need to do? Call in Hagar. Call in something other than promise.
Call in something that we can do. How can we help this thing along and you wind up with Ishmael? Jacob, I love Jacob. Jacob, who is a conniver and a deceiver, and he finally meets with God. He gets this vision of a staircase that angels ascending and descending on it and he sees God and he says, surely God was in this place and I didn't know it. And he's so excited about his vision of God that he doesn't know what to do with himself. So he just starts a religion and grabs a couple of stones, piles them up and takes himself, just been in the glory of God and steps right over here and says, well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. Put some self under the law and says, I'm going to make a vow and if God will take care of me and my family, then I'll come back to this spot and this will be an altar to God and I'll call it Bethel, the house of God and I'll give a tenth of everything that I make to God. Why would you want to encounter the glory of God and then make up your own law and put yourself under it?
Generation after generation after generation and even Jesus comes and he's spending all his three years with these 12 men and he's been relating to them. If anybody should know about a relationship, it should be Peter making up his own laws. I'll never leave you. I'll never desert you. I'll never betray you. I'll never speak against you.
I'll never. He said, Peter, he said, you're not going to make it through the night. You can't keep your own law for one night.
You'll deny me three times before the cock crows. Problem Paul's saying is that if you make up your own law, put yourself under the law, the law has no power to enable you to keep that law. So it only therefore has power to condemn you under the law. And Peter and all the disciples gathered at Pentecost, they could have just never imagined what was going to happen. Jesus had told him, he said, it's better that I go away because I'll send the Holy Spirit.
Jesus wasn't too worried about us because he knew the Holy Spirit was going to come and make the things of Jesus known to these people. And when the Holy Spirit was poured out and the glory of God was on every face, Peter realized what was happening. He realized and Spirit of God now took hold of him. And you don't see Peter anymore standing up in his first sermon saying, I'll never betray the Lord and I'll make sure that I leave my hair just this length and my beard.
He stood up and he announced that Jesus Christ had risen from the grave because he knew the glory of the gospel. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there's freedom because the Holy Spirit is a deposit guaranteeing your inheritance in the saints. You did not receive a spirit of fear that leads you back into slavery.
You have received the spirit of adoption as firstborn sons by which you cry out, Abba, Father. He is the spirit of freedom. Soon as the Spirit comes upon us, the fulfillment of Psalm 34-5, those who look to the Lord are radiant and their faces are never covered with shame. When you really see Jesus, the shame lifts, the veil lifts, the law lifts and you are free to be what he's always made you to be. The Holy Spirit wants to liberate you. It's not about all of a sudden you having no authority in your life and being able to just have a reckless life.
It's entirely the opposite. He has come because you have a great destiny. You cannot, you will not, you must not live it with change shackling you down when there's so much to do. I went to see Alice in Wonderland, the strange Johnny Depp mad hatter. That is a strange man and it was a strange movie. Alice has returned as the grown-up Alice. She had been in Wonderland as a little girl and now on the day of her surprise engagement party where the man that she doesn't want to marry is proposing marriage to her in front of hundreds of family friends. Alice is distracted by a bunny rabbit hopping by and after she is asked to be wed to this man she said, just a minute, and she follows the bunny who leads her down into the hole in which she falls into this great underworld with all of these magical creatures. And Alice and the question is amongst the creatures, is this the real Alice? Did the bunny rabbit bring the correct Alice? She doesn't seem like Alice that they remember.
And everyone is asking her about this. Finally they bring her to the wise caterpillar Absalom who knows things. And they said of the caterpillar, is this Alice? The right Alice? And the caterpillar says, she is hardly Alice. Alice goes on her many adventures in Wonderland or Underland as it is called and throughout her adventures she slowly but surely begins to regain some of the childlike wonder, imagination, faith, candor, spunk and outright courage that evidently she had as a little girl.
Until it comes up near the time where she is ready to fulfill her destiny and fight and destroy the great Jabberwocky. And one final appearance to Absalom the caterpillar whose chrysalis is nearly complete and he addresses her as Alice. She said, I thought you said I wasn't Alice.
He said, no that's not what I said. I said you were hardly Alice but now you're almost Alice. If I were to sum up the freedom of the Holy Spirit in my life, I would say essentially this, the more that I am in the Spirit, the more I am Alan. And I'm almost Alan. I'm not there yet but may he fill me with the Spirit again today and you because we're on our way. That's the gospel. Alan Wright and I can identify there.
Maybe you do. It's today's teaching in the series Filled. Why wouldn't everyone want the freedom of the Spirit? And Alan is back here in just a moment with additional insight on this teaching for your life and our final word. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover 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. Why does prayer seem to be a struggle? Many people recognize the importance of prayer in their lives, yet struggle with feelings of powerlessness and disconnect in their prayer practices.
Why do so many Christians feel their prayers are powerless? This common challenge leaves many wondering how to cultivate a more meaningful and impactful prayer experience. This month's featured resource from Pastor Alan is a digital bundle including an ebook Great Prayers from the Bible along with six audio messages on spiritual prayer guiding you toward a deeper understanding of what it means to pray in the Spirit. Drawing from biblical insights, Pastor Alan offers practical steps to enrich your own prayer life, making it a source of strength and joy rather than a struggle.
Deepen your connection with God and experience the profound impact of prayer in your life today. 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. Alan, if someone's listening right now and they've identified with this teaching and this thought, maybe it's just comfortable behind these bars. Maybe it's easier because we're talking about it because we're told what to do. We feel like it's safe here. Freedom seems a little bit scary to us. It can, Daniel. It really can. At least when we're under rules and laws and we're confined, at least we know what to expect.
At least we know that there are certain boundary lines. And there is a sense in which some people would say, if I'm really abandoned to the Holy Spirit and I have the freedom of the Lord that, you know, He's going to claim too much of my life. I want to say to every listener again that God who made you, He loves you. He has only good in store for you. Yield your life completely to Him. Allow Him to fill you ever increasingly because He is not only the answer for now and for all eternity, but He is life and life abundant. There is nothing to fear in God. He has only your good in mind. And so you can yield to Him and live a life of freedom. Today's Good News message is a listener supported production of Allen Wright Ministries.
