Delight: Take Pleasure in Obedience [Part 1]

Pastor author and Bible teacher Alan Wright. God is not invited us into greater sense of condemnation of self God instead invites us into a life of great your Alan Wright to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light.

I'm being diverted except for you to hear the teaching today. In the series.

We called saver has presented an older church in North Carolina are unable to stay with us throughout the entire program to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now and audio album called saver can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries either a CV album or digital download of these audio messages so as you listen to today's messages go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us@pastorout.org that's pastor out in.O RG or call 877-544-4860 877-544-4860 moral all of this later in the program but now let's get started with today's teaching here is Alan Wright this life in Christ is not so much duty as it is delight. We are at the culmination of a series that I've called saver. It is about becoming mindful of every blessing from God in the moment.

Each moment it is about letting go of our constant obsession with replaying the past and our preoccupation with always being somewhere in the future and instead being in this moment to experience the grace that God has for us in this moment and today, fittingly, to conclude we come to Isaiah 58 Isaiah 58 verse 13. If you turn back your foot from the Sabbath from doing your pleasure on my holy day and call the Sabbath a delight in the holy day of the Lord Hon. if you honor it not going your own ways of seeking your own pleasure talking idly, then you shall take delight in the Lord and I will make you ride on the heights of the earth's Nile feed you with the heritage of Jacob. Your father for the mouth the Lord has spoken and then the single well-known verse from Psalm 37 verse four. Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart talking about delighting in the Lord. Last week we can have ago we had a big, big staff party and it was so fun all the staff all the family were their kids had great fun things going on and it was just a night to say thank you to all staff and lots of giveaways and fun games and activities, and one of the fun games we did was I know Pastor Chris was behind it constructed a little family feud game that I was to moderate and well one of the questions and the survey of the family presented to the people around their tables. The staff and their supposed to come up with the answers and see who get the most points based on this and so one of the questions was common word statements or elements of Alan sermons and I bet you you could guess the number one risk of common statements. It would be what would you guess are you ready for some good news.

Survey said 31 points for that, and secondly that's the gospel so they got that most people got that right now.

This third one I don't know dues Chris he just wants to make fun of this because I said I one time it beggars belief well I do like the phrase was JI Packer wrote this in his knowing God.

One of my favorite passages when he talks about how exquisite the gospel is, and that we have become the children of God and that God's own happiness is tied up with ours and he said it beggars belief, but such really the gospel so maybe every now and then I say that and then forcefully, the response was a sports reference. I have been known to make a sports reference made to golf every now and then or basketball for sleep another sports reference and sixth hey how one more sports reference.

So in honor of Pastor Chris's family feud questions one prolonged sports reference is the illustration today does run throughout the whole sermon that only counts as one right it's fitting because it's Masters week and by a fluke and because of inclement weather on the horizon and Agusta Georgia replaying the Masters final-round earlier today trying to get it all done by 2 o'clock before the storms come in and so any of you golfers that I see on your phone. Checking the score will be called out publicly, and thou shalt not, thou shalt not tell the pastor any of the scores because he's taping it and will rush home to the exciting conclusion. Why is the master so special will. It starts with this golf course in this golf club Agusta national golf club. You can apply to be a member of it so you got a lot of money will other than mean you can become a member that you get invited to, and other all kinds of important traditions at Agusta there very very versatile about it but very important traditions that are there and these traditions all, spilled forward into this beautiful tournament week Masters is one of four majors we call them in the golf world.

But what's different about it is the other major tournaments moved to different venues, but the Masters is the only major exploit of the same place every year Agusta national. The winner gets a green jacket and the is that members of the club can wear green jackets and them the winner of the Masters can wear that green jacket throughout the year, wherever he wants to, but after year you have to turn it back into Agusta and it has to stay there and you can only wear when you're on the grounds of Agusta i.e. it is the most beautiful beautiful golf course you could ever seek. Just think of it this way when you go to the concession area to get a pimento cheese sandwich at the area you're standing and were all the other patrons have been trampling the ground is nicer than any golf course fairway that I've ever played on its immaculate. It is pristine.

It is, it is a tournament that the pros all want to win, and there is a certain decorum that is there.

There are no cell phones are no cameras allowed the CBS commentators are not allowed to call the people attending fans or spectators.

They must be called patron and there are only they only the Masters will only allow CBS to have four minutes of commercials for every hour of the broadcasted shifts to stress to special you can't be contaminating something so holy with commercialism. There are no sponsors there are no signs on the golf course, there are no electronic signs. They still have the old fashion little you know white signs up there and there almost always is incredible drama.

I could go on and on. I could if I if if I could afford to take the time off I would just sit and watch every shot you'd like to get a ticket to the Masters but it's one of the hardest tickets to get you just have a hard time because there are so few of them to go around and there's us a lottery that an ordinary person can enter and if so, you can get a chance to buy a ticket otherwise so mine is to give it to you. You could go on eBay and pay a fortune for one. But if you try to buy one outside the gates. They will arrest you.

There's no scalping right outside the gate at Agusta national.

It is the most special golf tournament and it's happening right now I'm preaching by I say all of this to say that, as you can see I am a connoisseur of the Masters and I like reading about every little detail of it and I like hearing the stories in the traditions and that the funny moments and I can remember specific golf shots I take delight in the Masters to delight means that you experience an inward serenity or happiness by the simple appreciation or admiration of something or someone that's Alan Wright will have more teaching in a moment. Today's important series so much worry about yesterday's failures cemetery getting ready for tonight is hard to focus on the matters most.

Wearing seasoned coaches, and mindfulness psychological program in Eastern religion. Mindfulness living in the present life each day to get messages with your digital way of saying thanks for your partnership. Major gift textures and levers of God's grace. Each moment to moment every day of your life gospel is shared when you get to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you get today. We will send you a special offer. We are happy to send this to you as I banks from Alan Wright Ministries, seven 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website pastor at work in today's teaching you once again is something that arises within the holder not so much because the object of delight does something for you.

But just because it is. I can't think of a more fitting word to culminate this series we call saver because to delight in the Lord is to savor his goodness and it is perhaps the most apt description of a life of mindfulness of God's blessings is to cultivate this capacity to delight in the Lord, and if you delight in the Lord.

I want to show you today how it changes everything. Delight. It is a Hebrew word that comes from a root that means delicate or pliable and came to be known to mean luxurious, so to delight is to experience something that is wonderful, luxurious and it causes you to have a and elation sense of joy within you.

It it it can at first seem like will may be. That is sort of a feminine type word and then there are some there are some things from which we derive joy that we wouldn't say Nestlé is a delight. It's not the word that you expect to hear from the defensive lineman after a really physical football game. Hey Bubba, that was a big game today and that you had five individual tackles and two sacks. What was it like out there today on this 95° day when it really physical battle. Well John, you know, it was a real delight now and then and then really delightful. Not really fit that setting, but don't think that is just feminine type concept because I've known men that love say to work on their own own old classic car and the purr of a good carburetor working well can be a delight known men who have a woodworking shop and can build big furniture and they delight in that my stepdad was superintendent construction superintendent build some huge skyscrapers in New York and he took me and showed me around and he took delight in big, big buildings, so delight is something that is within us all. When there's something that we behold we get to participate in or experience that causes us admiration and beauty. The thing about delight that I try to convey to you is that to delight in someone or something is not necessary to get something from it anymore than the Grand Canyon does something for you other than just the some things are just so beautiful and just you just your soul delights in them.

My mother's had a hard month. She's had the be hospitalized with some after an emergency surgery and she finally got home and then an infection may go back at another hospital stay. She's doing better. I think she comes home today but in between those hospital stays, something delightful happened. She hadn't been able to experience until she got out of the hospital because of hospital restrictions, but she got an opportunity to meet Bethany Harper Stewart. Her second great-grandchild. And what a delightful thing in the midst of hospital stays to be able to meet a great-grandchild for the first time and when you get in the presence of a cute baby.

There is something that just delight.

She hasn't and especially for us. If it's your own your own and so mom got to meet Bethany and then unfortunately CEC had to get back in the house will get an infection treated and but when I visit in the hospital when the main subjects is. Isn't Bethany cute and she just so special. She's such a big little girl just for being a month old and our eyes. Our eyes and we split a long conversation just about her eyes and I how she just fixed her eyes on her mother Courtney and and and how beautiful her hair is and how, in other words, delight is something that you can experience even when the object of your delight isn't doing anything for you because a baby doesn't actually do something for you baby can't even smile for a while and the baby doesn't contribute to the family budget.

The baby takes away from the family budget. The baby requires you to do things for the baby and yet you take delight in the baby I'm talking about the design of our souls. Our lives need delight in all the good gifts of God can be sources of delight. It is God's plan for our lives in ultimate delight is in the Lord himself delight is a very notion stands in contrast to the notion of self-denial in the Christian life. There are of course many times that we deny ourselves and there are many ways in which God has called us to let go of lesser things in order to follow him, but there is a grave misunderstanding about this amongst Christians and there is certainly terrible misunderstanding about this amongst those who have yet to know Christ. The context of the prophecy in Isaiah 58 is rooted in the first place. God correcting his people in their idea of the kind of fast, that would please him.

Isaiah 58 verse five says is such the fast that I choose a day for a person to humble himself is it to bow down his head like a reed. Some translations could put it to wilt like a reed, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him will you call this a fast and a day acceptable to the Lord God saying here is you really think that by going around and denying yourself food and then looking like a wilted read and putting sackcloth, and sprinkle ashes and saying woe is me and and subjecting yourself to self-condemnation. Do you really think that that's the kind of fast that I want an answer course is no same as it please me at all. There are some religions and ideologies that essentially teach that self-sacrifice is the mark of great spirituality, but such is not the notion of the Christian faith at all. Instead, God is not inviting us into greater sense of condemnation of self God instead invites us into a life of great delight.

There is an idea amounts some that to be a Christian means to deny oneself in the sense of making sacrifices for God evident to God that somehow inspired God to bless us. But, beloved, the Christian life is not a celebration of our sacrifice to God. The Christian life. The celebration of God's undermines for us running an important teaching today needs delight taking pleasure in obedience and you might be thinkable. What's with that would get more of the teaching to come as we come to the conclusion of saver and Alan is back here in the studio here in just a moment with a parting good news thought for the day. So much worried about yesterday's failures cemetery getting ready for tonight is hard to focus on the moment that matters most. Right now wearing seasoned coaches, and mindfulness psychological program. Eastern religion mindfulness living in the present is the way life each day to get messages with your digital way of saying your partnership making gift textures and levers of God's grace. Each moment moment every day of your life gospel is shared when you get right ministries.

This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you get today. We will send you a special offer. We are happy to send this to you as I banks from Alan Wright Ministries, seven 877-544-4860 877-544-4861 come to our website pastor at Gatwick on the other side's teaching today.

This can get your ear take pleasure in obedience that you know most of us have had a skewed view of obedience and how can this be enjoyable directly.

Well it it's is a completely wrong view of obedience to think that is drudgery. In fact, none of the commands of God never meant to be burdensome. Is that what God interested in is letting our delight and are our sense of duty coming together when you really delight in something you don't even think about the sacrifices that you're making towards it right and I use the example of the some mud delight in. For example, watching the Masters golf tournament take delight in that well you don't have to say nylon you need to mark out some time to be sure that your they are ready to watch it know it. Just what your delighted in you find that your oriented towards delight yourself in the Lord and will give the desires of your heart so the delight of God and the commands of God are not in on it and we got more to learn about 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@pastorout.org that's pastor out and.org. Today's good news message is a listener supported production Alan Wright Ministries