Daily Hope - Rick Warren

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey, friends, thanks so much for joining us today on
Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible Teaching Ministry of Pastor
Rick Warren. We're so glad to have you with us.
And today Rick continues in his series called Transform. Together,
We'll dive into God's word and discover powerful principles that
can truly change our lives from the inside out spiritually, physically, mentally, emotionally, relationally, financially,

(00:31):
and vocationally. You'll experience how God's truth brings real transformation
to every part of your life. And now here's Rick
with the final part of a message called How God
Changes Us.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
No. Number four. The fourth thing you've got to do,
and this is how God changes. This is transformation requires
cleaning house. Cleaning house in your mind and your body,
your spirit. Look at this verse Ephesians four twenty two.
So get rid of your old self, which made you

(01:10):
live as you used to, that old self that was
being destroyed by its deceitful desires. Now circle the phrase
get rid of I want to study and how many
times God says to get rid of something. That's all
through the Bible. Things we're supposed to get rid of now,
depending on what you want to change to get healthy

(01:30):
in that area, you're going to have to get rid
of some things. For instance, if you want a healthy body,
you're going to go home, have to go home and
get rid of a bunch of junk food in your house.
And you already know where it is, even the special stashes.
If you want to get If you want to get healthy,

(01:52):
you want to be transformed. You want to have more energy,
more strength, be more alert, be more aware, be more alive.
Iron Aus said, the glory of God as a human
being fully alive. I want you fully alive at the
end of the year. I don't want you sluggish. Yeah.
And if you're gonna do that, he says, then you're

(02:13):
gonna have to clean some house and you have maybe
have to go throw a bunch of junk food out
of your kitchen. Now, how about other areas. If you
want to have a healthy mind, you may have to
unsubscribe to a few magazines. Really is all that gossip
stuff educating you? Cleaning house may mean you need to

(02:35):
block a few channels on your television. Okay, you may
have to block it. You may have to go into
the parental guide. And even though any kids aren't living
at home. You set a parental guide for yourself. I'm
just not gonna watch that junk. I'm not gonna fill
my mind with poison. That's cleaning house mentally. You may

(02:58):
have to clean house in your schedule. Most of you
are trying to do too much. My goal as your
pastor is to get you to do less this next year.
That sound better, but to do the right things. To
do less and to not spend stuff. Don't spend a

(03:19):
priority energy on B priorities and C priorities. You go
home and make a list of all the things on
your schedule A priority, B priority, C priority. Then just
do the a's forget the businesses. Urgent and important are
not the same thing. And so you may need to
have to do a little house cleaning in your schedule

(03:41):
so that you can be transformed in your heart. You
might have to do some spring cleaning in your heart.
You know, I have a habit. I've done it every
year for I don't know how long. I have a
little piece of paper and I've given it to you
many times, called heart cleansing for personal renewal. If you'd
like it. It's just a list that I read down

(04:03):
that says, is this in my life? Is this in
my life? Is this in my life? Do I need
to confess this? Do I need to confess this? Do
I need to confess this? I had a little brochure
years ago that used to carry with me. Then I
lost it, and so I just created my own and
I go through that at the end of every year,
going I am not carrying garbage from this year into

(04:24):
next year. I'm not going to carry anger or worry
or fears or lust or jealousy or whatever depression. I'm
not going to carry a lot of garbage, emotional garbage
into the new year. I'm gonna let it go. I'm
gonna get get rid of it, and I'm going to
confess it to God. Augustine said, the confession of good

(04:44):
work of bad works is the beginning of good works.
So get rid of your old self. Look at this
next verse Hebrews twelve, Verse one says this we must
get rid there it is again that's house cleaning. We
must get rid of everything that slows us down, especially
any sin that distracts us, so we can run the

(05:05):
race that lies ahead of us. God has a new,
exciting race for you. This next year. But you got
to get rid of the stuff that's holding you back,
that's slowing you down. Now, why is that so hard?
Why is it so hard to get rid of bad habits?
Have you noticed it's easy to pick up bad habits.

(05:26):
It's very hard to get rid of them. Have you
noticed this? Yeah, Well, if you haven't noticed, I don't
know what world you're on, what planet you're on. Okay,
but it's not really easy to get rid of bad habits.
And so I want to explain to you before we
actually get into transformation why it's hard to do that.
There are four reasons. Write these down. The first reason

(05:47):
why it's hard to get rid of a bad habit
is because I've had them a long time. You didn't
collect your habits and your hurts and your hanging ups overnight.
It took years to get as messed up as you are.
Many of the patterns you established in childhood, and by
the way, they may have helped you when you were
a child, They may have helped you cope emotionally. They

(06:09):
were survival skills and you were in a very not
safe environment, and you learn certain habits and patterns of
reacting to people when as a young child, you were
kind of vulnerable, and a lot of habits. They may
be self defeating, but they're familiar and you know them
and you're used to them. And that leads me the

(06:31):
second reason they're hard because I identify with them. I identify
with my bad habits. And I talked about this, and
we often confuse our identity with our defects. We say,
you know, I'm a workaholic, or I'm always passive, or
I let other people have the or I'm aggressive or
or I'm timid, or i'm an overeater, or I'm this

(06:52):
or that, And we identify with our habits. And then
what happens is when you see yourself in a certain way,
you set up a self fulfilling prophecy that you act
like you expect yourself to act. Sometimes, when you have
bad habits, you say, unconsciously, if you have a fear
of change, If I change, who will I be? Because

(07:14):
this is me. I've always been this way. I've always
been pushy, I've always been a perfectionist, I've always been argumentative.
I've always been And then say, well, if I change,
who will I be? And so you're worried about your
identity there's third reason, and that is because they have

(07:34):
a payoff. They have a payoff. One of the great
principles of life that I've learned is always chue. Is this,
Whatever gets rewarded gets repeated, and whatever is being repeated
is being rewarded somehow. We don't do things that aren't rewarded.
So anytime you see a negative behavior in yourself, or

(07:58):
in your husband or your wife, your children, anybody else, self, kids,
or meat, you could know that there's some kind of payoff.
Maybe it's just temporary. I mean, if mom tells the
kids to come to dinner and nobody comes, and she
asks them politely, and nobody comes, and finally she yells,

(08:19):
and she yells, you guys, get in here to dinner.
It's getting cold, and everybody comes. What are we doing?
We are programming mom to yell. We are rewarding what
we don't want. Only we're only responding to the negative
rather than the positive. And we do this to each
other all the time. People do it in marriage all
the time. You set your husband up, you set your

(08:42):
wife up, and you reward negative behavior, and there is
always some kind of pay Now, maybe it's masking your
pain or maybe it's giving you some excuse to fail.
Maybe you're getting attention. I don't know, But there's a
payoff anything negative in your life. Life, there's a payoff
for There's a fourth reason why it's hard to get

(09:05):
rid of bad habits. We're gonna deal with this. And
because Satan fights it. He doesn't want you. He doesn't
want you to be set free, he doesn't want you
to be transformed. And so the moment uh you you
get serious about saying, God, I really want you to
make some changes in me. I'm not gonna stay the

(09:26):
same this next year. I'm gonna be a better man.
I'm gonna be a better woman. I'm gonna become a
man of God. I'm gonna become a woman of God.
I'm gonna become who God wants you to be. Then
he's gonna start giving you this negative thoughts, like who
do you think you are? You can't change, You've tried
to change in the past. It won't work, Yeah, because
of willpower, it won't. It's hopeless and you're you're never

(09:50):
gonnamount to anything, and it's not gonna work, and you
may as well give up. Sometimes people fear, you know,
if I rock the boat. Well, then maybe something battle happened,
maybe a somebody will walk out of my life if
I am transformed. Really, where do you think those fears
are coming from the Bible called Satan the accuser of believers.

(10:12):
So you need to understand that transformation requires cleaning house
and it's going to be easy. Number five, Transformation requires
honest community. That's the next thing Ephesians chapter four teaches us,
and Ephesians Chapter four tells us that there's some things

(10:33):
you're never going to be able to change on your own.
You need people in your life. You need support, You
need a small group, and that's why we insist in
everybody getting in a small group. If you don't get
in a small group, nothing's going to change in your life. Sorry,
I just be honest with you. Nothing's going to change
because in a small group you get to support you
need to change. And in Ephesians four, verse twenty five,

(10:55):
it tells us this, I love this in the message paraphrase,
no more pretense. Tell your neighbor of the truth. In
Christ's body, We're all connected to each other. So if
you lie to each other, you end up lying yourself.
What's he saying here, he's saying, you know what, Everybody
for change needs a community where they're accepted unconditionally, and

(11:18):
that's what Saddleback is meant to be. I've said many times,
this is a church for people who don't have it together.
If you're perfect, please go find another church, because we
don't want you here. Really, we only want people. There
are two kinds of people everybody. And those who've known
they've blown it know they don't they're not perfect. And
those who pretend like they're perfect. They pretend like they've

(11:39):
got it all together. We know you don't have it
all together, So why are you trying to pretend? He say,
no more pretense. Just tell your neighbor of the truth.
You know I'm struggling. If there is more confession of temptation,
there'd be fewer confessions of sin. We may waste an
enormous amount of time pretending. So listen very closely. If
you're serious, I mean serious about being a better person

(12:04):
this next year, about being transformed, not conformed, about making
progress and growing, You're going to have to be in
a group where you get close enough to people that
you know that they're gonna love you unconditionally and you're
gonna love them unconditionally, and you can say anything, and
it's okay. They're not going to walk out on you.

(12:26):
Real friends walk in when everybody else walks out. And
the one place where we can be real is in
these small groups. Look at the next verse, verse thirty two.
He's talking about these groups be kind and loving to
each other, forgiving each other justice, for God gave you
in Christ says, say, God's been gracious to me. God

(12:48):
cut me a bunch of slacks, so I'm gonna cut
you a bunch of slack. And when you make a mistake,
as I say, we we're loving, we're forgiving. This is
the way we do in small groups. And here's another
instruction for our small groups verse twenty nine. Never use
harmful words, but speak only what's helpful for building others up.

(13:10):
Circle the word others. He says, when you're in a
small group, you should not speak about things that build
you up. So speak about stuff that builds others up
according to their needs, not according to your need. That
it may benefit those who listen, not benefit you. He's
in no room for ego here. Don't use harmful words.
This is the kind of thing now Most of you

(13:32):
are already in small groups, but some of you this
is going to be your first group experience. So let
me just review real quickly what we call our small
group ground rules. Number one, what's said in the group
stays in the group. Number two, don't minimize others' pain. Okay,
just listen. Okay, don't try to fix people, just listen.

(13:54):
And number four, focus on my changes, not somebody else's.
I need on community. This is how we change a
year from to day. What's gonna make you different will
be the books you've read and the people you've associated with.
And if you associate with people who are on the grow,
guess what you're gonna be on the grow. You get

(14:16):
in a small group, then you're gonna be growing too. Finally,
number six, the sixth thing you need to change is
transformation requires faith. Transformation requires faith. You must believe you
can be different with God said, you must believe that
this next year can be different than all the other

(14:38):
years in the past. The person who says I can
and the person says I can't, they're both right. God says,
you've got to believe. The Bible says what serves not
a faith that's sin. Now, here's what the Bible tells
us in Ephesians. Now by his that's God's mighty power
at work within us. God is able circle the word.

(15:01):
Now by his mighty power at work within us, God
is able. Notice none of those three sentences, three phrases
have anything to do with willpower. Now you forcing yourself
to change His mighty power at work within us. God
is able. This is God working in your life. That's
what transformation happens. God is able to do far more

(15:25):
than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of,
even dream of. And He says, infinitely beyond our highest
prayers and desires and thoughts are hopes. So let's just
stop here for this man. I'm a pretty big dreamer.

(15:46):
You figure that out by now, God says Rick. You
think of the biggest thing I could do in your
life when I can top that. I've had some enormous
dreams in my lifetime, and God has bypassed every one
of them. Why, Because I am a man of faith.
I have a lot of weaknesses in my life. Just

(16:07):
ask me, or ask anybody who knows me. I got
a lot of weaknesses, But I am a man of faith,
and I have the ability to trust God for things
that other people simply aren't willing to trust Him for.
And so we set big goals, and we dream great dreams,
and we watch God do bigger than we ever thought.
God says, Rick, you can think of the biggest thing
I can you could ever think of? I could do

(16:28):
in your life, and I could top that. Now, how
about you think of the greatest thing you'd like to
see done in your life this next year? God says,
I can top that. Will you trust me? Read it again? Now?

(16:48):
By his mighty power at work within us, God is
able to do far more, not just more, far more
than we would ever even dare to ask or even
dream of, infinitely beyond our highest prayers and desires and
thoughts are hopes. That is faith. Remember we did the

(17:11):
series in Philippians All in the Fall. Philippians four thirteen says,
let's read this verse aloud together. Okay, let's read it aloud.
I can do all things through Christ who empowers me.
I'm ready for anything through Him who infuses inner strength

(17:33):
into me. I love that. In amplified translation. Now circle
the words can do. You got to have a can
do attitude, not a cannot attitude, but a can do
attitude according to your faith. Jesus said, it will be
done unto you. You get to choose how much God

(17:54):
blesses your life. You get to choose. Now, what do
you got to do? You got to make a simple step.
Clean out the junk food in your mind. Clean out
the junk food in your closet, Clean out the junk
food on your coffee table, clean out the junk food
in your kitchen and every other area. Because we're getting

(18:15):
ready for a transformation. Are you with me on this?
All right, let's vow for prayer. Father. I'm so excited
about what You're about to do in my life and
in the life of all these people that I love. Father,

(18:37):
as we look at these steps in the Book of Ephesians,
chapter four, help us to do every one of them.
To find a friend, to find a partner, to find
a coach, a mentor somebody who's going to be a
partner with us in the next fifty days. Help us
commit to learning the truth into new thinking. Lord, help

(19:01):
us to go home and clean house wherever that means
and whatever that means in our lives. Help us to
get rid of the things that slow us down, especially
the things that distract us, so we can run the
race that lies ahead of us. Father, I pray that
if there's anybody here who's not in a small group yet,
that today they'll make that decision. I'm going to get

(19:22):
in a group and I'll start a group, and may
they just find a friend and we launch a new
group for these fifty days. Help us to be kind
to each other, Help us to be loving with each other,
Help us to be forgiving of each other, Help us
to be supporting of each other, to say things that
build each other up, that encourage each other, that benefit

(19:44):
those who listen. And Lord, as we start this journey together,
I ask you to build our faith. Thank you that
when your work, when you're at work within us, that
you're mighty power within us. You're able to do far
more then we could ever dare to ask or dream of.
And I know, Lord that all of us have had dreams,

(20:06):
and some of them have been truncated, and some of
them have been delayed, and some of them been pushed back.
May this be the year that the dream comes true.
May this be the year that the transformation happens. May
this be the year that we say, I can do
all things through Christ, who empowers me. You have said,
according to your faith, that will be done nto you,

(20:27):
so build our faith. And I thank you in advance
for what you're going to do. Lord. It would be
a waste of time for us to go into these
fifty days not expecting you to revolutionize these seven key
areas of our lives. And so I thank you in
advance for the incredible stories that will come out of
this journey together. And I pray this blessing in the

(20:49):
name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
And everybody said amen. Wow.

Speaker 1 (21:01):
Some powerful words from Pastor Rick today. And now this
is really one of my favorite parts of the broadcast.
This is letters from our listeners, and now here's Rick.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Today. I want to share with you a very special
testimony from one of our listeners named Marquita, and thanks
to Daily Hope and your support, she recently asked Jesus
Christ to be the leader of her life. Here's her story. So,
Pastor Rick, I wanted to let you know that I
have prayed the prayer of salvation that you included in

(21:31):
the Deepening the Eyes of Faith message. I've been listening
to your messages for years. In fact, my child wouldn't
even be here today if it weren't for your words.
You wrote, there may be accidental parents, but there are
no accidental children. Well, I've given birth to a beautiful
baby girl, and she's the light of my life. In fact,

(21:53):
it now hurts to remember a time that I was
fighting to decide whether I was going to have her
or not. But I repeated your words throughout my pregnancy.
There are accidental parents, but they're no accidental children. And
although I'm a single mom today, with the support of
my family, we're thriving. I want to make sure that
she grows up to find her purpose and to serve God.

(22:16):
So thanks for renewing my faith in God. And as
I still try to find and fulfill my purpose, please
pray for me and my child. Wow, Marquita, you are
so right. God does have a plan and a purpose
for every single baby. There are no accidental babies. So

(22:38):
I want to take a moment right now and just
pray for you in this broadcast, a pray for you
and for your daughter. Lord, I'm asking you right now
to put your hand of protection, your hand of blessing,
your hand of guidance on Marquita and her daughter, and
I'm praying for both of them to know your purpose,

(23:00):
to feel your presence, to discover your power, to live
in your plan for each of their lives. In Jesus' name. Amen,
Thanks so much, Rick.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
You know Rick would love to hear from you and
know how this broadcast has blessed you and touched you,
so please send him an email at Rick at pastorick
dot com. That's Rick at pastorick dot com. Be sure
to join us next time as we look into God's
word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by
Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support