Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): Hey, thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Today, we're continuing our series called The Habits of Happiness. In this series, Rick dives into the book of Philippians and helps you discover God's path to true and lasting happiness. Let's get right to it with part one of a message called The Humble Path to Happiness.

Rick Warren: Today, we're in part three of a series, The Habits of Happiness. We're going verse by verse through the book of Philippians. If you were to go out on the patio or to some mall and ask people what they think is the path to happiness, most people would probably say get an education, get a job, get married, have a family, make a lot of money, and retire. That's the path to happiness. I know a lot of people who've done all those things, and they're not happy at all.

The Bible says that the path to happiness is through humility. You say, how in the world would humility make me happy? There are many reasons why humility is the key that unlocks true happiness and why pride is the thing that guarantees unhappiness in your life. One of the greatest killjoys in life, one of the greatest causes of unhappiness, is conflict. Everybody agree with that? You could have a lot of money, be famous, and be successful, but if you have conflict in your relationships, your life is unhappy.

If you're ever going to learn to be happy on a long-term basis, you're going to have to learn how to reduce and eliminate conflict in your life. That's where humility comes in. The Bible tells us that the habit of humility is the key to reducing conflict in your life because pride is the thing that causes conflict. Proverbs 13:10 says, "Pride always leads to arguments." This was the first verse Kay and I memorized when we got married 38 years ago. We memorized it on our honeymoon because we needed it on our honeymoon. We just see everything so differently.

In Philippians 2:1-11, we have the greatest explanation ever written on planet earth about the relationship between humility, harmony, and happiness. This passage tells us first that harmony creates happiness and that happiness comes from harmony. Then we learn in the next few verses that humility creates harmony, and in the last verses, it talks about how Jesus modeled both.

Philippians chapter two says, "Does your life in Christ give you strength? Does his love comfort you? Do we share together in his spirit? Do you have mercy and kindness? If so, make me very happy by having the same thoughts, sharing the same love, having one mind, and being of one purpose. When you do things, do not let selfishness or pride be your guide. Instead, be humble and give more honor to others than to yourselves. Don't be interested only in your own life, but be interested in the lives of others."

"In your lives, you must think and act like Jesus Christ. Christ himself was like God in everything, but he did not think that being equal with God was something to be demanded. Instead, he gave up his place with God and he made himself nothing. He was born to be a human being and became a servant. While he was living on earth as a man, he humbled himself and became fully obedient to God the Father, even when it caused his death on the cross."

"Then God raised him up to the highest place and God made his name greater than every other name, so that every knee will bow to the name of Jesus, everyone in heaven and on earth and under the earth. And one day everyone will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord and bring glory to the Father." This is a very powerful passage. It talks about how humility leads to harmony and harmony leads to happiness. First, Paul says that God's model for relationships is four kinds of harmony.

Paul says, "You will make my joy complete by having the same mind, sharing the same love, being united in spirit, and intent on one purpose." These are the four kinds of intimacy God wants you to have in your marriage and in every true relationship. He says I want you to have the same mind, which is mental harmony. I want you to share the same love, which is emotional harmony. I want you to be united in spirit, which is spiritual harmony. And I want you to be intent on one purpose, which is directional harmony.

We're headed in the same direction together. Can you imagine having a marriage like that? We don't have it because we don't do the things God tells us to do. In the next few verses, Paul explains that humility is the path to harmony and harmony is the path to happiness. If you've ever gotten tired of the conflict, you picked a good weekend to come to church. We're going to look at how to reduce conflict with others and have more harmony and happiness in your relationships.

This is guaranteed to work if you'll do it, but I need to give you three warnings. First, what I'm going to teach you this weekend is 100% radical counter-culture. It's the exact opposite of everything you've been taught in your life. Our culture teaches the exact opposite of what the Bible says about relationships. Most people aren't very good at relationships in the world because we don't follow what God tells us to do.

Second, what I'm going to teach you isn't natural. It doesn't feel like the right thing to do, but it is the right thing to do because we naturally want to indulge ourselves. Third, if I teach you this, I know for a fact that this week you will be tested in it. So I'm just warning you. Get ready. You're going to have some conflict in relationships this week because God is going to give you an opportunity to practice these four habits of humble happiness.

The first of the four habits for reducing conflict in your life, Paul says, is this: never let my pride be my guide. No matter what the relationship is, I should never let my pride be my guide. Pride is the root of every other sin. Pride is the sin that got Satan kicked out of heaven. Every conflict that you go through has an element of pride mixed into it. What is the middle letter of the word pride in English? I. What's the middle letter of the word crime? I. What's the middle letter of the word sin? I. You have an "I" problem.

I want what I want and I want it now, and that causes all kinds of problems. Never let pride be my guide. Again, this is counter-culture because in our society today, in modern culture, we reward narcissism. The most arrogant athletes, the most arrogant celebrities, the most self-centered entertainers are the ones we pay the most money to and pay the most attention to. It's the way our society works today.

The Bible says in Philippians 2:3, "Don't do anything from selfish ambition or vain conceit." Paul says that there are two conflict-creating kinds of pride. One of them is selfish ambition and one is vain conceit. Selfish ambition is saying it's all about me, and vain conceit means I'm always right. When you have those two attitudes, it's all about me and I'm always right, you have selfish ambition and vain conceit.

Selfish ambition says it's all about my needs, my wants, my fears, my success, my career. We know people who've walked out of marriages because the marriage was standing in the way of their career. Sometimes boyfriends choose girlfriends simply because of the image it gives them. They don't really care about them. They're just eye candy. Or girlfriends choose boyfriends because it's all about the image. They're not really caring about the relationship; they're caring about themselves.

James 3:16 says, "Wherever there's jealousy or selfish ambition, you'll find confusion and every other kind of evil." When you find confusion at your workplace, you can know that selfish ambition and jealousy are causing it. When you find confusion in your home, you can know that selfishness is causing that. This causes confusion everywhere, in marriages, in politics, in church, in homeowners' associations, in the shutdown of governments. If you won't play ball with me the way I want to play ball, I'll take my ball and go home.

Vain conceit is that attitude of I'm always right and you're always wrong. The Living Bible version of this verse says, "Don't live to make a good impression on others." And the Today's English version says, "Don't do anything from a cheap desire to boast." That would be a good verse to look at before you post on Instagram or Facebook or any other social media. I read an article a while back by Shauna, Bill Hybels' daughter, which was a great article called Stop Tweeting Your Perfect Life.

It is a great temptation on the internet to make yourself look better than you are, to appear better than you are. And we don't just do that on the internet, but we do it in lots of different areas. Never let my pride be my guide. Don't give in to vain conceit (I'm always right) or to selfish ambition (it's always about me). The husband who says I don't care about my wife's needs, it's my needs, that's called selfish ambition.

In Galatians, Paul lists about 17 effects of living with pride. He calls it the works of the flesh. He says when we live this self-centered, self-concerned, self-indulgent life, it shows up in all kinds of ways. He starts off by saying things like self-indulgence shows up in sexual immorality and wild partying and getting drunk. You would expect those things, but most of the things of the list are actually the sins that we have to deal with, relational sins.

Galatians 5:19-21 says, "Our self-indulgent nature, in other words, my natural desire to think of me and not about you, to think I'm number one and not worry about what you think, our self-indulgent nature shows itself in conflict, quarreling, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition. It shows up in causing divisions among people and the feeling that everyone else is wrong except those in your little own group." That's because they let their pride be their guide.

If you're going to have happiness, you've got to have harmony. And if you're going to have harmony, you've got to have humility. So never let pride be your guide. The second habit is the flip side of it. Be humble or I'll stumble. If I'm not humble, my relationship will crumble. Humility is the basis and foundation of every great marriage and every great friendship because in humility you don't act like you know it all. You treat each other with respect and you give each other more honor.

Marriage is not a 50-50. It's a 110-110. You give 110 and your spouse gives 110, and you try to outdo each other in honor. Philippians 2:3 says, "Instead be humble and give more honor to others than to yourselves." Again, that's the opposite of what our culture teaches. Our culture teaches I've got to do what's best for me. I've got to look out for number one. I've got to think about me. I've got to live for myself. I've got to do what makes me happy.

Humility is probably the most misunderstood quality that we need in life. A lot of people think humility means going around saying, oh, I'm no good, I'm nothing, I'm a zero, I'm a cipher. No, no, that's not humility. That's false humility. That's just degrading yourself. Humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking of yourself less. Do you hear the difference? Humility is not thinking less of yourself; that's false humility. Humility is you just don't think about yourself.

You think about other people. The more you think about other people, the more humble you are. If you walk into this room and you think, what does everybody else think about me, how do I look, you're being prideful. If you walk into this room and you think, how could I help the people in this room, you're being humble. The focus isn't on you; the focus is on the other people. Humility has nothing to do with what you think of yourself. Humility has to do with what you think about other people.

In other words, humility is not putting myself down; humility is building other people up. Humble people build other people up. Great people make people feel great. Little people belittle people. The Bible says, instead be humble and give more honor to others than to yourself. In other words, humility is not devaluing me; it's valuing others more. Humility is not denying your strengths; it's being honest about your weaknesses.

We're all a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. You have some great strengths, and you have some great weaknesses. And humility is being honest about both. I'm good at this, and I'm not good at that. I'm strong in this, and I'm really weak in this. I have some really great strengths, and I have some enormous weaknesses. Just ask my staff, ask my family, ask me, I'll tell you, because I'm not trying to hide them. Humility is simply being honest about both.

The Bible says be humble and give more honor to others than yourself. Why should I be humble? Because God makes more promises in the Bible about humility than anything else except generosity. Let me give you a few things God promises to do if you live a humble life, if you live dependent upon him, if you think about others instead of thinking about yourself. God says I will give you my presence, I will give you my power, I will give you my peace, I will make you prosperous, I will make you successful, and I will give you great honor.

The very thing everybody wants in life, God says comes not through pride, not through bragging, not through boasting, not through pretending you're something you're not, not through posing and being a poser. It comes through humility. God says I bless the humble person. In fact, in James 4:6, it says this: "God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble." Notice the good and the bad. God opposes the proud. You know what the Bible says? God hates pride.

Does God hate anything? Oh, yeah. There are some things God hates, and one of the things God hates is ego, arrogance, pride, conceit, self-centeredness, self-promotion. God hates pride. And he says God opposes that proud. That means anytime I am acting or saying something or thinking in a prideful way, I am on the opposite side of God. I may even have the right cause, but if I'm presenting it in a prideful way, God says you're wrong.

You may have all the right politics figured out, but if you're prideful and arrogant about it, guess what? You're wrong. You're on the opposite side of God. God doesn't just say, oh, it's okay, I'll let you get away with a little bit of pride. God says I hate it and I oppose it. And every time I'm prideful and every time you're prideful, I'm on the opposite side of God. I'm in a battle with God, and I'm going to lose that battle because your arms and my arms are too short to box with God.

That's the negative side. The positive side says God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. What's grace? Grace is the ability to forgive when I don't feel like forgiving. Grace is the ability to resolve a conflict with my husband or my wife when I don't feel like it. Grace is the ability to compromise. Grace is the ability to get along. Grace is the ability to build a strong relationship when everything wants to tear your marriage, your friendship, whatever that relationship apart. You need grace. The only way your relationships will last is with God's grace, and the only way you get God's grace is by being humble.

So I must never let my pride be my guide and I must be humble or I will stumble and my relationships will crumble. Here's the third habit for overcoming conflict. This one sounds easy, but we don't do it. Learn the lost art of paying attention. If you want to have a happy life, you're going to have to have happy relationships. And in order to have happy relationships, you've got to have humility in the middle of them. And part of that is learning the lost art of paying attention.

We pay attention to screens more than we pay attention to people. I mean, you walk into a meeting and how many people are sitting there looking at their phone texting? They're not paying attention to the people; they're paying attention to screen. Or your head's always down in a video game, looking into a video game. Or you're walking across a campus or taking a lunch break and you've got earbuds in and you're listening to your iPod.

There's no way you can pay attention to the people around you. Somebody could be dying and in deep pain and you're in your own little self-centered world. I've closed out everybody else and I'm in this. I was in New York City a few weeks back and I walked out and I swear everybody on the street was listening to something else. And I'm going, I could stand here and yell "fire" and nobody'd even know it because our technology has made us to no longer pay attention to people.

In other words, you're sitting here with two friends and you're tweeting to 25. And then you're really worried about is anybody retweeting it or is anybody liking my post. And what's that saying? It's all about me. Social media can feed your narcissism, feed your pride, if you let it. And you get distracted from seeing the people around you.

Guest (Male): Thank you for listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Hey, did you know that most people look for happiness in all the wrong places? You won't find it through money, fame, or power; you'll only find real lasting happiness by following God's commands. And that's why Rick created The Habits of Happiness Bible study. You'll discover how happiness runs deeper than any circumstance, feeling, or relationship because of God's unconditional love for you.

This interactive, full-color hardcover book is filled with biblical truths, scripture, practical lessons, application exercises, and prayers to guide your journey. It's a comprehensive study tool that will help you experience the biblical habits that lead to true and lasting happiness. This Bible study is only available on Daily Hope, and quantities are limited. So be sure to request The Habits of Happiness Bible study today when you give a gift to help Daily Hope take the hope of Jesus to a hurting world. It's our way of saying thanks. Just go to PastorRick.com to get your copy of this great resource. That's PastorRick.com or you can just text the word "hope" to 70309. Again, that's the word "hope" to 70309. And thank you so much for your support. Your gift to Daily Hope helps us share the hope of Christ with people everywhere. 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.