Daily Hope - Rick Warren

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey there, and welcome back to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Today,
Rick continues in his series called Connecting with God the
Lord's Prayer. In this series, Rick shows us what it
means to be truly spiritually connected to God and to
each other through the power of God's love and God's word.

(00:22):
I'm so excited to hear what Rick has to say
today in part one of a message called the Prayer
of Release.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Two of the greatest barriers in your life that keep
you from experiencing genuine peace of mind our guilt and resentment.
I call him the misery twins. Guilt and resentment do
more messing up in your life than anything else, and

(00:51):
one of them has to do with when you hurt
other people, then you feel guilty, and when other people
hurt you, then you feel resentful. Prayer deals with both
of these issues in a very powerful way. Now you
know we're in this series I'm calling Connecting with God.
As we go line by line through the Lord's Prayer,
and we first looked at our Father who art in heaven,

(01:13):
Hallowed be Thy name, and that's the prayer of connection.
What kind of father is God really like? And then
we talked about Thy Kingdom, Come, Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. That's the prayer
of surrender, and it is the antidote distress. If you're
stressed out, you need to go hear that message. And
then the next week give us this day our daily bread,
which is the prayer of dependence, which is really the

(01:36):
antidote to worry. And if you understand what God has
promised to do in your life, you don't have any
need to worry. Last week we looked at what I
call the prayer of cleansing, and forgive us our debts,
or forgive us our transgressions, or really it just means
forgive us our sins. And I gave you a spiritual
evaluation tool for you to go home and work on

(01:58):
this last week, and we talked about guilt last week.
This week we want to look at what I call
the prayer of release, which deals with the other of
the misery, twins, resentment, and the Bible says this, they're
on your outline and here on the screen. Forgive us
our sins, just as we have forgiven those who have

(02:19):
sinned against us. We say, Lord, we want you to
forgive us as much as we forgive everybody else. Uh, oh,
we need to look at that one, the prayer of release. Now,
the fact is in your life you're going to be
hurt by other people. You've been hurt many times in
the past, You're going to be hurt in the future,

(02:40):
sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. And if you don't learn how
to release that hurt, it's going to pile up in
your life. And like the garbage of guilt that we
talked about last week, your life starts stinking. And if
you allow resentment, grudges, anger to build up inside your

(03:00):
life and you don't know how to let it go,
you don't know how to get rid of it, it'll
poison your spirit inside you. Now, it's one thing to
forgive people who just hurt you one time and that's it.
But what about repeat offenders who keep doing it over
and over and over and over, and they just keep
hurting you and hurting you and hurting you. What are
you supposed to do with those kind of people? How

(03:23):
often am I supposed to forgive somebody who continually keeps
on hurting me? Good question. In fact, it was a
question that one of Jesus' followers, Peter the apostle, Peter
asked Jesus two thousand years ago. There on your outline
he said, it says Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord,

(03:44):
how many times shall I forgive my brother when he
sins against me? He says up to seven times. Now,
we don't really know if Peter actually meant his brother,
who by the way, was named Andrew. But the truth
is about ninety percent of all resentment starts in the

(04:05):
family of most anger. Most resentment happens to the people
closest to you because you're in daily contact with them.
You know, to dwell above with those we love, that
will be a glory. To dwell below with those we know,
that's another story. And it is the people around us
that we're closest to that often hurt us the most.

(04:28):
That's much easier to forgive a one time offense. But
what if my brother keeps on hurting me over and
over in the daily contact. I mean, we joke about that.
But the truth is many of you have been deeply hurt,
deeply hurt by a family member something they said, something

(04:50):
they did, physical abuse, verbal abuse, sexual abuse. It may
have been in your immediate family, it may have been
an uncle or a grandparent or somebody, and you've been
deeply hurt by a family member and you can still
remember it today. And Peter's talking about this. He said,
how often do I have to keep forgiving my brother?

(05:12):
He says seven times. Now Peter thinks he's being magnanimous here,
because the Jewish law required that you had to forgive
a person three times. And after three times, tough luck, buddy,
I don't have to forgive you anymore. And so Peter
knows that the Jewish law says you got to forgive
three times, and so he says, how about I'll double it,

(05:36):
and I'll throw in for one for good measure, and
I'll really impress Jesus. Hey lord, how about seven times?
And noticed Jesus' response the next verse. Jesus answered, not
seven times, but seventy seven times? Did he really mean
seventy seven times? What's he saying here? The point is,
if I'm counting, it's not really forgiveness. He's saying an

(05:59):
unlie limited number of times. How about seven hundred and
seventy seven times? He's saying, you have to keep on,
you have to keep on releasing the hurt and you
have to keep on forgiving the offender. And to night
we're going to talk about what that means and what
that doesn't mean. But Jesus wanted to clarify this, and

(06:21):
he said, you just got to keep on forgiving the
people in your life. And so he told the story
in Matthew chapter eighteen, which is called the Story of
the Unforgiving Servant, and it starts like this up here
on the screen. He says, once there was a king
who decided to collect on all the debts that his

(06:42):
servants owed him. So he began to call them in
one at a time, and he asked to be repaid,
and he discovered that one of his servants owed him
ten thousand talents of money. Now, of course, in those
days they didn't use dollar and cents or yen or
Deutsche marks. They were called talents talents of gold. And

(07:07):
he says, this one guy owed him ten thousand talents.
In today's amount, that would be about twelve million dollars.
It's not some little debt here, Okay, he's twelve million
dollars in debt. We don't know how he mismanaged it,
but it's hopeless. Now. In those days bankruptcy was really

(07:29):
quite simple, and it tells us in the next verse.
Since his servant did not have enough to pay his
great debt, the king ordered him to be sold as
a slave, along with his wife and his children and
all that he had, in order to repay his debt.
In those days, if you went bankrupt, real simple, you

(07:51):
just got sold into slavery, you your wife, your kids,
and all your possessions, and you lived in the debtor's
house or lived as a servant or a the rest
of your life. Now, the truth is this guy's twelve
million dollars in debt to his king. It would be
impossible for a servant to ever pay off that much money.
I mean, think about this, twelve million dollars even paying

(08:15):
If the servant could pay one hundred dollars a day back,
which he would not be able to do, it would
take him over three hundred years to pay off twelve
million dollars. So this is an impossible debt. He needs
a bailout. Okay, he needs a serious bailout. And it

(08:41):
says here the servant fell to his knees and he
begged Congress, no, I mean begged, and he begged the
king please, sir, be patient with me, and I will
pay you back everything I owe. This is true, really pathetic.

(09:01):
The guy's twelve million dollars in debt, one hundred dollars
a day for three hundred years, and he says, give
me a few more days. It makes me think of
all those movies you've seen were the Mob. Somebody's in
debt to the Mob and they come and they're choking
him in there, and they're about to kill him. He says,
give me twenty four hours to come up with fifty
million bucks. You know, you've seen that in a million

(09:24):
different movies. That's what this guy is saying to the King, says,
just give me a little bit more time, a little
bit more time. It's not gonna help this guy out.
He's hopelessly in debt. But the King notices his his plea,
and he feels sorry for the servant and he actually
releases him from his debt. He says, I'm gonna forgive you.

(09:45):
I'm going to write it off, I'm gonna wipe the
slate clean, I'm going to let you off the hook.
I'm just gonna forgive you, and we're gonna just say
account settled. You don't owe me anything. The next verse says,
in verse twenty seven, the king's heart was moved with compassion,
and he released him. That's what we're talking about tonight,

(10:05):
the prayer of release. He released him and forgave him,
canceling his entire debt. Now, why would anybody do that? Really?
Why would anybody just let anybody else off the hook?
More important, why must you do that? Why must you

(10:28):
let people off the hook who've hurt you deeply and
badly when everything in you wants to hold onto that hurt. Now,
God's word gives us three reasons why we have to
let go of a hurt, Why we have to forgive,
Why we have to not hold onto our resentment, not
to rehearse it over and over, but we've got to

(10:48):
release it instead of rehearsing it. There are three reasons.
Number one, the first reason is because God forgives me.
He has forgiven me many many times, and so I
am to forgive other people God has forgiven me. Now,
in this story that Jesus tells, the king who represents

(11:08):
God obviously forgives the servant Matthew eighteen twenty seven, It
says the servant's master took pity on him, canceled his
debt and let him go. And just as the king
canceled the debt of this servant and the story, God
sent Jesus Christ to pay for your debt. Everything you've

(11:31):
ever done wrong in your life has already been paid for,
so you don't have to pay for it. Jesus took
your wrap, he paid your jail time, he paid your ticket,
he took your offense, and he said, I will pay
the wages of sin is death. And Jesus Christ died
for all of your sins. Look at these verses up

(11:52):
here on the screen. The Bible says, most of us
have sinned yet. Now, oh, I didn't misread that dead
night It says, what okay, turn to the person next
you and say you're included. Okay, all right, so all
of us, all of us, have sinned. Yet now God

(12:14):
declares us here's the good news. The bad news. We've
all sinned, we've all blown it. Nobody bats a thousand.
All of us have sinned. Yet here's the good news.
Now God declares us not guilty, not guilty of offending him.
If we trust in Jesus Christ, who freely takes away

(12:35):
all of our sins, God has forgiven me. Look at
this next verse. You, the Bible says, are a God
of forgiveness, always ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, and
full of love. This is the meaning of grace. And
we talked about this last week when we talked about
getting rid of guilt, that when I admit my sin

(12:57):
to God, I admit my imperfections and all the things
I've done wrong, my rebellion and everything. God says, I'm
going to forgive you instantly, and I'm going to forgive
you freely, and I'm going to forgive you completely, and
I'm going to forgive you repeatedly. Now, the fact is,
you owe an enormous debt to God and you could
never repay it back. And God has chosen to wipe

(13:20):
out your debt. God has chosen to release you from
the things that you owe to Him because of your life. Now,
let me ask you this. If you were this servant
in the story, how would you feel if you were
told by somebody you O twelve million dollars. Let's just
call it even. Yeah, that's exactly WHOA exactly right? All right,

(13:45):
you get the A, All right, It just means WHOA.
I would feel relief, I would feel joy, I would
feel gratitude, I would feel energy, I would feel a freedom,
I would feel like partying. I would I feel like
being nice to everybody else because somebody had just forgiven
twelve million dollars of my debt. But that's not what

(14:08):
the servant did in this story. He reacts very differently.
In fact, what he does is, once he's forgiven, he
walks out of the king's presence and he finds a
guy who owes him just a little bit of money,
not a lot, just a little bit, and he begins
to threaten this guy and says, you better pay me

(14:30):
back or I'm going to have you thrown in jail.
Here's what it says here on the screen. But the
servant went out and found a man who owed him
a hundred donari, and he grabbed him by the throat
and harshly demanded, you must pay me back right now.
And the man pleaded, just as the servant had with
the king, I promise to pay you back, just give

(14:53):
me some time. This is exactly what he had said
to the king. But the unforgiving servant refused, and he
had the man thrown in jail. Now, it's interesting this guy,
although he had been forgiven of a twelve million dollar debt,
he shows no mercy to a guy who owes him

(15:14):
a little bit. By the way, do you know what
a hundred denarias seventeen bucks? It's not a whole lot,
it's seventeen bucks. And he goes to this guy and
he starts grabbing him and choking in for it. By
the way, Roman law in the Roman Empire allowed you
to choke a debtor. You could kind of squeeze it

(15:34):
out of them. They were allowed to do that and
pay up. Now, you're gonna pay me right now? Now?
Why was this guy so harsh? Now, listen, here's the
point of the story. Because the guy did not really
believe that the king had let him off the hook.
He didn't really feel forgiven. He didn't believe he wouldn't

(15:56):
have to pay back the twelve million, And so he
goes out and foolishly starts trying to get money from
everybody else, going, I got to pay that king back
somehow because he's gonna kill me or whatever. And so
he goes out. He did not believe he was forgiven.
I want you to write this down. Here's the point.

(16:17):
When I feel unforgiven, I am unforgiving. That's what this
story is teaching. When I feel unforgiven, I am unforgiving.
When I feel ungraced, I am ungracious. When I don't
feel released of my mistakes and sins, I certainly don't

(16:40):
want to release you of your mistakes. And if I
don't feel good about me, I sure don't want you
feeling good about you. And the reason why we have
such a hard time forgiving other people we don't feel forgiven,
because if you really felt the weight off your back
and forgiven of everything in your life, you'd be you'd

(17:01):
cut people a whole lot more slack if you really
felt forgiven. You see, here's a little insight. When you
find anybody who's harsh and judgmental and critical and self
righteous and holds a standard of perfection that even they
themselves can't hold up to, and they're they're, you know,

(17:25):
just demanding in every sense of the word. You know,
one thing, they're guilty. They feel guilty. People who are
caring secret guilt take it out on everybody else, and
they're always damanding and damning and putting down and judgmental
and critical because they don't feel forgiven. The most forgiving

(17:48):
people in the world are those who feel the most
forgiven to whom much has been forgiven. They are more
forgiving to everybody else, to whom grace has been shown
a lot. They are gracious to everybody else. So let
me ask you a question. Are you unconsciously trying to

(18:08):
repay God? I mean, maybe you are a believer in
Jesus Christ, but inside and you've accepted christ salvation, but
inside you're kind of going, I'll make it up to
the Lord, I'll get back. You don't really feel released,
and you're trying to repay God, and you're trying to

(18:29):
be good in order to repay God. It ain't going
to happen. You're too much in debt and it's already
been forgiven. So what do I need to do Instead
of trying to get even trying to get right, I
need to relax. The Bible says this, be kind and
compassionate to one another. I mean it's to everybody else.

(18:51):
Why forgiving each other? Just as in Christ, God forgave you.
When you really feel forgiven, you're gonna be forgiving. And
by the way, you'll never have to forgive anybody else
more than God's already forgiven you. So there are three
reasons I have to let go of the hurt in

(19:12):
my heart, and I have to forgive people when they
hurt me. Number One, God has forgiven me the twelve
million dollar debt. Number two, this is a big one.
Resentment is self torture. Resentment is self torture. It is
a self inflicted wound. Whenever you're resentful, whenever you're holding

(19:33):
a grudge, whenever you get bitter, it always hurts you
more than the person you're bitter against. In fact, they're
not even thinking about it. They hurt you in the past,
they've forgotten about They've gone on with their life, and
you're still worrying about something that happened a year ago,
ten years ago, or maybe when you were a child.
They're not even thinking about it. Your past is passed
and it can't hurt you anymore unless you hold on

(19:55):
to it. And if you allow people to hurt you
in your past from your past to continue to hurt
you in your presence, that's stupid. The people who hurt
you in your past, they can't hurt you anymore. The
only way they can hurt you is if you hold
onto the hurt. And holding onto the hurt is called resentment,
and it always hurts you. It's self torture. Job says

(20:19):
this in Job chapter five, verse two, to worry yourself
to death with resentment others. I wish they hadn't done that,
and I'm so mad at them. It would be a foolish,
senseless thing to do. It doesn't work. Resentment is self torture.
You're only hurting yourself. You know in this story that

(20:40):
Jesus told, when the King hears about this servant who
he's forgiven twelve million bucks and it's reported to him
that he's out choking people over seventeen bucks, he is furious.
The King is ticked. He is livid, and he has
this servant come back in before him, and here's what

(21:04):
he says, You, contemptible and wicked servant, I forgave and
released you. This is the prayer of release, and I
canceled your great debt. Shouldn't you have shown mercy and
released your debtor, just as I did with you? And
in wrath, the King sent him to the jailers to

(21:28):
be tortured in the torture chamber. Now, this is really interesting.
The word jailer's there in Greek is where is the
word basanis tasse? Basanis tasse in Greek, and it literally
means tortures. And he says, Okay, if that's the way

(21:49):
you're go, you're gonna be You're gonna be grabbing everybody
else and choking him by the throat after I've forgiven
you all that twelve million bucks. Okay, let him. Let
the guy be tortured. What's the point of the story.
Resentment is torture. It hurts you on the inside when
you get resentful, when you carry bitterness in your heart.
It is an emotional abu grabe. It is a prison

(22:13):
that's going to torment you. And it's a self imposed prison.
Nobody else is making you miserable. You're making yourself miserable
because you won't let that hurt go. You keep holding
on to it and nursing it and grudging it and
say I'll never forgive, and on and on, and it
torments your mind and it tortures your body, and it
eats away at you like a cancer. Resentment is far

(22:35):
worse than cancer. It'll eat you alive. Cancer can be cured,
but resentment can until you let it go and destroys
your peace and happiness. In fact, this it can actually
even make you sick. I read the other day here,
I read this medical study published in Heart Circulation magazine

(22:57):
reported that people who carry resentment. This if you're mad
at somebody and you won't let them off the hook,
you're in trouble physically. People who carry resentment are twice
as likely to have a stroke, twice as likely to
have a stroke, three times more likely to have a
heart attack, or three times more likely to have bypass surgery,

(23:21):
and four times more likely to have unhealthy levels of cholesterol.
What's he saying there in that study, he said, it's
not what you eat, it's what eats you. That's what's
making you sick. You say that burns me up, well
it is, it's burning you up on the inside. In

(23:41):
another study, Stanford researchers linked carrying a grudge to higher
levels of diabetes and carrying a grudge to higher levels
of cancer. And here was the direct quote. There is
an enormous physical cost to holding onto anger. You weren't
made by God to carry rems that are round in
your heart. That's why the Bible says this up here

(24:03):
on the screen. Some men stay happy until the day
they die, and others have no happiness at all. They
live and die with bitter hearts. So let me ask
you what hurtful memory are you holding on to? What
memory tortures you every time you think about it, that

(24:26):
person who hurts you and you're still mad at them.
And what is it that every time you think about it,
it torments you. It tortures you. Friends, It's not worth it.
It's not worth it. You got to let it go.
You got to learn how to pray, the prayer of release.
Forgive us our debts. As we forgive, everybody's indebted to us,

(24:49):
everybody who's hurt us, everybody who's been mean to us.
I have to learn to forgive because God has forgiven me,
and because resentment is self told.

Speaker 1 (25:06):
You know, sometimes the most important role you can play
in the life of a child is teaching them to
trust God through prayer. Yeah, we believe it's the key
to living with hope. Jesus said this. We should always
pray and never give up. That's why it's so important
to strengthen the hope of children by introducing them to

(25:27):
Jesus's model for prayer at a very early age. So
now we're so excited to tell you about a very
special resource to help you do just that. It's called
The Lord's Prayer Words of Hope and Happiness. This book
brings the poetic scripture from the King James version alive
for readers young and old, and you'll find thoughtful insights

(25:50):
from New York Times bestselling author Pastor Rick Warren and
stunning illustrations by award winning artist Richard Jesse Watson. This
will become a meaningful bedtime ritual, a treasured memory, and
a lasting legacy that bears good fruit for generations to come.
Be sure to request your copy of the book The

(26:12):
Lord's Prayer Words of Hope and Happiness today. When you
give a gift to help take the life transforming word
of God to the world through daily hope, this is
our way of saying thanks so much for your support
of this ministry. Just go to Pastororick dot com to
get your copy of this great resource. That's pastorick dot com.

(26:35):
Or you can just text the word hope to seven
oh three to oh nine. That's the word hope to
seven oh three oh nine, and thank you so much
for your support. Your gift to Daily Hope really helps
us share the hope of Christ with people all over
the world. Be sure to join us next time as
we look into God's.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
Word for our daily hope.

Speaker 1 (26:56):
This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and
you'll are generous financial support.