Daily Hope - Rick Warren

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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. All right, So now
we're going to get right to Rick for part one
of a message called how to Get Closer to God.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Now. Our verse, which is our theme for this next
seven weeks, is Romans twelve verse two. We mentioned it
last week in the introduction. Let's read it together. Romans
twelve two do not con to the pattern of this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. And

(01:07):
where is that found? Romans twelve two do not conform
to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by
the renewing of your mind. You've heard me say this
many times. The way you think determines the way you feel,
and the way you feel determines the way you act.

(01:28):
If you want to change something in your life that
you don't like, you don't start with your actions, and
you don't even start with your feelings. You start with
your thoughts. If you're acting depressed, it's because you feel depressed,
And if you're feeling depressed, it's because you're thinking depressed thoughts.
The key to transformation starts not in your actions, not

(01:48):
in your behavior, not in your body. It doesn't start
with your will. It starts with your thoughts. And if
you can change the way you think, that'll change the
way you feel, And if you change the way you feel,
that will change the way you act. Now, we're going
to take that principle Romans twelve two principle and apply
it to all seven key areas of your life relational, physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, financial, vocational.

(02:15):
We're going to look at all seven major areas of
your life about how do I change the way I
think about this so that I feel about it differently,
And then if I feel differently, then it's going to
change the way I act and the way I respond
to other people. And that's called transformation. Transformation changes us
from emptiness to fullness. Transformation changes us from defeat and

(02:39):
failure to faith and victory. Transformation changes us from insecurity
and inferiority to courage and to boldness. It helps us
become all that God wants us to be. Now, what
I want to say in this first session, as we
begin looking at your spiritual health, and we're going to

(03:01):
start with that, is that the further away you get
from God, the more trouble you're going to have in
your life. The more trials, the more difficulties, the more stress,
the more things are going to go wrong because you're
not cooperating with your creator. You're not following God's plan

(03:22):
for your life. And the Bible says the way of
the unrighteous is rough, it's full of thorns, it's difficult,
it's a rocky, rocky road. The further I get away
from God, the more trouble I'm going to have in
my life. On the other hand, the closer I get
to God, the more my life is going to be transformed.

(03:45):
And we can see this all through the scripture that
Paul when he finally met Jesus Christ face to face,
he was radically transformed from a literally a terrorist. He
was a religious terrorist into the apostle of love who
wrote the most beautiful poem on love ever written or
penned by men. Isaiah was transformed from a depressed person

(04:09):
into a courageous person when he met God. When he
got close to God, Moses got so close to God.
The Bible says he was even transformed in his appearance,
and people had to even look away from him. He
almost like glowed, and he got so close to God.

(04:29):
God is light, and in him is there are no
darkness at all. He was literally physically transformed. Now we
all want to be close to God. I mean, you
wouldn't be here this weekend if you didn't want to
be close to God in some way. But the Bible says,
all we, like sheep, have gone astray. We've each turned
into our own way. In other words, like sheep, we

(04:50):
tend to wander. You don't have to teach sheep to
drift off. They just do it naturally by their very nature.
They just kind of wander off. In the show, e
has to bring them back in and they'll walk off
a cliff, and you know, sheep aren't really that bright
an animal. They'll walk into a den of wolves and

(05:11):
in all kinds of difficult and dangerous situations. Sheep tend
to wander in. The Bible says all we, you and me,
like sheep, tend to go astray. We don't tend to
stay close to God. We tend to wander off. And
so this weekend, as we start transformation, and if I said,
the closer you get to God, the more you're going

(05:32):
to be transformed, we need to talk about how do
you get close to God? How do you stay close
to God? And if you've fallen away from God, how
do you get back in that close relationship to God.
Some of you you can point to a time in
your life and you go, Man, I remember when I
was really I felt God's presence. I was close to God.

(05:54):
I could sense his friendship, I could sense the fellowship,
and there was a joy in my life. But I've
lost that. You know. It's it's like you let the
air out of a balloon. How do I get back
to God if I've kind of wandered away, if kind
of lost the spark, Because if I'm not close to God,

(06:14):
I don't have the power to make all the other transformations. Fortunately,
we have a story in the Bible on how to
get back to God and how to get close to
the Father. It's one of the most famous stories in
the entire Bible. Jesus told that it's the story of
the prodigal Son, or sometimes it's called the story of
the Loving Father, because it's really more about the father

(06:37):
than is about the son. And that story is in Luke,
chapter fifteen. Let me read you the story, and then
we'll pull some principles out of it on how to
transform your life spiritually Luke fifteen, Verses eleven to twenty four.
Jesus told this story. A man had two sons, and

(07:01):
the younger son told his father, give me my share
of your estate now, instead of waiting till you die.
So the father divided his wealth between his two sons.
A few days later, the younger son packed all his
belongings and left to live in a distant land. See
he's already getting away from the father. He's getting distant
from the father, and he got as basically as far

(07:23):
away from the father as he could. He goes to
a distant land, and there he squandered the gift he'd
been given. And we've all done that, and he wasted
his life and money on wild parties and reckless living.
Now about the time all his money ran out, a
severear of famine hit the land, and he began to
starve because he was left with nothing. Now he's getting

(07:45):
hungry now. The only job he could find was feeding
swine on a farm, and he became so desperate and
so hungry that even the pig slop he was feeding
the swine looked good to him. But no one would
give him anything for his hunger. When he finally came
to a census, he said to himself, this is crazy.

(08:07):
At my father's home, even the lowest paid workers eat
well while I'm over here, far away, dying of hunger.
So he goes, I know what I'm going to do,
he says, I'm going to return home to my father
and humbly say, Father, i have sinned both against God
and you, and I'm not worthy to be a part

(08:30):
of the family or called your son. But please just
make me one of your servants who works for you.
I'm not even going to be a family member. Just
hire me out as a servant. Make me one of
your servants who works for you. And with that attitude,
he headed back home to his father. But while the
son was still a long distance away. He hadn't got

(08:52):
all the way back home. His father saw him coming,
and filled with love and compassion, he ran out to
his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him.
The son said, now he's got his prepared speech, Father,
I have sinned against both God and you, and I'm
no longer worthy of being called your son. But the

(09:15):
father said to his servants, quick, bring me the finest
robe in our house and put it on him. Then
get my signet ring for his finger, and shoes for
his feet, and then roast the calf that we've been
fattening up. We're going to celebrate with a feast of
eating and drinking, for this child of mine was distant

(09:37):
and dead, but now he's back and alive. He was lost,
but now he's found, And so the party began. Don't
you love that story? And it tells the story of
how every one of us tends to wander away from
our creator, wander away from the father who made us,

(10:00):
away from the God who loves us. This kid starts
off saying, God or Dad or father, I want you
to give me much rightfully mine. It's all about me.
Give me my it's a very self centered life. And
that's where we usually start in life. Give me my, God,

(10:21):
give me my I want mine now, and we're by
the way. We're in a hurry, and I want it
and I want it now, and if I can't pay
for it, I'll put it on credit. And so we're
always in a hurry. Give me mine now. And so
he takes off and he packs up and he heads
off for Sunset Strip in Jerusalem, and there he wastes

(10:45):
his money and his time and his energy on wine,
women and song, particularly women, and he really gets mess
up and he hits the skids and he becomes homeless.
And then on time that the nation goes into a
national recession because there's a famine in the land, and

(11:05):
now nobody has anything to eat. So nobody's gonna give
a panhandler or a street guying to eat because they
don't have anything to eat. And then he can't even
find a job. Things go from bad to worse, and
finally finds a farm where he hires himself out to
do the worst job on the farm, slopping pigs. Now

(11:26):
for a jew that's not a good thing, that's not kosher,
because you're not even supposed to touch a pig. Okay,
you're not even supposed to have anything to do with pork.
He gets the worst job a Jewish kid could get,
slopping pigs, and he gets so hungry, and he gets
so desperate. He's going, man, this stuff looks good. You

(11:50):
gotta be serious, seriously desperate if you think pigslop looks good.
And it says nobody gave him anything. And then it
says he wises up, and it says he came to
his senses, and he goes, shoot the servants, the poorest
paid guys in my dad's employment get eat better than this.

(12:11):
What in the world am I doing? Now? He knows
he doesn't deserve his father's love. He knows he doesn't
deserve he's just wasted half of his dad's inheritance, all
that his dad's burned his entire life working to earn.
And he goes, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm
not gonna go home and ask God to or ask
the father to just accept me back in the family.

(12:31):
I just go home and say, look, hire me. I'd
rather be a servant in your house than be over
here in a distant country, starving to death, and you
know the rest of the story, as we saw the
father's response. Now from this story we gain the four
things you need to do to get back to God. Now,

(12:53):
I don't know where you are today. You may be
way way way way way way way way way far away,
maybe men in church in years and years and years,
or maybe you a little bit closer, or maybe you're
a little bit closer, but maybe even you've just been
distant for a week and you've had one of those
weeks and you just thought, you know, I really don't

(13:13):
feel God's presence in my life, and yet we all
long to be close to God. How do I get
back to him? You do these four things? Okay, write
him down. This is the pathway back to spiritual transformation.
Number one. I get fed up. That's the first. I

(13:34):
get fed up with my life. I get fed up
with my circumstance. I get fed up with the way
I've been living. I just get sick and tired of
being sick and tired. I am not going to live
this way anymore. I am too stressed out, I'm too lonely,
I'm too depressed. I am overworked and busy, and I

(13:58):
don't even like myself. Why would anybody like me? I
don't even like me. I don't like the life I'm
living right now. Now, let me just say this, Nothing
is going to happen in your life in the next
seven weeks until first you get dissatisfied with the way
you are. If you think, man, it's fine, I'm just fine.

(14:19):
I don't need any change in my life, then you
know what, you can sit out the next seven weeks
because nothing's going to happen in your life until you
decide I don't like this. I'm tired of being stressed
out all the time. I'm tired of being frustrated all
the time. I'm tired of being overworked all the time.

(14:43):
I'm tired of feeling distant from God. You gotta get desperate,
you gotta get hungry, You've got to get anxious for change.
Nothing happens until you get fed up. In that passage
in scripture, it says this, he wasted it all, he

(15:05):
had nothing left. He got desperate and hungry, and he
finally came to his senses, and that's where transformation starts.
Are you there yet? If not, it's okay, God'll just leave.
Let you stay there and he'll allow a little rain

(15:26):
in your life, and if that doesn't work, he'll allow
a little bit more in your life. And if that
doesn't work, he'll send a storm. Why Because God loves
you just the way you are, but He loves you
too much to let you stay that way. He will
not let you waste your life. And when God, you know,

(15:50):
wants to come and get our attention, he comes, and
he he knocks on the door, and if we ignore it,
he just knocks on the door again. And then if
he we ignored, he knocks on the door again, and
if we ignored, he blows the door down. Some of

(16:11):
you have had the door blown down in your life
and you lost your job, or you lost your marriage,
or you lost a friend, you lost something. Why Because
God does everything he does in your life out of love.
He does not want you to miss him, and he
does not want you to waste your life. You know

(16:33):
the old phrase, you can lead a horse to water,
but you can't make him drink, But you can salt
his oats make him thirsty. God often makes you thirsty
by putting salt in your oats. And when you start
saying I'm just so unsatisfied with my life. I just
don't like the way I'm living. I don't like this. Hello,

(16:55):
that's God knocking on your door. The first step in
transfermation is for you to get disgusted, to get discontent,
to get fed up with the way you're living. Jeremiah
twenty nine, Verse thirteen says this, God says, you will
find me when you get serious about finding me, and

(17:17):
you want it more than anything else. See, God's not
got to reveal himself if I just kind of want
to do it on the casual, it's kind of a
part time hobby. I gotta get fed up with the
way I'm living. Say, there's got to be more to
life than this. There's got to be a better way
to live than this. There's got to be a saner
way to live than this. You get fed up. Second step,

(17:40):
you own up first. I get fed up. Second, I
own up. I own up to my own sin. I
own up to my own sin. That's the second thing
that this young man did. First he got fed up.
But then in verse seventeen and eighteen, it says when
he came to his siny circle that he goes, this

(18:02):
is nuts, this is nonsense, this is crazy. I can't
maintain this lifestyle I've been living right now, It's just
not sustainable. It's not fulfilling, and it's not sustainable. When
he came to his senses, and that is you know,
he wakes up. You see, to live without God is insane.

(18:23):
To live without God does not make sense. To live
without God is not rational. To live without the creator
who made you is not logical. It doesn't make sense.
When he came to his senses, he said, I have
sinned against God and you, and nothing's going to happen

(18:45):
till you come to stage two. And stage two is
you go? All right? I just need to own up here.
I need to face up to the fact that I
have been not living God's way. I've been living my way.
I've been doing it my way. I've been doing it
way I think is best. I've been doing it the
way that protects all my fears. I've been doing it
the way that tries to control everything around me. Even

(19:07):
though I know I can't control it. I'm still trying
to control it all. And I'm getting tired of holding
onto all of the controls. I'm about ready to resign
as general manager of the Universe because I've noticed it
isn't cooperating with me, and so I own up. And
what do I own up to? I own up to

(19:28):
my sin. When he came to his sense, as he said,
I have sinned now. In Isaiah fifty nine, verse two,
there on your outline, the Bible says this, it's your sins.
Your sins have separated you from your God and have
hidden his face from you. Have you ever prayed and
you felt like God was a million miles away? Have

(19:52):
you ever prayed and felt like your prayers are bouncing
off the ceiling? Have you ever prayed and felt like
there's just like this veil between me and God. I
can't see God, I can't hear God, I can't feel God,
and I feel like I'm just talking to myself. Where
does that come from? Your sins have separated you from

(20:12):
your God and have hidden his face from you. That's
where it comes from. It comes from your sin. I
sent out on a Facebook and Twitter. I said, if
you feel far from God, guess who moved. God hasn't moved.
God didn't move. God didn't go on vacation. God didn't

(20:35):
move away to a foreign country. God has always been
there and he has never not been there, and he
loves you unconditionally. But if you feel far from God,
you're the one who moved, and you moved away by
giving your love to something else. When you give anything
else your love, there's a word for that in the Bible.

(20:56):
It's called an idol. And we think idols are like
these little stone things that people bow down to in
words no, no, no, no no. An idol can look
like your car. An idol can look like your job.
An idol could be a dress, and idle could be
the way you look. Anything that you love more than

(21:19):
God becomes an idol. The First and second commandments say,
thou shalt have no other gods afore me, thou shalt
not make any false idols. Money can be an idol.
Success can be an idol. Golf can be an idol.
These are not bad things, they're just not deserving the
first place in your life. So I own up to

(21:40):
my sin. Your sins have separated you from your God.
The fact is this, you're as close to God as
you choose to be. You can't really blame anybody else.
You can't blame your husband. You can't blame your wife.
You can't blame your mom, your dad, the brother. You
can't blame the gover. You can't blame other people. I

(22:03):
said last week, you spell blame, be lame, and that's
being lame when you blame other people for your spiritual condition. Well,
if my husband were a more dedicated believer, really, well
if my girlfriend was more on fire for Christ. Really,
you are as close to God as you choose to be.

(22:24):
And the fact is you haven't been desperate. You haven't
been fed up enough to say I am desperate to
know God. If I were to hold you underwater, you
would struggle. But when you really started running out of breath,
you would really struggle because you would be desperate for air.

(22:45):
When you're that desperate, you don't just get fed up.
You own up. And he said, I've got to know God.
You're as close to God as you choose to be.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Such a great message by Rick today and every day.
I sure hope you were just as encouraged as I was.
And now here's Rick with an important message.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Hi everybody, thanks so much for listening today. You know,
my hope is that God uses this broadcast to help
deepen your relationship with Jesus. Now, these daily Hope messages
are distributed on radio stations and digital platforms all across
the globe, and listeners are writing and letting us know

(23:30):
that their lives are being changed. They're telling us that
they're walking with Jesus and that guilt and fear has
been chased from their lives by God's love. You know,
relationships are being restored, and marriages are being healed, and
many people are saying that they found their life purpose.
I want to say thank you to you, because we're
only able to carry the hope of Jesus to these

(23:53):
people all around the world because of gifts from generous
listeners like you. I wanted to say I am so
grateful for your prayers and your financial support. Now, I
understand in times like these many of you are unable
to give financial support. Hear it from me. That's okay,

(24:16):
because I never want anybody to give unless God leads
them to give. That's between you and God, not between
you and me, but between you and God. And your
prayers are a continual and incredible contribution to this Daily
Hope ministry. Now, if you do want to give a

(24:36):
financial gift, I've got some really great news to share
with you. There's a generous friend of Daily Hope Broadcast
who is offering to match the amount of your gift.
In other words, if you give twenty dollars, then that
person's combined it with a grant to make your gift
forty dollars. Now, if you've never given a gift a

(24:59):
Daily Heel, I want you to pray about partnering with
us so that together we can continue to share the
hope of Jesus throughout the whole world. I love you
so much.

Speaker 1 (25:10):
You know, when you give a gift to Daily Hope,
you're helping share the hope of Jesus with people everywhere.
And right now your gift will be doubled by the
fifty thousand dollars matching grand So please go to Pastorick
dot com or text the word hope to seven oh
three to oh nine. Again, go to Pastorick dot com

(25:32):
or just text the word hope to seven oh three
oh nine. 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