Here's Pastor Alan Wright with today's blessing—a biblical, faith-filled vision for your life. You have come to Mount Zion and to Jesus and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. Hebrews twelve twenty-four. When the first big brother grew jealous of the favor God showed the younger, he murdered him in the dirt. And God said, "The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground." Genesis four ten.
What was the blood's cry? Justice. Cain must pay. Wrong must be avenged. The guilty cannot go free.
The blood sound still cries to God, but He sent a better big brother, who instead of resenting his younger siblings' blessings, came to make it possible. Jesus's blood cries out also to the Father, but it is a different voice and altogether better sound. Mercy. Grace, forgiveness. May you walk with gratitude and confidence under the voice of the better blood.
Pastor, author, and Bible teacher Allen Wright. Jesus called His own Spirit the third person of the triune God, the Paracletos. It means the one who comes alongside, and that's why many translations call the Holy Spirit the word that Jesus used, the Helper. I mean, He's God. And he's holy, holy, holy.
But you also need to understand the Holy Spirit just comes alongside. He puts His arm around. He says, "How can I help you today? I'm here to help." 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 "Gateways to Grace" as presented at Renolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now, which can be yours for your donation this month to Allen Wright Ministries. As you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at pastorallen.org.
That's pastorallen.org, or call eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. While at our website, please let us know how we may pray for you. Submit your prayer request to our prayer wall and be uplifted and encouraged as the community around this ministry starts praying for you and receive notifications as your. Request is prayed for.
That's the prayer wall at Pastor Alan dot org. We're honored to stand with you in prayer. More on all of this later in the program, but right now let's get started with today's teaching. Here is Allen Wright. You see, at the bottom of this inverted pyramid, the president is there serving.
Vice presidents who serve managers who serve employees because the whole mission is to serve as many customers as you can, and that's an entirely different way of thinking about about your life and about work. And I'm so glad I got introduced to this early on because it really is my model.
So technically, I've got the title of lead pastor and head of staff or whatever, but. I I do, and I always have thought my role is, I'm I'm serving. How can I how can I help? How can I help these pastors and these elders? How can I help them so that then they they can help?
Other staff and other key volunteers, who then can serve and and help the body of Christ discover their gifts and then use them, so that together we can serve a whole congregation, and then there's a whole congregation we can serve these communities with the good news of Jesus Christ. And so, and so that's way that's way I view it, right? And it's real. I mean, this, no matter what it is that you are called to, I think this is the model. And Jesus is very practical about this.
He says, "Whoever is servant is the greatest." And so, put this in the most practical terms: if if you are if you are a salesperson, the more people that you get to serve, the more successful you are. If you are leading a company, then. The more that you can serve, so that you can eventually serve more customers, the more successful you are. Whoever gets to serve the most is the greatest. Jesus says.
So there's a really practical sense to it, but it also has to do with the spirit of which every single thing we do, because we all have different kinds of callings and different things the Lord's calling us to do. And it really doesn't matter what it is, whether it's whether it's something that is behind the scenes or something that's up front. And and it really kind of works this way. I get so tickled sometimes. I'm like, sometimes in my work, I have to stop and go, "Wait a minute, who's boss around here?" Because the fact of the matter is, it's like Laura, my assistant.
She's like, "You need to call so and so." Okay, thank you for that. And then you know later, say, "Did you call so and so?" I had not yet. I will.
Okay, get on it. Crystal, guys, she's our director of strategic initiatives and programs right here, and so she's got me signed up on on a program called Asana, and it's how you assign tasks and all this stuff. And so I'll get it, I'll get, I'll get Asana tasks from her. Here's stuff for you to do. I'm like, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be the boss.
I'm supposed to tell other people what to do, but that's not the way it works.
So one of the greatest gifts I get is Crystal, and she'll give me stuff at the beginning of the week. Boss, here's what I need. These, these, these. And I was like, wait, I thought I was the boss, but you see the whole point of it. I tell everybody, "You are serving me if you tell me what I was getting ready to forget to do, and I need to do it, or if you help me know what the priorities are so that I can help you do the ministry.
You are serving me, do you see? And I just just tell me how I can best serve." It was a huge, huge difference, right, between a preacher preparing a sermon and then. Hoping that you know it's delivered well and that people will say that was a great sermon, versus a preacher who's like a cook, a chef who fixes a meal, and you good cooks, you know what it feels like where you spend all afternoon in the kitchen, and then you get to nourish somebody. It is the fact that you got to nourish them that brought you the joy. I just want to help somebody.
Our whole healing ministry is built on this. I just want to help people. The whole, the whole reason that I want all of you to discover and use your spiritual gifts. I just want you to be able to help people. It's, it's, that's what we do.
It's completely countercultural and a whole new definition of greatness, isn't it? And I'm just saying, take Jesus at His word. He really meant it. He really said it, and He's the Savior of the world. And He knows what He's talking about.
This is what greatness is. This is what greatness is. Here's another thing that's so great about serving: is in our serving there is a fellowship with Christ, who is the ultimate servant.
So, in this act of self-humbling, in our Humbling. We are connected with God. He is our source, and there's something about the humility of serving, where we are not in it for any other purpose than helping somebody, and helping them have greater well-being. When we are in that, and we're doing that. Whether it's pulling weeds in the gardens at Mineral Springs Elementary or packing up ten thousand meals for the poor, whether it's you running your company this week or a preacher preaching a sermon, whatever it might be, if we are humbling ourselves where it is about the other, it is not about us.
It really is right now about the other. In that humbling, there's something to be cherished because we realize we're in fellowship with Jesus, and we are experiencing love from God that is not dependent on any exalted status that we have.
So it's a fellowship with Christ. And there also is in our serving the freedom that comes from the beauty of self-forgotteness. I mean, I think this is part of why it's so great to have a regular discipline of serving in our lives, because when you serve, really authentically serve, you get to have a vacation from your own mind. It makes me think of the guy who wrote the book. It was called "I Was Always on My Mind." And there's a tyranny to always being on your own mind, isn't there?
Am I doing good enough? What do people think of me? Am I getting enough? Have I gotten an award lately? Have I done this?
What about me? Me? Me? Me? Me?
And it's it's, and if you get anything in your life that gets you off your own mind, you start feeling liberty. To have to think about yourself all the time is not freedom; it is slavery. But to be able to think about someone else, to be able to just do that and to serve, there is a gift of self-forgetfulness in that, and. It's probably why when Scott Peg told a patient go down to the nursing home and read to some elderly, that she felt a little better about that. For at least those two hours, she was able to put her thoughts somewhere else towards somebody else, and it's freeing.
I'm talking about a new definition of greatness. This is why Jesus said, "This is great. If you want to be great, you want to have a great life, then then then be a servant." Richard Foster said, "The discipline of service. There is liberty because service enables us to say no to the world's games of promotion and authority." And then finally, finally, it's great to serve because it's more blessed to give. Jesus said, and when you are serving, you are tapping into.
One of the greatest, most powerful promises that Jesus ever made. He's talking about a pathway to blessedness. He's talking about a reality of blessedness. He's talking about a mystery of blessedness that, in the act of giving, in it there is blessedness. It's just when we've talked about this in the past, but it's just even in our own physiology, when.
A mother nurses her baby; her own body is releasing the kind of hormones that make her happier and more content. When you give yourself in service, there is in the giving a blessedness. It's not just a pathway to some blessing. It's just it's in the giving of it. In his book *Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being*, the University of Pennsylvania Professor Martin Seligman.
Has said, scientists have found that doing a kindness produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well-being of any exercise we have tested. That's a big statement. I'll read it again: doing a kindness, just doing a single kind thing. Scientists have found produces the single most reliable momentary increase in well being of any exercise we've tested.
So if you're if you're even just a little bit down, then just go serve somebody, just go do something kind. Wow, what's happening with this? Richard Foster again says, the daily discipline of this brings about the rise of the grace of humility. It will slip in upon us unawares, though we do not sense its presence. We are aware of a fresh zeal and exhilaration with living.
We wonder at the new sense of confidence that marks our activities. Although the demands of life are as great as ever, we live in a new sense of unhurried peace. People whom we once only envied, we now view with compassion, for we see not only their position but their pain. People whom we would have passed over before, we now see. And find to be delightful individuals.
Even more than the transformation that's occurring within us, we are aware of a deeper love and joy in God, and our days are punctuated with spontaneous breathings of praise and adoration. And listen to this line: I love this. Joyous hidden service to others is an acted prayer of thanksgiving. It's like gratitude prayer. Enacted.
Serving. Whoever Jesus said would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to serve, but to serve. He's saying, I have demonstrated and am demonstrating. What I mean by this, so Jesus, the greatest person, he's saying, I came not to be served, but to serve, and ultimately, it'll be through the act of me giving my life as a ransom for many. We've spoken of in the past the amazing scene when Jesus sets out to wash the disciples' feet, and he comes to Peter.
And Peter says, "Oh no, you're not going to wash my feet. You've you've got the pyramid inverted here, Jesus. That's not the way it works. This is a menial task, and you're the high one." And Jesus says, "But Peter, if I don't wash you, you have no part of me." And the language there, as we've spoken of in the past, is inherent language. He is saying, "If I don't wash you, then you will not have a share in the inheritance." And Peter may not have understood fully what that meant, as he's speaking of this vast spiritual inheritance that makes us coheirs with Christ.
But he did know enough to go.
Well, if that's the case, then then not only my feet, but my whole body, wash all of me, because I want my inheritance. And what Jesus was saying, beloved, is Peter, dear Peter, I understand that you don't want me to do a menial task, but the pyramid has been inverted, and I, I'm, I've came to serve, and I want, I want you to let me serve you, because this is my great mission. And what he's saying essentially is, if you won't let me wash your feet, a relatively simple thing, how are you going to let me wash your soul? If you won't let me take this towel and wipe your feet, how are you going to let me bleed on a cross for you? If you won't.
Let me serve you in this small way. How could you ever let me serve you by the laying down of my life, wherein I would secure for you justification and impute to you righteousness? If you won't let me serve you now, how are you going to let me serve you by filling you with my own spirit, so that you could preach the Pentecost sermon for me and watch thousands come to Christ? If you won't let me wash your feet, how are you ever going to let me pour out an anointing on you, so that one day on your way to the temple you'll see a lame man and look him in the eye and say, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I thee." Take up your And walk, oh Peter! I need to serve you because the Son of Man did not come.
So that people could just serve him, he came so that he could serve in the ultimate way of laying down his life and being raised from the dead for you. He served by taking your sin. He served by taking your shame. He served by taking away your guilt. Whoever trusts in the Savior has been served by the Savior, and he's here today, and he wants to serve you still.
Jesus called His own Spirit, the third person of the triune God, the Paracletos. It means the one who comes alongside, and that's why many translations call the Holy Spirit the word that Jesus used, the Helper. I mean, He's God, and He's holy, holy, holy. But you also need to understand the Holy Spirit just comes alongside. He puts His arm around and says, "How can I help you today?
I'm here to help." This turns upside down every religious notion anybody ever had. For nobody else has ever spoken of a God who came to serve. And Jesus has said, "I'm demonstrating to you what is in the very heart of God. This is what greatness." Looks like. Wow.
So let him serve you, and let him so fill you with that same spirit and same attitude that you get in on this giant secret. He's saying there's no big mystery to this. I'm not rebuking you for asking what it means to be great. I'm going to tell you what it means to be great. Serve somebody, help somebody, because whoever serves is great, and this means if you want to be great, you can be because anybody can serve, and that's the gospel.
Pastor Alan Wright, our good news message. What's so great about serving? It's from the series Gateways of Grace. Please stay with us. Pastor Alan is back, joining me in the studio, sharing his parting good news thought for the day.
Here in just a moment. What if growing closer to God isn't about trying harder?
So often we approach spiritual growth with a list of things we need to do: pray more, read more, be better. But what if the secret to spiritual transformation isn't found in greater effort, but in experiencing more of God's grace? In his book *The Gateways of Grace*, Pastor Alan Wright invites you to discover a fresh perspective on spiritual growth through timeless practices like Scripture, prayer, meditation, wonder, and rest. You'll discover how to create space for the Holy Spirit to work in your life. These spiritual disciplines aren't obligations that earn God's favor; they're gateways that open our hearts to experience more of God's goodness, peace, and transforming grace.
When you give to Allenwright Ministries, you help share the gospel with listeners around the world. And when you give today, we'll send you Pastor Alan's book, The Gateways of Grace, as our thanks to discover these aren't just disciplines; they're gateways. Step through them and discover the grace that's been waiting for you. 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 eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty, or come to our website. PastorAllen.
dot org back here now in the studio with Pastor Alan and our conclusion to this teaching. What's so great about serving? Well, the the easy thing about this is it should not be difficult to find a place to plug in and serve. Exactly. Just keep these things in mind.
It's a new paradigm for what success means. Redefine success. The one who's the greatest, the one who's most successful, Jesus says, is the one who's serving. Um. And so, if you are leading, lead as a servant.
And it is actual fellowship with Jesus when you serve. It draws us into the freedom of self-forgetfulness. It puts us into the principle that Jesus taught—that is more blessed to give than to receive. And so, in all these ways, you are becoming like God, who came in the form of a servant. It's a beautiful, beautiful gateway of grace.
Serving. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen dot org or call eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. That's eight seven seven five four four forty eight sixty. 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.
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