Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): Hello everybody, this is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren. I'm really glad you're here. Today we're continuing our series from Psalm 23 called Living in the Goodness of God. It's all about how God's goodness meets you right where you are and brings hope even in difficult seasons. So let's get to it and open with part one of a message called Relaxing in God's Goodness.

Pastor Rick Warren: One of the big myths in Southern California is that everybody here is laid back and easygoing. Yeah, right. That Southern California vibe, the Beach Boys, it's all copacetic. It's also a haven for workaholics. Surveys have shown that Southern California residents would actually rather work than play, or pray for that matter. Studies actually have shown that we actually prefer employment over enjoyment.

All this good weather creates a lot of workaholics. The truth is a lot of people don't know how to relax. We are addicted to adrenaline. We don't know how to slow down. And that's true of actually all Americans. Studies have shown that the average American today is sleep deprived. The average American today gets two hours less sleep a night than we did 50 years ago.

We don't know how to relax. We don't know how to rest. We love to work. A lot of Americans are like Job 20 verse 18. It says in the Message paraphrase, "They are unable to relax and enjoy anything they've worked for, so busy getting more." I want to do a little quiz to see if you are a workaholic. Be truthful, no cheating. You don't have to raise your hand on this.

Are you always in a hurry? Is your to-do list always unrealistically long? Do you use days off to catch up on unfinished work? Has more than one person ever told you to slow down? Do you feel guilty when you relax? Do you have to get sick to get time off? You know you're a workaholic when all your Christmas cards come back from business associates. You know you're a workaholic when you head out for back-to-school night and you don't know which one your kid attends. You know you're a workaholic when your family refers to you as occupant. And you know you're a workaholic when you take business-related reading material into the bathroom.

I remember many years ago a lady said to me, "Pastor, I tried to call you all day Monday." I said, "Well, I'm sorry, but Monday is my day off. It's my Sabbath." And she said, "Well, the devil never takes a day off." I said, "Yeah, and if I didn't, I'd be just like the devil." So you want me to take a day off. I'll never forget the first year of Saddleback Church. I really was working 18 hours a day, and Kay was too, to begin this baby church.

In the first two years of Saddleback Church, twice a week Kay cooked meals to have people in our home from the church. We had every member of our church in our home at least once the first two years of Saddleback Church. That isn't going to happen anymore, friends, not all 35,000 of you. But I remember she cooked the same meal Tuesday and Thursday twice a week for two years. I learned to like it. But we were working hard, 18 hours a day.

At the end of the first year, I stood up to speak on the last Sunday of the year and fainted. I was just worn out from exhaustion: physical, emotional, spiritual, relational, in every area. Over the next year, God had to teach me some things about balance in life, which I actually have had to learn over and over again. I don't think you ever permanently learn these things.

But God gave me a verse at the end of the first year of Saddleback. It's Exodus 23, and this is what God said to the Israelites when they were going to go into the Promised Land. He said, "I'm not going to give you everything I've promised you in a single year because you're not prepared to handle that much blessing, and it would be too much for you to manage. Instead, you'll take possession of what I want to give you little by little so that you can grow. Then you'll be strong enough to handle it all."

That verse changed my life. It's what I call pacing growth. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is a church or anything else worthwhile. God doesn't want you to accomplish it all at once. He wants you to learn pacing growth little by little. While God is growing your business, he's growing you. While God is growing your children, he's growing you. While God is growing your career or whatever else is in your life that is important to you, he's growing you.

He says, "I want you to learn this little by little, pacing growth." The fact is, God considers rest as important as work. Some people think only God smiles on them when they're working or praying or doing spiritual things. God smiles on you when you rest. Did you know that? If you've ever as a parent gone in and watched your children sleep and the joy that gives you just watching them sleep, God enjoys watching you sleep.

God rested. Are you busier than God? The Bible tells us this in Exodus 31 verse 17: "One day a week will always serve as a reminder that I made the heavens and the earth in six days, and then on the seventh day I rested and relaxed." Now, why did God rest and relax on the seventh day? Well, he certainly wasn't tired, because God doesn't get tired. God never gets tired. But he was modeling for us what he wanted us to do: to rest and to relax, to keep a Sabbath, to have balance, and to relax in the goodness of God.

Now, we're in this series we've just started called Living in the Goodness of God. We're looking at Psalm 23, which actually models for us ten ways that a good shepherd takes care of sheep. He feeds, he leads, he meets their needs, and the ten ways God's goodness wants to benefit you, how God wants to take care of you. A lot of your worry and a lot of your hurry and a lot of your scurry and a lot of your restlessness actually comes from not understanding the goodness of God in your life.

When you understand what God has done for you and wants to do for you in the future, you can relax. You can learn to rest. You can learn to let down. You can learn to let go. You can live in the goodness of God. In that Psalm, the Lord is my Shepherd Psalm, he gives us ten things that the shepherd does. One of the things that a good shepherd does is they make sure the sheep get enough rest in order to stay healthy.

That takes us to verses one and two. Let's look at it again. "The Lord is my shepherd, so I have everything I need. He makes me lie down in green pastures, and he leads me beside quiet waters." Now, you might want to write this down. These images are actually a metaphor. They represent rest and refreshment. When he makes me lie down in green pastures, that's rest. And when he leads me beside quiet waters, that's refreshment.

Notice, I want you to circle the word "makes." He makes me. Has God ever had to make you lie down for your own health's sake? Because you wouldn't slow down? If you won't lie down, God will make you lie down. Sometimes the only way God can get you to look up is lay you flat on your back with an illness. God will do that because he's the good shepherd and he cares about your health, your physical, emotional, spiritual, every area of health.

I want you to write this down on your outline: To give God my best requires rest. If you don't have rest, then you're going to be stressed. In fact, the difference between being blessed and being stressed is often rest. Isn't it amazing how much better things look after a good night's sleep? The difference between being stressed and being blessed is often rest. "The Lord is my shepherd; he makes me lie down," when I don't even want to.

Have you ever seen a child frantically trying to stay awake? They're just trying, and their eyes are closed, but they're trying to stay awake. Resistance to rest is immaturity. It's immaturity. Now, I've got a confession to make because I always preach every week these messages to me first. If it doesn't hit me, I don't figure it's going to help you. But if it helps me, I go, "Okay, that'll probably help somebody else."

So this message, I need to hear this message on relaxing in God's goodness. I've had a couple of very frantic weeks where I had eight outside messages to deliver, speaking engagements outside of the area. I told you last week I was at the National Prayer Breakfast and I spoke five times at that, and then I went to another place and I spoke to the coalition of Christian colleges and universities, to all the leaders of the Christian schools around America. Then I went and I spoke to a youth pastor's gathering.

I've been overstretched the last couple weeks. I need this message. So if you get anything out of it, congratulations, but I'm really preaching it for me. Okay? So if you want to take a nap, you might get more benefit out of it than just listening. Put your head on the shoulder of the person next to you with their permission, and I'll wake you up at the end. As I said, rest is often the difference between being blessed or stressed.

When we look at Scripture, we see that God rests. We see that Jesus rested many, many times. He had advances and retreats, seven of them in his three and a half year ministry. Jesus rested. If you're going to be like God, if you're going to be like Jesus, you've got to learn how to rest. I have to learn how to rest, how to relax, how to relax in the goodness of God.

Now, that's what I want us to look at today. How do you relax in God's goodness? Before we do that, I just want to mention, why do people overwork? I mean, we need to get to the source of our stress. Why do we overwork? Why do we not get enough rest? The Bible's full of many, many examples and reasons why you get stressed instead of blessed because you're not at rest. The Bible gives us many, many examples and reasons.

Let me just give you five from the word of God and let's see if any of these might be causing you to not get the rest you need, to not relax like God wants you to relax in life. These are just some of the common reasons from the Bible. Number one: The first reason the Bible tells us that people don't relax is misplaced identity, and that is basing my worth on my work.

We fall for this all the time. One of the reasons why people can't relax is they confuse their work and their worth. They confuse their net worth with their self-worth, their value with their valuables, and they think, "If I work real hard, I succeed at work, then I am valuable. If I don't work, I don't produce, I'm not productive, then I'm not valuable." And that's a total lie. It's a total myth.

But in Western culture, our identity often revolves around our work. So we overwork in an attempt to prove ourselves. "If I achieve a lot, then I must be worth a lot. I must be valuable. I must be important. I must be significant." But your significance has nothing to do with your job or your career or your achievements, in fact. Ecclesiastes 10 verse 15 says this: "Only someone too stupid to find his way home would wear himself out with work."

That's pretty frank. You might want to put that on a card and put it on your windshield there. "Only someone too stupid to find his way home would wear himself out with work." He says life is more than work. Yeah, it's important, but your life is far more than the work you do. It's just a portion of your life. But when we have a misplaced identity and we think our worth is based on our work, then we're going to put all of our time, our money, our energy, our effort into our work.

Number two: Second reason people don't relax is materialism. This is obvious. Always wanting more things. When I've got to have more things, then I've got to make more money. When I've got to make more money, I've got to work harder and longer hours. And yet the Bible says not to do this. Proverbs 23 verse four and five warns us about materialism and it says this: "Do not wear yourself out trying to get rich. Have the wisdom to show some restraint. Your money can be gone in a flash, as if it had grown wings and flown away like an eagle."

He says, "You can lose your money. Don't spend all of your life trying to get something you can lose so quickly." He said it can fly away like an eagle. Now, evidently America's founding fathers wanted you to remember this because they put an eagle on every dollar bill as a reminder of this verse. It has been my observation, having counseled thousands of people, that we spend the first half of our life sacrificing our health overworking in order to get wealth.

And we spend the second half of our life sacrificing wealth in order to get our health back. Have you ever thought about that? The first half of life, you give up your health in overwork in order to get wealth, but in the second half, you spend all that wealth trying to get healthy again. This is not wise. Always wanting more things. In Luke 12 verse 15, Jesus says this: "Watch out. Always be on your guard against all kinds of greed because your life is not defined by how much you make or how many things you own."

Materialism, just like misplaced identity, causes me to overwork. A third cause in the Bible, it says that envy can cause you to overwork, and that is wanting to be like other people. I'm trying to keep up with the Joneses. I'm trying to keep up with my neighbors. I'm trying to keep up with everybody else. And that will cause me to do things that I don't really have the time to do. Too busy trying to keep up with others, and that's envy.

"Their kids have dance lessons, so we have to have dance lessons for our kids. And their kids are involved in these five extracurricular events, so our kids have to be involved in these five. Not necessarily. My girlfriend is on social media all the time, so I better be on social media all the time." And we do things we don't need to do because other people are doing them.

Solomon noticed this problem of envy literally thousands of years ago. In Ecclesiastes 4:4, he says this: "I've learned why people work so hard, why they work so hard to succeed. It is because they envy the things their neighbors have. I want to be like them. I want to have what they've got. I want to do what they do. I want to go where they go." Well, they may be under stress more than you, so make sure you're following the right model.

Envy. Number four: A fourth reason why people don't relax, according to Scripture, is when we value achievement over relationships. When we value achievement over relationships. Men, we're more prone to do this than women, but everybody can do this, where you put your career above everything else, including relationships. We all know people who've walked away from marriages because of their career. Or they've walked away from being a good parent or just being a good friend because the career was more important. The work was more important. And when goals are more important than people in my life, or when goals are more important than people in your life, you're skating on thin ice.

What a special message from Pastor Rick. And now, let's hear how lives are changing through Daily Hope. Here's Rick with a letter from one of our listeners.

Today, I want to introduce you to Agatha, who's translating Daily Hope into German for her husband. She writes, "Pastor Rick, your preaching is bringing many souls to God. My husband, who is an unbeliever, is drawing closer and closer to God. Every day I translate what I hear on Daily Hope into German because he can't speak and understand English. Pastor Rick, your teaching has changed his life, and I can see his progress and eagerness to follow Jesus."

Well, Agatha, thank you so much for sharing your story with me. This is a wonderful story to hear that you're translating what you hear on Daily Hope for your husband and that he's growing closer to Jesus. I'm so happy for that. We're always looking for translators to help us in new languages as we take the message of God to more people around the world. So you will keep praying for your husband and you keep praying for us, that God allows us to take the good news of God's hope all around the world.

Guest (Male): Hey, if you'd like to let Rick know how this broadcast has blessed you, he would love it. Please feel free to send him an email at rick@pastorrick.com. That's rick@pastorrick.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.