Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Rick Warren: Hi, this is Rick Warren, Bible teacher with 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's good news. Where else can you get that kind of news? Nowhere else.

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 life. 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. That's rick@pastorrick.com. I would love to hear from you. God bless you and Happy Easter.

Guest (Male): Hello and thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. This is the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Today, we are continuing in a series called The Miracle of Mercy. Rick will show us how God's mercy can lift your guilt, heal your wounds, and transform the way you live. Okay, and here's part two of a message called Easter Means It's a New Day of Mercy.

Rick Warren: So what happens if I ask God for mercy when I've messed up? You might write this down. God's mercy forgives me and frees me. He does two things: he forgives me and he frees me. Forgiveness takes care of my past guilt, and freedom gives me the power to change in the future. I'm forgiven from my past so I can get on with my future.

So many people are stuck in the past and they can't get on with their future because they can't let the past go. Jesus says I want to forgive you and I want to free you. This is the very thing Jesus said he came to do. In Isaiah 61, Jesus quotes this: "I was sent to announce freedom to all held captive and forgiveness to all who've been imprisoned."

Now he says freedom for captives and forgiveness for those who've been imprisoned. Now he's not just talking about people in a little physical prison. He's talking about the emotional prisons that we lock ourselves up in. What holds you captive? What's got you locked up inside? What has enslaved you? What has imprisoned you?

In a crowd this size, some of you right now are imprisoned with regret and you just can't forgive yourself over that thing that happened in the past and you're in a prison of regret. Some of you, over things you've done. Some of you are in a prison of resentment over things that people have done to you. You say they hurt me and I'm never going to let them go and I'm never going to forgive them. You're in a prison of resentment.

Some of you are in a prison of envy. How come my husband isn't like her husband? How come my kids aren't like their kids? And you're in a prison of envy. Some of you are in a prison of worry and you worry constantly and it makes you sick and tired, and you get sick and tired of being sick and tired. Some of you are in a prison of addictions and secret sins and secret habits.

What does Jesus have to say to all of this? Look at the next verse, John chapter 12. Jesus said, "I have come to save the world and not to judge it." I love that verse. I have come to save the world and not to judge it. You know what? I want to be like Jesus. It's not my job to judge the world. Jesus didn't. He said, "I came to save it." My job is not to judge the world. My job is to point to the Savior and there's only one. It's not me. It's not you. It's Jesus. And point to him in that way.

Now let me be clear. There is going to be a judgment day one day. No doubt about it. The Bible's very clear about this. At the end of time, every human being is going to give account of their life before God at the judgment day. But that day is only for people who reject the grace and mercy of God. God doesn't want to judge you. He wants to show you mercy, which is why Jesus came to Earth.

Which is why he offers you mercy before the judgment day comes. It is his nature to be merciful. The only people going to be judged on the judgment day are the people who have rejected the mercy of God. There's a verse in the Bible that says mercy triumphs over judgment. I'm glad for that verse. It means I'm not going to get what I deserve and neither are you if you accept the mercy of God.

And so Jesus says I want to show you mercy. Now Saddleback Church is literally filled with tens and tens of thousands of people whose lives have been radically changed by experiencing the mercy of God. I want you to hear one example and I want to introduce Nate who's going to come and share here at Lake Forest. Would you give him a warm welcome?

Nate: Happy Easter everyone. My name is Nate and I'd like to share with you how experiencing God's mercy changed my life in so many great ways. Growing up, my idea of God was that he was just a bully with a stick waiting to punish me when I failed. I believed that my salvation was up to me and I had to work to achieve it.

I was raised in a Midwest church and anytime the doors were open, my family was inside. Yet our lives were vastly different at home. Physical, emotional, and spiritual abuse occurred often. I felt the shame of being told "I hate you" by my mother and the neglect of a father who would not stop her from hurting me.

This led to a pattern of escape, selfishness, and denial in my life that I eventually took into my marriage. This pattern of behavior led me to resent my wife and family. I eventually sought approval outside of my marriage and I had an affair. The guilt of what I had done led me to Celebrate Recovery here at Saddleback Church.

Yet I was still just trying to keep my wife from leaving me. I would eventually tell my wife about my affair right before I deployed to Afghanistan with the Marine Corps. While on deployment, I witnessed many horrors and became very depressed and angry. The anger led to constant fights with authority and eventually thoughts of suicide.

I believed I was a failure as a husband, a father, and now as a Marine. As Pastor Rick just talked about, I felt trapped and caught in a prison that I had created and I saw no way out. I sat on my cot ready to take my life with a pistol and God reached to me through a photo of my son. I was not going to abandon him.

I found encouragement through a copy of The Purpose Driven Life sent by a small group from Saddleback San Clemente. I read it every day and God would speak to me through Pastor Rick's words. When I got home things were anything but smooth. My issues with combat grew along with the consequences of my infidelity.

This eventually led to separation from my wife and almost a divorce. I was a liar all my life and when I told my wife about being suicidal, she just thought I was manipulating her. God used the time of separation to show me the extent of his grace and mercy. He showed me that his love was not bound to my acts but stood apart from them.

That he sent his son to die on a cross in spite of my sin. I had accepted Christ as a child but it wasn't until an adult at the bottom of my barrel that I understood and accepted Christ in me. His forgiveness of my sin freed me from all condemnation. I still struggle with doing what's right but now I have a new power that comes from God's mercy. In closing, I'd like to say to you that no matter who you are or what you've done or been through, God is waiting to show you his mercy. He wants to forgive you from your past and free you for your future. Just say yes to him today. Thank you for letting me share.

Rick Warren: Now I don't know what you're ashamed of, but let me show you how God responds to it. What Jesus does when I mess up. Look at these next verses, Psalm chapter 86: "O Lord, you are so good and kind. You are so ready to forgive, so full of mercy to all who ask your aid." If you come to God with your habits and your hurts and your hang-ups, he's not going to scold you, he's going to save you. It's good news. He's ready to show mercy.

And even more, look at this verse from the Bible, Hebrews chapter 4: "Jesus understands every weakness of ours because he was tempted in every way that we are, but he did not sin." Jesus had the same temptations you and I do. He just didn't sin because he was God. So whenever we're in need, we should come bravely before the throne of our merciful God.

That's a poetic way of saying you need to come with confidence in prayer and go God, I need help. Come before the throne of God, your merciful God, say God, I need your mercy. And you just come confidently. And he says, "There we will receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." When you come to God and you've really messed up and you go, God, I've messed up, he's not stern, he's sympathetic. This is going to change your whole view of God. And it's why you don't need to run from him.

Now that's just one of the ways you need to see God's mercy in your life. Let me give you a couple others. The second is when you get angry. Now almost all anger in our lives comes from either fear or frustration. Anger is a warning light that says you're afraid or you're frustrated. And when you don't have all your needs met, you tend to get angry. And the more needs that go unmet in your life, the more angry a person you become.

So write this down, the second thing. I need God's mercy when I don't have what I need. When I don't have what I need. Now the fact of life is none of us have all that we need. None of us have everything we need within ourselves. We're all finite, we're incomplete, we're broken people with weaknesses. We all have things we lack in life.

You don't have all the talents that you need. You don't have all the abilities that you need. In fact, God did that intentionally. God gave us different abilities so we would need him and need each other. If you had everything to meet your needs in yourself, you wouldn't need God, you wouldn't need other people. So you don't have all the abilities you need in life. You just don't have them.

And on top of that, we all have disabilities. Yeah, we're all disabled in different ways. You have some mental disabilities. You can't think in certain ways that other people can. Mental disabilities. You have emotional disabilities and that keeps coming up over and over in your relationships and you fall in the same traps and you have the same arguments and the same conflict because of your emotional disability.

You have physical disabilities. Have you noticed that your body isn't perfect? Looked in the mirror lately? Your back doesn't always work right. Other parts don't always work right. Yeah, so we're all intentionally don't have it all in ourselves.

Now this is because God wants us to be dependent. See, in America, we think independence is the highest priority. But dependence is not a bad word. Dependence is just another word for trust. And trust is another word for faith and God wants you to learn to depend on him. Why? It makes God happy when we depend on him.

Just like if you're a parent, you are happy when your children trust you. You are happy when your children depend on you because it shows confidence in you. It shows that they believe in you. You give them a promise, they believe you're going to keep it. God gets joy out of having us be dependent upon him.

Now if you don't depend on God in your life and you only depend on yourself, you're going to have a pretty small life. You're going to have a frustrated life because you don't have enough in you to meet all your needs. You could not possibly meet all your needs. So you'll grow up being frustrated, disappointed, and angry because you can't meet all your needs. There are needs in your life only God can meet. And you try to meet them, you're going to just be frustrated, angry, resentful, and disappointed.

In John chapter five, we have another story of Jesus showing mercy to a disappointed man. And the story goes like this: In Jerusalem, near the Sheep Gate—there were many gates into the city walls and this one was called the Sheep Gate because that's where the sheep went in—near the Sheep Gate, there was the Pool of Bethesda, which was surrounded by five covered porches.

So there's this pool and there's like a portico around it, a colonnade around it. Now a large crowd of all sorts of disabled people would lie by the pool. And by the way, we are a crowd, a large crowd of disabled people. Awaited, lie by the pool waiting for a miracle. Now there was a legend—it wasn't true—but there was a legend that every once in a while, an angel would stir up the water.

And whoever was the first to get in the pool in the water while it was still moving would get what they needed and be made whole. So a lot of people were sick. They're sitting by this pool waiting for it to be stirred. Now one poor man had been waiting by the pool for 38 years. That's a long time to wait for a miracle.

He's been waiting for his unmet need to be met for 38 years. What unmet need in your life have you been waiting to see met for 38 years? And you keep expecting somebody else to meet that need or something else to meet that need and it's not happening. What have you been waiting on to meet all your needs? You know, if I could just get married, all my needs would be met.

Anybody want to give a testimony on that one? This guy's disappointed. I mean, he's upset. He's frustrated. He's been laying by this stinking pool for 38 years. Why? Because he put his faith in something besides God and you're going to always be disappointed if you expect something else or someone else to meet a need in your life that only God can meet.

And he's just disappointed. And imagine how discouraged he is and how let down. He's been laying by this pool for years. He has missed most of his life. Imagine all the good things in life he's missed simply laying by this pool. No wonder he's mad. No wonder he's angry, no wonder he's frustrated. His needs aren't being met. And he's just so disappointed.

What's your secret disappointment? If we could do an x-ray on your heart, what would it reveal is your deepest secret disappointment? Well, to be honest, Rick, I'm disappointed in my marriage. It's not at all what I thought it was going to be and I've just settled for what it is and I'm disappointed in it. Or maybe you'd say, you know, if I'm really honest, I'm disappointed in me.

I thought by this time in my life, I'd be further down the road, but I'm not. And life has not turned out the way I thought it was going to be and I am disappointed in me. I'm disappointed in a child. I'm disappointed in my career. What does Jesus do with your disappointments, with your secret disappointments? He responds with mercy. This guy's been disappointed for 38 years.

And here's what Jesus does, verse six. When Jesus saw this man and he heard that he'd been lying there for such a long time, he asked the man, "Do you want to get well?" Now this sounds like an obvious question here, doesn't it? I mean, of course I want to get well. I've been waiting for this. I've put my faith in this pool and I've been waiting for 38... of course I... isn't it obvious that he wants to get well?

No, it's not. A lot of people who are sick don't want to get well. Because health means you have to change and change is scary. And health means I have to take on responsibilities. I can't just blame other people. I can't just lay around. Health means I've got new things that are scary in my life. A lot of people don't want to get well.

Do you want to get well? Do you want to get healthy in your relationships? Do you want to get healthy with God? Do you want to get healthy in your life? Do you want to get well? As a pastor, I've probably counseled tens of thousands of people over the years about marriage, about their business, about bankruptcy, death, divorce, you name it.

I couldn't count the number of people that I've talked to who were in very unhealthy, very sick, very miserable relationships and aren't willing to change. And they go, "Well man, why don't you just change?" "Rick, are you telling me to divorce?" No, no, I'm not saying that. I'm saying change. You change. You can't change anybody else.

Let's just settle that one. You will never be able to change anybody else. You can't change anybody else. You can only change you. But when you change you, it changes the equation in a relationship and it forces change in the other person's life. So you can't change them, but you can change you and that will change the relationship. And when I say why don't you just do that, they start making up all these excuses and start giving me rationalizations and start blaming the other person for their problems.

And that's exactly what this guy did. Now Jesus asked the question, "Do you want to get well?" Straightforward question. Yes or no. And the guy doesn't give him a yes or no answer. Here's what the guy says back, verse seven. Jesus said, "You want to get well?" And the man says, "Sir, I have no one to help me get into the pool when the water is stirred." He didn't ask that question.

"While I'm trying to get there, somebody else always gets ahead of me." Jesus didn't ask that. Now see his anger's coming out. He's missed out on all this stuff, but notice what he does. He blames other people. "There's nobody to put me in the water." Who are you blaming for your unhappiness? Who are you blaming for your unhappiness?

"Well, if my husband, if my dad, if my..." Who are you blaming? You are as happy as you choose to be because happiness is a choice. And if you're unhappy, it's your fault. Happiness is a choice. Nobody else can make you or keep you happy. Happiness is a choice.

I think I've been in 164 countries and I've spent a lot of time in little villages with the poorest of the poor people and they are extremely happy. Why? Because happiness is a choice. Who are you blaming for your unhappiness? And then not only did he blame others, he resented the success of other people.

He says, "You know, while I'm trying to get there, down to the pool..." By the way, where are you trying to get? Where's the "there" that you're trying to get there? "While I'm trying to get there," that goal that you've got in your life, he says, "somebody else always gets ahead of me." Have you ever felt that way?

I just can't get ahead. Everybody else gets ahead of me. Why'd he get the promotion? I should have got the promotion. Why'd she get engaged? I should have got engaged. How come they're having a baby? We've always wanted to have a baby. And you're not only blaming, you're resentful of the success of other people. This is not a very happy man here.

He doesn't have what he needs and he's responding with bitterness, anger, frustration, disappointment. And yet Jesus responds to him with mercy. And this is what he does in verse eight. Then Jesus simply said to the man, "Stand up. Stand up. Pick up your mat and start walking." When the man trusted Jesus—that's the key—when the man trusted Jesus, he was immediately able to walk again. What had become seemed impossible became possible when he trusted Jesus.

Guest (Male): Hey, did you know that the number one attribute of God in scripture is his mercy? It is, and he wants to be merciful too. Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." Matthew 5:7. Now you can dive deeper into our current study with Pastor Rick's Miracle of Mercy study kit.

Through his six-session video and workbook study, he'll show you the five marks of mercy. You'll discover how mercy forgives the fallen, helps the hurting, is patient with difficult people, is kind to its enemies, and cares for the lost. And as you grow in mercy, you'll experience the blessing God promises to the merciful.

The Miracle of Mercy six-session video study kit is perfect for both personal and small group study time. So please be sure to request your copy today when you give a gift to help Daily Hope share the certain hope of Jesus with people everywhere. That'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. 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.