Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Pastor Rick Warren: Hi, this is Rick Warren, Bible teacher for the Daily Hope broadcast. Did you know that because of Easter, your past can be forgiven, you get a purpose for living, and you can have a home in heaven? That is good news. Where else can you get that kind of news? Nowhere else.

And did you know that at Easter, studies have shown people are more open to an invitation to go to church than at any other time of the year? Don't go to church by yourself, but bring somebody who doesn't know Jesus Christ: a family member, a friend, a coworker, a neighbor, a relative.

If you bring them to that church service and they come to know Christ, you're going to be making a friend for eternity. It'll be the most important investment you can ever make in their lives. And by the way, if they come to Christ, would you let me know about it? I'd love to hear that story, that you brought somebody to Easter and they found Jesus. You can write to me, rick@pastorrick.com. I would love to hear from you. God bless you and happy Easter.

Guest (Male): None of us can earn our way into heaven because eternal life is a free gift when you accept Jesus as the Lord of your life. Hey everybody, this is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Today, Rick Warren continues the series called Good News About Grace.

You can't truly understand the Christian life until you understand grace. It's at the heart of your faith and your relationship with God. In this series, you're going to discover how not to only understand grace, but how to experience it and the joy that it brings. And right now, here is part one of a message called Restoring Grace.

Pastor Rick Warren: Your relationship to Jesus Christ is like any other relationship. It has to be maintained. No relationship ever stays the same. You're either growing closer to the Lord or you're drifting away. You never just stand still. You don't just become a Christian and then that's it. You're either having your heart grow warmer every day or it's growing colder.

We've all known Christians who are no longer walking with the Lord. They've fallen away. At one point, their hearts were warm and on fire for God, but today they're nowhere to be found. We all know the struggles in our own heart, that we face temptations, we face ups and downs, we face days that we think, "I don't know if I want to be a Christian today."

The good news is that God offers to us restoring grace. When we blow it, when we walk away, when we stumble, when we fumble, God says you can come back to me. We can pray the prayer that was prayed in Lamentations chapter five, verse 21. Read it with me: "Restore us, oh Lord, and bring us back to you again. Give us back the joys we once had."

How do you get the joy back in your Christian life? You may have been a believer for months, years, or even decades, but it may have gone a little stale in your life and maybe you're just not as close to the Lord as you used to be. First, I want to identify four common causes of why people fall away from the Lord. There are many reasons why people might backslide or are not walking with God anymore.

In Mark chapter 14, the Bible tells us the story of Peter, one of the disciples, and his denial of Jesus on the night Jesus was betrayed and arrested. In that story, we have an example of four common causes of why people fall away. Jesus had been in the upper room with his 12 disciples. They had had the Passover together, which he turned into the Lord's Supper.

Then he shocked all the disciples by announcing, "One of you is going to betray me." This shocked everybody. One of the twelve was going to be the guy who turned Jesus in, who was the traitor? They all began to say, "Lord, is it me? Is it I? Did I do it?" Peter, in his typical foot-in-mouth braggadocious way says, "Lord, everybody else may stumble in their faith, but I will not."

You can almost hear the swagger in his voice. All these peons, sure, they may cop out, but not me. I would never deny you. This is the first reason people backslide: overconfidence. We begin to think that we can handle everything on our own. We begin to think that we're so strong that we would never fail. We begin to say, "Oh, that would never happen to me."

Anytime you hear about somebody else's stumbling and you say, "That could never happen to me," you are setting yourself up for a fall. Given the right situation, any of us is capable of any sin. The Bible says the heart is deceitful. That means we lie to ourselves as much as lying to others. I can't even figure out why I do what I do, much less figure out why you do what you do.

We don't always know why we do what we do. You should never say, "Well, I could never fall for that," because that's called overconfidence and it's the first step in falling away. First Corinthians 10:12 says, "If you think you're strong, be careful because you'll fall. Let him who standeth take heed lest he fall." It's a trap.

Proverbs 16:18 says, "A proud attitude leads to ruin. Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall." I've said before that the way you spell ego, E-G-O, stands for edging God out. Whenever I get overconfident, I get ego in my life. I'm edging God out of my life and I'm already backing away and heading down the slippery slope of falling away from Christ.

The second cause of falling away is laziness. We see this too in the story of Peter's denial. We get lethargic and we slack off. All those good habits that we used to do, like praying every day, reading the Bible every day, being in a small group, or giving, we start saying, "Maybe I don't have time for that right now." When you do, it ought to be a warning light.

In the next scene, we see this happening to Peter. He just got tired. Jesus took Peter, James, and John into the Garden of Gethsemane. He said, "I want you guys to stay here and pray with me for a while." This was the night he knew he was going to be arrested, and the next day he would be executed, crucified. He said, "Can you guys just be with me? Watch and pray."

He goes off and prays a little bit and he comes back and they're asleep. He goes off again, he comes back and they've fallen asleep again. Peter's problem was he just kept falling asleep. Jesus says in verse 37, "Couldn't you stay awake with me one hour?" There's a principle here. When you get tired, you're setting yourself up for major temptation.

It's more difficult to do the right thing than it is to do the wrong thing. It's easy to do the wrong thing. In fact, the wrong thing is often the easiest thing. If you really want to do the right thing in life, it takes energy. It takes effort. It takes a lot of stamina. Because you're trying to do the right thing all the time, you're going to get tired emotionally, physically, spiritually, in every area of your life.

If you don't know how to recharge yourself emotionally, or spiritually, or physically, then fatigue is going to set in. Fatigue should always be a warning light in your life. Something's going wrong. Something's out of order. When you're tired, that's when you're most vulnerable to temptation. I've talked to a lot of Christians who stumbled in major ways in their life.

When you go back and talk to them, it always seems to be during a time of great stress when they were very tired and they were ignoring all the warning lights. They didn't know when to take time off. They didn't know when to double up their effort in prayer. They didn't know when to get back in the Bible in a greater degree and they set themselves up.

Fatigue lowers your defenses and then it makes you vulnerable. Matthew 26:41 says, "Watch and pray so you won't fall into temptation." We've got to keep our guard up because when we start letting it down in laziness, we're starting on the slippery slope to falling away. The third cause of falling away from Christ is fear of disapproval.

We're worried about what other people think. We're afraid they'll reject us. We're afraid that they won't accept us, that they'll make fun of us or ridicule us or put us down, or that we might be harassed. This is what happened with Peter. After Jesus was arrested, verse 54 says Peter followed him at a distance. Jesus has been arrested and Peter decided he would follow him at a distance.

Just far enough back so that nobody would identify him with Jesus. Do you ever try to follow Jesus at a distance? "Oh, yeah, I am a follower of Christ, but let's not get fanatical about this. Let's not get radical. I don't want to be red-hot for God. Somebody might think I'm a nutcase. I believe in Jesus, but I want to follow him at a distance."

If all of a sudden they outlawed Christianity and they made it illegal and you were arrested for being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you? Would your neighbors know really that you're a Christian, or would they just know that you're always gone on Sunday morning? One of the signs that you can know you're slipping away from Christ is you start to become ashamed of him.

You want to follow him at a distance and you're ashamed to put your Bible on your desk at work. You're ashamed to pray over a meal in a restaurant in public. What might people think? Well, they might think you're a believer. You're ashamed to be seen with a group of other Christians or you're ashamed to even be known as a Christian, so you try to keep it a secret.

Proverbs 29:25 says, "Fearing people is a dangerous trap." When you start worrying about what other people think, you're headed for trouble. It's a snare and it's going to catch you. Mark 8:38 says, "If anyone is ashamed of me and my words here on earth, I will be ashamed of him before the holy angels and my father in heaven."

Jesus is saying there are no secret agents in God's army, no closet Christians. It's time to come out of the closet. A lot of Christians can talk about anything except Jesus. They're what I call Arctic River Christians, frozen at the mouth. Revelation 21:8 lists cowardice in the same category as murder and adultery.

That's how serious it is to be embarrassed. When you're worried about the disapproval of others, you're on the slippery slope of falling away. Then there's one other thing: convenience. We want to have a faith, but we want it to be a comfortable faith. We want it to fit our schedule. "Sure, I want to follow Christ as long as it doesn't cramp my style."

Notice what happened to Peter. Peter followed Jesus at a distance and then it says he sat with the guards and warmed himself at the fire. This is an amazing scene. One of the twelve, one of the original disciples, Jesus is about to be executed and Peter is partying with the enemy. He's sitting there in the crowd, wanting to be one of the gang, warming his hands by the fire.

The very men who were going to torture and execute Christ, he's there sitting around a campfire with them. He said, "I just want to hang out. I just want to be comfortable. I want to enjoy life. I don't want to be cold, I want to be warm. I want to be accepted. I want to be a part of the gang. I just want to be one of the boys. I want to follow Christ when it's convenient."

If it's not convenient, forget it. I'm going to go back and hang out with the guys. If you try to enjoy the world's campfire, you're going to get burned because you're not in the same kingdom, you're not in the same world, you're not in the same lifestyle anymore. I've been in ministry now for over 25 years and I've seen it all. I've watched a lot of people flame out and I've watched a lot of people sidelined.

People who had big talk, but nothing to back it up. People who were supposedly strong Christians that today they can't be found anywhere. Even in this church in 18 years, I've seen this parade of short-term disciples who walk with Christ as long as it's convenient and then they start to fall away. I have noticed a pattern when people fall away from Christ.

It is the same pattern I have seen hundreds and hundreds of times. It always starts like this: when a person's real active in a church and they start falling away, the first thing they stop is their giving. I've seen it hundreds of times. The first thing they stop is their giving. Jesus said your giving indicates your heart. He says, "Where your treasure is, your heart will be."

It's a good thermometer. It's a good EKG of your heart. How's your giving? Then the second thing that falls away—always giving is the first thing that stops. It says I'm getting into the world's way. The second thing that stops then is prayer. They stop praying. Then the third thing is they stop attending. What happens to those people?

What happens to a person who is a genuine Christian? They really have committed their lives to Christ, but for one reason or another, they've backslidden. They've fallen away. They're not walking with the Lord anymore. How does God respond to those kind of people? When a Christian sins, does he lose his salvation? When a Christian sins, does he go to hell?

How does God respond? He responds the way he always responds to his children: by grace. Romans 8:1 says, "There is no condemnation for those who belong to Christ Jesus." Circle the word "no." That word "no" is the strongest possible negative in the Greek language. It means no, no, never, not in a million years.

There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. This is not a promise for everybody. It's not saying go ahead, anybody can do whatever they want and there's no condemnation. It says for those who are in Christ Jesus. If you are a genuine believer in Christ, you've put your trust in Christ, you've accepted his grace, there is no condemnation.

What's that mean? It means you don't lose your salvation when you sin. Aren't you glad for that? If you could lose your salvation every time you sinned, you'd lose it about once a minute. If you lived for Jesus Christ your entire life and five minutes before you died you blew it and then you go to hell, you would live in fear your entire life.

If you felt that fear, you need to go and read the book of First John about 15 times because it's written to say, "This is so you can know for sure that you have eternal life." If you were saved by your works, then you could lose it by stopping work, but you're not saved that way. There is no condemnation when a Christian sins.

It does not say there are no consequences. It says no condemnation. There are a lot of consequences when I get out of God's will for my life. When I blow it, when I intentionally don't do what God wants me to do, when I ignore his will, oh, there are major consequences and the same thing for you too.

Every time you disobey God, every time you ignore his will, every time you don't follow his instruction, you lose. You hurt yourself and you hurt other people and you lose big time. When a Christian sins, what happens? You lose your fellowship with Christ, you lose your effectiveness on earth, you lose rewards in heaven, no doubt about it, and you lose your joy here on earth.

The most miserable people in the world are not unbelievers, it's believers who know better and are acting like unbelievers, but you do not lose your salvation. Why? Why doesn't God just kick us out when we blow it? Why doesn't he say, "Okay, you had your chance. You knew better and you still blew it. You're out of the family, forget it"?

Why doesn't God reject believers when we sin? For five reasons, and this is what grace is all about. Number one: because his love is unconditional. God doesn't say "I love you if you're good or perfect." He doesn't say "I love you because." He just says "I love you, period." God will never stop loving me because I'm a recipient of his grace. Lamentations 3:22 says, "God's compassion never ends. It is only his mercies that have kept us from complete destruction." God's compassion never ends.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Pastor Rick has created a beautifully illustrated book called Journey with Jesus. This book is stunning. It's filled with beautiful photographs, colored mosaics that depict the sacrificial journey Jesus made to save us. Here is Pastor Rick to tell you more.

Pastor Rick Warren: Every year, Christians from all over the world remember the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ by traveling to Jerusalem, where they walk the path that Jesus took on the way to the cross. That path is called the Via Dolorosa, which literally means "the way of suffering."

Since you may not be able to ever travel to Jerusalem, I want to suggest a way for you to celebrate and reflect on and pray about what Jesus did for you on the cross. I've created a brand new, one-of-a-kind resource that will take you through the 15 stops that the Bible tells us Jesus took on the road to Calvary and his death on the cross.

We're calling this resource Journey with Jesus. Journey with Jesus is a deluxe, hardcover gift edition book that's illustrated with beautiful photos, high-quality glossy photos of mosaic tile artwork that reflect each of the stops that Jesus made on his journey to the cross. You're not ever going to forget this gift. It's a great gift book to keep and to study over and over again and it'd make a great gift for your family and your friends too.

Guest (Male): Be sure to request your copy of Journey with Jesus when you give a gift to help Daily Hope share the love of Jesus around the world. 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. 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.