Rick Warren - These 4 Daily Habits Build Happy and Healthy Relationships...

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
It is impossible to be happy while your relationships are unhappy.
Iver I agree with that. I mean, you can meet
all kinds of people. They've got all kinds of money,
they've got all kinds of fame, they've got every kind
of pleasure you can imagine. But if they're in the
middle of a divorce, they're not happy. If your relationships
are unhappy, your life is going to be unhappy. So Paul,

(00:24):
when he starts talking about and modeling the Habits of Happiness,
he begins right off the bat the first eleven verses
of Philippians chapter one, talking about how do you have
happy relationships? How do you have healthy relationships? So we've
got to start here before we can go anywhere else
in the Habits of Happiness. Now, in the first eleven verses,
Paul makes his description of his relationship. He describes his

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relationship to the people of Philippi, and he gives us
four statements. And we're going to come back and look
at these as habits you can develop to have healthier,
happier relationships. Let me read it to you, Philippians, chapter one.
This letter is from Paul and Timothy, slaves of Jesus Christ.

(01:09):
It's written to all of God's people and Philippi who
believe in Jesus Christ, and the elders and the deacons
of the church. May God, our Father and Lord Jesus
Christ give you grace and peace. That's his introduction. Now
he gets into his first subject. He says, every time
I think of you, I give thanks to my God.

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I always pray for you, and I make my request
with a heart full of joy because you've been my
partners and spreading the good news about Christ from the
time you first heard it until now. And I am
confident that God, who began this good work within you,
will continue his work until it's finally finished on the
day when Jesus Christ comes back again. Now it's right

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that I should feel as I do about all of you,
for you have a very special place in my heart.
We've shared together the blessings of God, both when I
was in prison, when I was out defending the truth
and telling others the good news. God knows how much
I love you and how I long for you. Can't
you see the personal nature of this book how much

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I love you and long for you With the tender
compassion of Christ, Jesus and I pray that your love
for each other will overflow more and more, and I
pray that you will keep on growing in your knowledge
and understanding, for I want you to understand what really matters,
so that you may live pure and blameless lives until

(02:41):
Christ's returns. And may you always be filled with the
fruit of your salvation, those good things that are produced
in your life by Jesus Christ, for this will bring
much glory and praise to God. Now in the first
eleven verses of Philippians, Paul models four relational habits that

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if you will just practice these things, your relationships will
be more enjoyable and your happiness will be greater. They
are easy to explain, they are simple to understand, but
they are incredibly hard to do because when I tell
you these, you go, oh, yeah, I know this, I

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know this, but you don't do it. And so although
it's easy for me to teach them, it's very hard
for all of us to practice them. But if you
will do these four relational habits and you'll build them
in your life, your relationships will be transformed and you'll

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be happy. All right, let's look at it first Number one,
to be happy. The first thing Paul says, is this,
I must be grateful with the people in my life.
I must be grateful for the people in my life.
Study after study after study after study after study link
gratitude to happiness. It's been proven over and over by psychologists, sociologists,

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and others that the more grateful you are, the more
happy you are. The more ungrateful you are, the more
unhappy you are. And if you want to have good relationships,
you start with the attitude of gratitude, you will be
far happier. You will enjoy your relationships more if you
will develop the habit of being grateful for the people
in your life. The habit of being grateful for the

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people in your life. Phlippius, Chapter one, verse three. Paul
starts off with this this very first thing. Every time
I think of you, I remember he's in Rome. They're
in a city called Philippi. Every time I think of you,
I give thanks. I give thanks to my God. Paul says.
You know what, I remember the good things about you,

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and I focus on the good times we've had friends.
That simple truth right there is the source of good relationships.
And when marriages stop doing this, they crumble. When you
stop remembering why you got married in the first place,
what attracted you to that person. When you stop remembering

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the good times, when you stop being grateful for your mate,
your marriage is already on a long slide into oblivion.
Paul says, every time I think of you, I give
thanks to God for you. Let me ask you, just
be real, honest. When you think of the people in
your life, do you automatically is your first thought gratitude? No,

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it's not. No, it's what do they need to do
for me? Are they late? Are they in a hurry?
What's not right? What have we had a problem with?
What have we got to get done? Your first thought
is not gratitude. Paul says, when I think of you,
the first thing I do is I think your gratitud
I'm grateful for who you are. I'm grateful for what
you've done. Now here's the problem with us. The problem

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with this is the longer you know someone number one
you take them, the more you take them for granted.
Isn't that true? The longer you know someone, the more
you take them for granted, the more you focus on
their faults, and the easier it is to remember bad times.
I don't know why it is. But it's easier to
remember baptimes than it is happy times. Paul says, every

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time I think of you, I give thanks. If you
would just develop this habit that whenever you think of
the people in your life, your friends, your neighbors, your husband,
your wife, your kids, your relatives, whatever, that the first
thought is gratitude. It's going to change your relationship. Now,
that's a habit you have to develop. It does not

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come natural. We are not by nature grateful people. We
are by nature discontented people. We are, by nature always
wanting things to be different. Philippians, Chapter one, verse five.
Paul says it again, I thank God. I thank God
for the help that you gave me. Now, if you

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know the story of this church that he started, there
there was a woman named Lydia who was a businesswoman
who opened up her home. And he says, from the
very first day, you welcomed us, and you helped us
from the very first day. And then, as I said
several times in Paul's travels, the Philippian Church was funding
Paul's missionaries journeys, and in this particular instance, they had son,
a man named of Paphroditis all the way to Rome

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to bring him a financial gift, because Paul was in
Rome by himself in prison, and if Paphorditas had nearly
died on the way, we'll get to that later in
the book. And now Paul is sending him back with
this thank you note to the people in Philippi, and
he says, I thank God for the help you gave me.
I just wonder what is it that you have forgotten

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that other people have done for you. And the longer
you know someone, the more you take them for granted,
the more you look for their faults, and the more
it's easy to remember the bad things than the good things. See,
the truth is about Paul and Philippi. He didn't have
a good time in Philippi. In fact, it was one
of his roughest churches getting started. But you don't get

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any of that in this letter. The fact is when
Paul went to the city to start a church, he
was beaten, he was whipped, he was humiliated, he was
falsely arrested, he was thrown in a prison, he went
through an earthquake, and then he was politely asked by

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the city leaders to leave town. When I thank God
for you, I think of you, I thank God for you.
What is he doing? He is choosing selective memory. This
was not a happy place all the time. It wasn't
all sunshine and lollipops and roses and rain my little pony.

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It was a lot of bad stuff it happened. But
Paul chose not to dwell on painful memories. Are you
still living some painful memories with some people in your life?
You've never let them off the hook, and you can't
enjoy a relationship because you're still holding on to the past.
Memories are a choice now. If you want to hold

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onto your painful memories, go right ahead, but you're not
gonna be happy. Paul had a lot of reasons that
painful memories in Philippi. It was not a happy time
for everything that happened there, as they said, beaten, maligned
and all these things. But he says, every time I
think of you, I thank God for you. He's choosing
to be grateful for the people in his life. The

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attitude of gratitude will transfer a relationship. If you're not grateful,
you're gonna have all kinds of complaining, worrying, all kinds
of other things. I've got to be grateful for the
people in my life. Number two, the second habit of
happiness and relational happiness is this, I need to not
only be grateful for the people in my life. I
need to pray with joy for the people in my life.

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I need to pray joyfully. I need to pray with
joy for the people in my life. Now Paul is praying,
as we just read this passage, praying for these people.
How would you like to have the apostle Paul praying
for you. You think that would help the guy who
wrote much of the New Testament, wouldn't you like? Don't

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you know? Those Philippians thought, Hey, this is pretty cool.
Paul is praying for us. Doesn't it encourage you to
know when somebody is praying for you? Yes, yes, it does.
It encourages you. In fact, the thing that keeps me
going is your prayers. And when people say I'm praying
for you, pastor Rick, I take that serious because it's

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what I move on. It is that power that I
move on, Paul says. In verse four, he says this,
I always pray for you. Now, that's part of it.
But notice the rest of the verse. And I make
my request when he's praying for you, he says, with
a heart full of joy. Now I want you to
just minute think of somebody who irritates you. Don't look

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at him, just think of him. Okay, maybe somebody you've
got a strained relationship with, or they just kind of
rub you the wrong way. I have two questions for you.
Number one, do you pray for them? Okay? Do you
pray for it? Or do you just complain and grumble,

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a nag, a nitpick. If you prayed more, you'd have
a lot less to grumble, complain, nag, and nitpit about.
So you can decide. Does nagging work no? Does prayer
work yes? So why do you do more of the
thing that doesn't work than does? Paul says, I pray

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for you, and you need to pray for the people
in your life. But then he says, I pray for you,
making request with a heartful of joy. When you do pray,
do you pray with joy? And let me give you
a little secret here. There are things within people's lives
around you you'd like to change. You don't want to
change yourself, you want them to change. If she would

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just do this, if she would just do that, if
he would just do this, And we always want to
change other people. You can't. You can't change anybody. You
cannot change anybody. They can only change themselves and you
can only change yourself. So all of that trying to
change your change program doesn't work. But you can pray,

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and God can change people. Positive praying is more effective
than positive thinking. You know, people read all these books
about positive thinking. Well, okay, there's nothing wrong with that.
I'm sure I'd rather have you thinking positively than negatively.

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But all the positive thinking in the world, is it
going to change your husband or your wife, or your child,
or your friend or your situation. Positive thinking is not enough.
Positive thinking can change you, but it can't change somebody else.
But positive prayer can. Start praying for them. Start praying

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for It'll change you, and it can change them. Start
praying for them. He say, well, what do I pray? Well,
I would encourage you to pray what Paul prayed, and
in verses nine to eleven, we have what Paul prayed.
Here's what he says, and this is my prayer that
your love may abound more and more in knowledge and
depth of insight, so that you may be able to

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discern what is best that you may be pure and
blameless until the day of Christ, and that you may
be filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through
Jesus Christ to the glory and praise of God. What
does he say? Four things you can pray? Pray and
I would say, pray these for your kids. Pray these
for your friends. Pray these for your boyfriend, your girlfriend,

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Pray these for your boss, Pray these for me, anybody
you care about. Pray with joy for the people in
your life, and you pray these four things. First, pray
they will grow in love. Pray that they will grow
in love. Paul says that your love will grow more
and more. Number two, he says, pray that they will

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make wise choices. Pray that the people in your life
and your family, and your friends and your neighbor. Pray
that they will make wise choices. Verse nine and ten
says that you will know and fully know and understand
how to make the right choices. Third thing to pray

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for the people in your life. Pray they will live
with integrity. Pray that they will live with integrity. Paul says,
I pray that you may live pure and blameless lives.
Until Christ returns. The fourth thing to pray is pray

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that they will become like Jesus. Parents, there's your prayer
agenda right there. Husbands, wives, friends, there's your prayer agenda
right there. Pray that they will become like Christ. Verse eleven.
That you will be filled with the fruit of the
righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and

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praise of God. What the fruits he talk about there, well,
we call it the fruit of the spirit. The fruit
of the spirit is the character of Jesus. In Galatians
five twenty two and twenty three says this. The fruit
of the spirit is love and joy, and peace, and
patience and kindness. The fruit of the spirit is goodness

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and faithfulness. Fruit of the spirit is gentleness and self control.
What is that? It's the perfect picture of Jesus. Now,
these four things you can pray for me any day
of the week. Pray that I will grow in love.
Pray that I will make wise choices. Pray that I
will live with integrity. Pray that I will become more
and more like Jesus. You can pray these for yourself.

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You can pray these for your spouse. And you know
what you can know they will be answered. Why, because
they're in the Bible. This is not a prayer if
it's your will, God, this is God's will. It's in
the Bible, so you know God wants to answer that prayer.
So the first thing I do have to be grateful
for the people in my life. And second, I have
to pray and actually pray joyfully, not with complaining, not

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with criticism like, oh God, why can't you get this
man in mind in shape. That's not praying joyfully. That's
praying whinily, crankily. Now pray joyfully, and here's what you pray.
Number three, here's the third habit, Paul says, and it's
in the next verse. I must expect the best from

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people in my life. I must expect the best. Now,
these things are so simple for me to teach you,
but they are so hard to turn into habits. We
don't normally expect the best from the people around us.
We expect the worst. We expect them to let us
down because we have a track record. Now, he's saying,

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you want to make a habit of believing in people
rather than criticizing them. Expect the best. Philippians want and
in the verse six is the next verse, he says this,
I am confident of this that God, who began a

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good work in you, will carry it to completion until
the day of Christ Jesus. I'm expecting the best from
the people in my life. Now. Paul is a pro
at bringing out the best in people, and I want
to teach you how to do it right now. There

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are three things that you do to bring out the
best in people, and Paul does all three of them.
In this verse, he says, here's how I bring out
the best people. Number one, he believed in people. He
believed in people. He says, I am confident, and he
gave them confidence. Do you give the people in your
life confidence or do you tear them down? Do you

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build them up or do you tear them down? Do
you give the people in your life confidence? You know,
if a child is running a race and you're at
the track watching him run a race at school, and
all of a sudden, they really mess up and they
stumble and they fall flat on their face and they
embarrass themselves, and you're in the stand as a parent,
what do you do. You don't get up and say, oh,

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I'm so embarrassed. I'm leaving you know how pathetic you are.
A bad parent would do that, But what does a
good parent do. A good parent stands up and yells
even more. You can do this. Get up. I believe
in you. I know you can do it. Come on,
come on, get up. I know this is just a

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minor thing. No, don't worry about it, don'torry about anybody else.
Just keep on running. That's what God does with you
when you stumble. That's what God wants you to do
with people in your life when they stumble. That's what
it means to be like Jesus. Paul says, I believe
in people. I give them confidence. I helped them grow.

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I am confident that what God has started in your life,
he's going to continue to do. You see, we all
need people to believe in us because it's how we change.
You can't change unless somebody believes in you and you
believe in yourself. Acceptance always precedes transformation. That's why I

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always say, you know, don't tell it like it is,
Tell it like it could be. Sometimes you know, I
trained pastors in preaching, and sometimes pastors say, well, I
just tell it like it is. I said, well, okay,
but that doesn't change anybody. Tell it like it could
be is preaching for faith. I could get up here
and say, you know, you're all not doing a good job,

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and I could tell you all the errors you're not
doing a good job in. What would it do? Just
make you defensive? It wouldn't change you one bit, and
next week you go, oh, let's go back and have requipus.
The more some people actually a spiritual massacres o pastor.
That's such a great sermon. It made me feel so bad.
I don't go what, no, No, that's not it. Nobody

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changes by nagging. Doesn't happen in the pulpit or anywhere else.
So don't tell it like it is. Tell it like
it could be. If I helped draw a picture, say
this is what you could become, this is what you
could be with God's power in your life, then you
get excited. Paul says, I'm confident I believe in you.
The second thing he did is he gave people vision,

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and the vision was you're going to keep growing. God's
not gonna what God starts, he finishes. He's not gonna
leave you halfway out there. He gave people vision. He
painted a picture of the future. Now, why is that important?
Because study after study after study shows that we tend
to live up to the expectations of other people. When
people expect the best of you, you tend to do better.

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When teachers expect to the best of their students, they
always perform better than teachers who don't expect the best
from their students. That has been proven over and over
again in studies that we tend to become what we
believe the most important people in our lives think about us.
So Paul says, I expect the best from people. I
believe in people. I give people vision. And the third thing,

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this is really important. He was patient with people's progress.
I am confident to what Gods began in you. He's
going to keep on and he's going to carry it
to completion until the Jesus Day of Jesus Christ. He
was patient with people's progress. Now, why is that I'm

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so important to your happiness? I'll tell you why. If
you insist on perfection in people, you're going to be
miserable the rest of your life because there's nobody perfect,
especially you. And if you're always expecting perfection in people

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before you can enjoy them, then you're never going to
be happy because nobody's perfect. Paul says, I am patient
with people's progress. If you want to really be happy
in your relationships, if you want to have happier relationships,
healthier relationships, celebrate how far people have come rather than

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judging them for how much they still have to go.
You got to be patient with people's progress. God doesn't
wait until you're mature for him to start loving you,
so you shouldn't do that with others either. You got
to love them morts and all. You've got to be
patient with their progress. Now, what is the key to patience?

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How do I celebrate how far people have come rather
than judging how far they left go. The key to
patience is love, and Paul says in the next verse,
verse seven, it is right for me to feel this way.
In other words, I expect the best from you. It's
right for me to feel this way about you since
I have you in my heart. This is a real

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key to happiness and it's real key to healthy relationships.
You got to have people in your heart. You know
what I've discovered. If people aren't on my heart, they're
on my nerves. And if I want to get them
off my nerves. Nerves, I gotta get them on my heart.

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If I'm praying for somebody, they just don't bug me
as much. They just don't bother me as much. If
they're on my heart, they're not on my nerves. But
if I'm not praying for them, I get perturbed by
them pretty easily. He says, I have you in my heart.
You see, so many of the relationship problems that you have,

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that you have over and over and over, is because
we all tend to react with our head, not with
our heart. And that's the wrong place to go in relationships.
That's you know, somebody comes you, let's say men, let
me talk to them in for a minute. Your wife
comes to you and says, honey, this really frightens me,
This really worries me. This thing really concerns me. And

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you react not with your heart. You react with your
head and go, well, that's illogical, that's dumb. You shouldn't
feel that way. Oh that was helpful. Now that did
that really build a bridge? No, no, it didn't at all,
because you're reacting with your head rather than with your heart.
When people say and you've had people say this, to

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you before. You just don't understand. You just don't understand.
You just don't understand. They're not really talking about understanding.
What they're really saying is you don't feel my pain.
You don't feel what I'm feeling. Has nothing to do
with understanding. It has everything to do with empathy. You're

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not sympathetic, you're not empathetic, you don't care, you're not
feeling my feelings. And I say you don't understand. We
try to logic it out and say, well, let me
understand it. No, it's not logic. It's feelings. Feelings are
just feelings. They're not right or wrong, they're just they're
just feelings. The last five months, I've been getting a
PhD in learning empathy and all of the things we've

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been going through in our family. That's what they're saying
is you don't feel it. So when Paul says I
have you on my heart, loving from the heart begins
with understanding, and it means you know why they tick,
you know how they tick, and you don't judge them
for ticking that way. You just listen and you accept,

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and you listen and you understand moods and you respond accordingly.
And that leads us to the fourth big habit, and
this one is the granddaddy of Maul and Paul says,
this is the fourth secret. I must love people in
my life like Jesus does. I must love people in

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my life like Jesus does. I must be grateful for
the people in life. I must pray for the people
in my life with joy. I must expect the best
from the people of my life. And I must love
people in my life like Jesus does. Now again, I
told you it's easy for me to teach it. It's
incredibly hard for you to do this because you're not Jesus.

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And we tend to be self centered. We tend to
look at our own needs and all of the things
that have happened in our life. But I've got to
love people like Jesus does. Verse eight. Here's the fourth
thing Paul says about relational habits. God is my witness
that I tell the truth when I say that my

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deep love for you, my deep love for you, all
comes from the heart of Christ, Jesus himself. I love
this verse so much because I identify with it. You see,
Paul started the Philippian Church. He was the first member.

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He was the first pastor, and so I identify with
how he felt about this church as I do about you.
John three sixteen says this, This is how we know
what real love is. Christ gave his life for us,

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so then we ought to give our lives for who
for others? Now? What is that reference? Again? Look at it?
What is it? It's first John three sixteen. Does that
remind you of any other verse? John three sixteen? Same
guy wrote, both, you know what the problem with relationships
is today? People who know John three point sixteen ignore

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first John three sixteen. We all know John three sixteen.
Most of you could quote it. God so loved the
world that he gave his only son that whoever believes
in him should not perish but have everlasting life. That's
the way to salvation. It's a way to have past,
forgiven purpose, for living home in heaven. God says, I
sent my son. That's how much I love you. And

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we're all grateful for God's love for us John three sixteen.
But we want to ignore first John three sixteen. It says,
and this is real love. God gave his life for us,
He gave his son for us, and we must do
the same. Thing. If we would do that, we would
not have any relational problems because we wouldn't be thinking

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about ourselves. We'd be thinking about other people. It's about
our heads. And as we close, I just want to
ask you to do a little personal evaluation. Which of
these four habits do you need to work on? Who
do you need to be more grateful for? Who in

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your life have you taken for granted? Who have you
failed to appreciate? Who have you because of their faults
or flaws you have not been grateful for them. That's
the first habit of happiness. Be grateful for the people
in my life. Number two, are you praying for the

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people in your life? And are you praying with joy?
Are you praying with complaining? God fix that person? Are
you praying with joy? I'm going to encourage you to
make a prayer list and write down some names and
pray the four things that Paul prayed. That people will

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grow in love, that they will make wise choices, that
they'll live with integrity, that will become like Jesus. Let
me ask you this. Are you patient with the progress
of the people in your life or do you demand perfection?
It's never good enough? So I said, if people have

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to be perfect for you to enjoy them, you're never
going to enjoy them. And number four, who do you
need to start loving from the heart rather than from
the head. If you've never invited Christ in your life,
say Jesus Christ, thank you for loving me, Thank you
for dying for me. I don't understand it all that.

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I want to get to know you and I want
to learn to love you back. And then, Dear God,
I ask you to give me the power to be
grateful for the people in my life. Help me to
remember the best and forget the rest and on those
bad relationships. Help me to start praying for them and

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pray with joy. I pray that they grow in love
and that they live with integrity to become like Jesus.
Dear God, I want you to help me develop the
habit of expecting the best from the people in my
life rather than criticizing the worst. Help me to believe

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in people. Help me to be confident and build confidence.
Help me to be patient with people's progress. Help me
to recognize how far people have come, not how far
they still have to go. Dear God, help me to
have love in my heart and to love people, not

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from the head. Men who you guys who are married, say, God,
help me to love my wife from my heart, not
from my head. And help me to love people in
my life like Jesus does. And I would be willing
to lay down my life in sacrifice or in service.

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I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen,