Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

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's 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.

And 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. 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. 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, and 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. And here's the final part of a message called Easter Means It's a New Day of Mercy.

Rick Warren: We know that on earth, not everybody gets healed. Not every prayer gets answered. That's on my list of questions to ask Jesus when I get to heaven. I don't know that sometimes what I've prayed for people they got better, and I've prayed for some people and they died. I don't know. I don't know why. All I do know is this: this is earth, not heaven.

In heaven, everything is perfect. On earth, nothing is perfect. In heaven, there's no sadness, sorrow, sickness, sin, suffering. On earth, we've got all of that. And that's why we are to pray, "Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," because in heaven, God's will is always done and on earth, it's almost never done.

Somebody says, "If I go out here and I got drunk and I had an accident and killed somebody," and people say, "That must be God's will." That's not God's will. That's my will. I made a stupid choice. I mean, people all the time say, "Why doesn't God just get rid of all the evil in the world?" Fine, kill us. Who do you think does evil?

It'd be very easy for God to get rid of all the evil in the world: take away our freedom of choice because the fact is, a lot of times, I'm selfish. A lot of times, I'm mean. A lot of times, I'm only thinking of me. A lot of times, I couldn't care less about you, and you do the same thing too, and we hurt each other intentionally and unintentionally.

God could easily get rid of all the evil in the world by taking away our freedom of choice and making us all puppets, but he wants us to choose to love him, a voluntary choice, not be a puppet. And so, I know that we live with imperfection. I know that many godly people live with chronic pain. But I do know this, and I want you to write this down, and I've seen it in hundreds of thousands of cases.

I do know this: that when I ask for God's help, God's mercy makes the impossible possible. He can do things that I cannot do. He has power I don't have. He has resources I have never even thought of. And he makes the impossible seem possible. He makes it possible. What's the impossible problem in your life?

You say, "Man, that one's never going to happen. I've been waiting by the pool for 38 years and still don't have a husband." There's a double meaning in "pool" right there. Well, if it hadn't happened by now, it ain't going to happen. Anytime you use the word impossible, listen for laughter from heaven because it's not in God's book.

The Bible says this in Luke 18: "What is impossible with men," this is Jesus talking, "what is impossible with men is possible with God." Now, that problem you think is impossible in your life, sometimes God doesn't remove it, but he gives you supernatural power to handle it. Some problems in life you're going to have the rest of your life. They're just not going to go away, and you're just going to have to learn to manage them.

But God will give you the power to make the impossible possible, and you'll be able to handle it. Why didn't God just take away all of our problems? Because God's more interested in your character than he is in your comfort. The comfort comes in heaven. But right now, you're in school and God wants you to grow up, and some things you only learn through tough times like persistence, determination, diligence, patience, things like that.

If you always got your way, you'd never learn patience. God wants to grow character in your life. But what's impossible with men is possible with God. Now, I want to be clear. As a pastor, I love you, I care about you. My job as a pastor is to be your spiritual coach, help you make smart decisions, help you think through the decisions of your life.

And I want to be clear with you. Some of you haven't yet stepped across the line and opened your life and committed your life to Christ. You're thinking about it. That's okay. Take the time to make the smart decision. But I will tell you this. If you open your life to Jesus Christ, you give your life to God and say, "God, I want to go with your plan from now on instead of my plan," you're not going to have a problem-free life.

And anybody who tells you that is lying to you. A follower of Jesus has the exact same problems as a nonbeliever. The exact same problem. The difference is, we have a power that comes from God to handle it in ways that we could never handle on our own. And you don't get that power until you accept the mercy of God in your life.

So I have the same problem, I just have a power and an energy that allows me to handle stuff in far greater ways, and that's what he wants to do in your life. But God does promise you this. Look at this next verse. It's from the book of 2nd Peter. And here's a promise from God to you. "As you get to know Jesus better, he will give you through his great power everything you need for living a truly good life."

Now, circle "everything you need." Notice it says if you trust Jesus Christ with your life, he will give you everything you need for a good life. It doesn't say everything you greed. It doesn't say everything you want. I mean, you might want a gold-plated Bentley. God's not going to give that to you. You're going to have to buy that one on your own.

But he says, "I will give you everything you need for living a truly good life." And that is a promise of God. And when I don't have what I need, when I give myself to the mercy of God, he makes the impossible possible. Now, let's look at a third way real quick. And this is a problem that all of us have, and it is the problem of fear.

Everybody has secret fears. You have secret fears and you don't want anybody else to know about them. Now, my fears are perfectly reasonable, logical, and rational. Your fears are dumb. That's always what we feel. And we always try to talk our spouse out of their fears because we don't have them.

But our fears are perfectly normal, make a lot of sense, and you ought to be fearful about this too. Now, there is one fear that is universal among everybody, men and women, all ages, and it is the fear of death. And so write this third thing down: I need God's mercy when facing death. Now, only a fool would go all the way through life unprepared for what you know is inevitable.

Death is universal. The last time I checked, the mortality rate in the world is still 100%. We're all going to die at some point. Death is inevitable. Death is unpredictable. You don't know what's going to happen. And without faith, it's fearful. I'm not afraid of dying. I haven't been afraid of dying for decades.

But if you don't know God and you don't have made peace with God and you don't have the mercy of God in your life, you're going to be fearful about death. You probably don't even like to talk about it. In Luke chapter 23, we have the story of a dying man, and it's actually the story of a thief dying on the cross besides Jesus.

You remember that when Jesus was nailed to a cross, they nailed him between two criminals. We don't know anything about their lives except that they were evidently lifelong criminals, had committed a capital offense, and were given the death penalty. So Jesus is dying between two criminals.

One of these criminals turns to Jesus and ridicules him and puts him down and blasphemes him, and the other guy turns to Jesus and asks for mercy. Here's the story. "One of the criminals being executed on the cross beside Jesus ridiculed him saying, 'If you're supposed to be the Messiah,'" you know, the Savior of the world, "'why don't you save yourself? And by the way, us too.'"

Now, by the way, Jesus is not going to save himself because he didn't come to earth to save himself. He came to save us. And so he's not going to save himself. He's going to hang there in pain and die for my sins and for your sins. He didn't come to save himself. Certainly, Jesus could have taken himself off the cross. He created the universe.

He could have done that, but it was not nails that held him to the cross. It was love. Love for you. And he said, "If you're supposedly the Messiah, save yourself and us too." But the second criminal, this is the guy on the other side, rebuked the first guy and said, "Man, don't you even fear God when you're dying? We deserve to die for our evil deeds, but this man hasn't done anything wrong."

Now, he says, "Buddy, don't you realize the seriousness of your situation? You are about to go face to face with God in a matter of seconds. You're in your dying minute and you're going to blaspheme, you're going to put down Jesus Christ? Buddy, do you not realize what's about to happen?"

The reason why a lot of people dismiss God, make fun of God, reject God, or just live their life ignoring God is because in their heart of hearts, they think death is the end. That's it. It's over. There's nothing to it. And that's it. But they're wrong. There is life after death. You say, "How do you know that?"

Because Jesus proved it. You say, "How do you Rick, how do you know? Why do you believe in life after death?" Because I'm betting my life that Jesus Christ wasn't a liar. What are you betting your life on? "Well, I just think it just ended." Oh, you're just betting your life on a supposition? That's a pretty big gamble, buddy, to be wrong for all of eternity to think it just ends at death and then realize, oh, it didn't end.

Can I have a mulligan? Can we do a do-over here? A little late now, bud. Sorry. One day you're going to stand face to face before God and you're going to give an account of your life. You can run from God the rest of your life, but you can't run from him anymore. I mean, you can ignore him all your life.

But one day, you're going to see him face to face. Death is the start of eternity. You're going to spend more time on that side of death than you do on this side. You get 60 years, 80 years, maybe at the most 100 years. It's not very much on this side of eternity. You're going to spend trillions and trillions and trillions of years in eternity.

Now, this guy says, "We deserve to die for what we've done." There's a word for that. It's called confession. He's not saying, "Hey, you got the wrong guy here, you killed the wrong guy, I'm innocent." He's saying, "We deserve to die." But he says, "This man between us, this Jesus Christ here, he has never done anything wrong."

Now, I looked up that word anything. It means "oudés" in Greek. Nada, nothing, zero, zip, no way, never ever, nothing. Have you ever met anybody in your life that you could say that about? She's never done anything wrong in her life. No. You can't say that about your mom or dad or your brother or sister.

You can't say it about yourself. Why? Because there's only one perfect person in the universe. It's God. He's the only perfect one, which is why you need Jesus Christ to get to heaven because you need a perfect Savior to get into a perfect place. Heaven is perfect, and I'm not. There's no way I can get to heaven on my own effort.

I'm never going to be perfect. And if God let imperfect people into a perfect heaven, it wouldn't be perfect anymore. So somehow, I've got to get in on somebody's perfect ticket. That's why Jesus came to earth to be the Savior. And so this guy turns, this criminal turns to Jesus, he's dying on the cross in his last few seconds.

And in verse 42, then he said to Jesus, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." That's all he says. And Jesus replied, "I guarantee you that today you will be with me in paradise." Hello, friend, that's last-minute mercy. That's getting in by the skin of your teeth in the last few seconds of your life.

He simply says, "Jesus, remember me." Two words: "mnēsthēti mou" in Greek. Remember me. Now, what's implied in these words? I can't save myself. I've made a mess of my life. I've wasted a lot of time. It's getting pretty late. I'm not going to blame anybody else. I can't say I'm better than so-and-so because I'm not perfect.

I'm a lot of things I've messed up in. He's hanging there on the cross with no hope, and he throws himself on the mercy of God and he says, "Lord, remember me. Remember me." That's it. That's all he's going to say. That's the shortest salvation prayer in history. Two words: "remember me."

Now, let me tell you something, you guys. There are some churches you can go to and they're going to tell you that you have to have a certain script and say certain words and recite certain things in order to get into heaven, and they've got their theological terms and you got to pray a certain prayer a certain way. This guy just goes, "Lord, remember me," and Jesus goes, "That's good enough. See you in heaven."

That's called mercy because it's not about what you say, it's about humility. There's only one thing that will keep you out of heaven: your pride. Your pride. Your pride will keep you out of heaven. Your unwillingness to accept the mercy of God because that's the only way you're going to get there. You're never going to get there by being good enough.

It's only by the mercy of God. If you could get to heaven without Jesus dying for you, God wasted a lot of energy. There was no other way. There was no other way. And so he believes he's God. He says, "Remember me when you come into your kingdom." He's saying, "This guy's not a poser. This guy's not a fake. This guy is not an imposter. He's the real deal. This is God. This is the Son of God dying here between us."

That's interesting to me. Everybody in Jerusalem by this time knows Jesus can do miracles. He's been doing them for years: raising people from dead, healing the sick, blind. And here's the guy on the cross. He doesn't ask Jesus to take away his pain, which he could have. He doesn't ask Jesus to keep from dying, which he could have.

He just says, "Remember me when you get in your kingdom." He realized his greatest need was forgiveness for his sins, not relief of his pain. Now, I know some of you hear this and go, "This is a great idea. You can do it at the last second. That's what I'm going to do. Okay. I'm going to go out and live for myself, make a ton of money, be a selfish and self-centered, and sow my wild oats, and in the last second of my life, I'm going to go 'remember me.'"

That's a really dumb idea. I mean, in the first place, what if you get Alzheimer's for 10 years and you can't remember anything? Okay, a little too late then, bud. Or or you go out and, you know, you get hit by a semi-Mack truck on the train and you go, "Oh, I was going to say it next Thursday."

But really, it doesn't even—it's not even rational when the God who created you and loves you and has a plan for your life offers you mercy now, why would you say, "I think next week"? What's the logic in that one? There's only one thing that's called: pride. It's arrogance, it's ego, and that's the thing that will keep you out of heaven, rejecting the mercy of God.

What happens when I accept God's mercy? When I say, "God, I admit it, I've messed up and I've missed out on a lot of stuff." Well, God's mercy will save me for eternity. You might write that down. When I come to God humbly and say, "God, I need your mercy," God's mercy will save me for eternity.

This is what Jesus promised. Jesus replied, "I guarantee you that today you're going to be with me in paradise." He said it's immediate. Today you go straight to heaven if you've accepted the mercy of God. He said, "You will," it's certain, "be with me," it's a relationship, "in paradise," it's a place forever.

Here's the good news. Let me wrap it up. You're made by God to last forever, and he wants you in his forever family, but you have to ask. Look at this verse. This is what Easter's all about. This is why we're celebrating it. Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, even though he dies, will live again."

I'm betting my life that Jesus Christ is not a liar. What are you betting your life on? Now, if Jesus had not risen from the dead, I would have no reason, no valid logical reason to believe that I would be raising from the dead one day, that there would be life after death. But because he did it, if he raised himself, then I believe he can raise me.

What's the condition? What's the condition for receiving the mercy of God? You just ask. Look at the next verse. Acts 2: "Anyone who asks for mercy from the Lord shall have it and shall be saved." You want to be saved? You ask for the mercy from the Lord. Now, circle the word anyone. Doesn't matter what your background is, what your race is, what your ethnic group is.

Doesn't matter what you've done or who you've done it with or how long you've done it. Doesn't matter what your religious background is. You may be Baptist or Buddhist or Methodist or Mormon or Muslim or Hindu or Jewish or atheist or agnostic or no religious background at all. It really doesn't matter. He says anyone who asks for mercy from the Lord shall have it and shall be saved.

Do you realize for your entire life, God has been preparing you for this very moment? This moment right now. Before you were born, he knew that on Easter, you'd be sitting in Saddleback Church just long enough that he could say this to you. I have loved you all your life. I made you, I have a plan for your life. I created you and I want to show you mercy and kindness, even the places where you've missed out and you've messed up.

And I've been waiting, waiting to do this in your life. God's message to you this Easter is the last verse on your outline: "The Lord is waiting to show you how kind he is and to have mercy on you. The Lord always does what's right and he blesses those who trust him." So I want us to close with a prayer to receive God's mercy.

And if you have never ever done this, I highly recommend you pray this prayer. Let's bow our heads. Now, it really doesn't matter what the words you say are. As I said, it's more a matter of humility. But as I say this words, you can just say, "Me too, God. I agree with what Rick's saying," and make this your prayer.

You might just start off by saying, "Dear God, dear God, I need your mercy." Just say it in your mind. "I need your mercy. I've messed up, I've missed out, and I know that one day, I'm going to die and face you. And I admit that for much of my life, I've ignored you. I have loved other things more than I have loved you, God. And I've lived my life by my plan, not yours. I want that to change starting now."

"Jesus Christ, thank you for being so merciful. I know that I don't deserve your forgiveness. I don't understand it all, but thank you for dying on the cross for me. I know that only your mercy could save me. I could never be a good enough to get into a perfect place like heaven. So just like that thief on the cross, I humbly say to you: remember me. Remember me."

"I ask you to save me. Save me not just from hell, but save me from hell on earth. Save me from the hurts and the habits and the hang-ups that mess up my life. Save me from the mistakes and the sins and the attitudes that just keep causing me to stumble over and over in the same way. I thank you for your mercy and I humbly ask you to accept me into your family. And I do this because of what Jesus Christ did for me on the cross and at Easter. Amen."

You know, if you just prayed that prayer for the very first time, or you just recommitted your life to Jesus again today, would you let me know about it? There's something real about sharing your commitment. So write me, Rick@PastorRick.com, and say, "Rick, I prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ," and I'll send you some material that'll help you on your journey with Jesus, and I'll also pray for you. God bless you and Happy Easter!

Guest (Male): What a fantastic message from Pastor Rick. You know, Daily Hope is changing lives every day. Here's Pastor Rick with a letter from one of our listeners.

Rick Warren: I want to thank all of you who've taken the time to write me and to share your story. I absolutely love these stories. Your letters and your notes really encourage me. Here's a note from a listener that I just want to share with you.

It says, "Pastor Rick, I want to thank you for your ministry of the Daily Hope podcast. They've been especially helpful as my wife and I are working through a painful time in our marriage and healing in our relationship. It's a blessing to be challenged to love the Jesus-kind of love and to build up trust once again where it's been broken. You know, as I work through a very busy time of year, I stream your podcast and find myself praying and nodding all day long. Now, I hope you're nodding in agreement, not nodding off in sleep. Your preaching speaks directly to my heart and I'm praying for the courage to rebuild the trust and love, to love her the way that God built me to love her. Thanks again for your work and the transformative change it brings out. I truly don't know where I'd be without Daily Hope podcast. Sincerely, Nathan."

Thanks for writing, Nathan. I want you to know that I'm going to be praying specifically for you and for your wife and for your marriage. It means a lot to me to know that these broadcasts are helping you through a difficult time.

Guest (Male): Thanks so much, Rick. And if you'd like to let Rick know how much this broadcast has meant to you, how it's blessed you, please send him an email at Rick@PastorRick.com. That's Rick@PastorRick.com. Rick looks so forward to reading those emails. Be sure to join us next time as we look into God's word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Daily Hope Ministries and your generous financial support.