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. And 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. All right, let's get to it. Here's part one of a message called "Five Daily Habits for Happiness."

Rick Warren: If you pull out your message notes and if you'll open your Bible to Philippians chapter three. We are continuing in the series that I started a few weeks ago on the habits of happiness as we go through the book of Philippians. In chapter three, Paul gives us another five habits of happiness. Now, all five of these you can do on a daily basis. All five of these habits you can do during a 15-minute quiet time where you spend alone with God. And if you will build these five habits into your life, the happiness in your life will exponentially grow and the unhappiness in your life will decline.

Philippians chapter three. Let's get right into it. The first habit that Paul models here in the first few verses is this: every day, relax in God's grace. That's the first thing you need to do if you want to be a happy person. Every day, relax in God's grace. Don't try to earn God's approval, don't try to earn his love, don't try to earn his recognition. You don't earn it. God is love, and God loves you unconditionally.

Now, let me explain the difference between religion and a relationship. Religion is what you do for God. Relationship is what God has done for you. Jesus did not come to give you religion. God isn't interested in religion. God is interested in you having a relationship. And the Bible is all about what God has done for you and what Jesus did for you on the cross, not about what you do for God. And so Jesus says, "I don't want your religion, I want a relationship." You will lose your happiness every time you forget this. Every time you think, "I've got to earn God's smile, I've got to earn God's love, I've got to do something really cool to make God love me." No, you don't.

Philippians chapter 3 verse 3: "We Christians glory in what Jesus has done." Circle that: "has done," past tense. On the cross, Jesus said, "It is finished." "I've done it all. What Jesus Christ has done for us, and we realize that we are helpless to save ourselves." We're not trying to earn our way to heaven, we're not trying to work our way to heaven, we're not trying to prove we're good enough to get to heaven because none of us are good enough to get to heaven. It's only God's grace. You need to relax in God's grace. I love the Message paraphrase of this verse, which says, "We couldn't carry this off by our own effort and we know it." I like that.

Now, one of the things that will rob you of your happiness is what I call the first trap, and I'm going to give you five traps out of this passage today. And the first trap that will take away your happiness is legalism. Legalism is the attitude that I have to prove my love to God. Legalism is trusting in what I do for God instead of what Jesus did for me. Trusting that I have to do rules and regulations and rituals and restrictions and all these things in order to prove myself worthy. That's called legalism. In other words, "If I just keep the Ten Commandments, then God will let me into heaven." Well, number one, you can't even name them, much less keep them. Okay? So, you're not keeping the Ten Commandments. I'm telling you right now, you're not. You've broken them.

What about adultery? The Bible says if you've ever lusted in your heart, then that's like adultery. So guess what? You're guilty of them all. And the Bible says if you hate somebody in your heart, it's like murder. So you're guilty of all of them, and that's why you need grace. So relax. Relax in God's grace. Now, Paul says in this passage in verses three to six, he says, "Before I became a Christian, I was a legalist." In fact, he says, "I was a professional legalist. I was trying to earn heaven through rituals, through my race, through religion, through rules, and through reputation." And he goes, "It wasn't working." He said if anybody was a legalist, I was. In fact, in verse six, he says this: "In legalistic righteousness, I was faultless." In other words, for a guy who was a rule-keeper, he said, "I did it. I kept all the rules and I was a good man."

By the way, how do you know when you are a legalist? Here's how. The telltale sign is this: you are judgmental of other people. You are harsh on other people. Anytime you see somebody who's judgmental of others, critical of others, the reason why is, "I don't feel good about me because I know I'm not measuring up, so I certainly don't want you feeling good about you, so subconsciously I'm critical of everybody else because I don't think I am accepted and loved."

How do you know when you're living by grace? You're gracious to others. When somebody is living by grace, they go, "Hey, God's forgiven me, I'm going to forgive you. God's cut me some slack, I'm going to cut you some slack. I'm getting by simply on the grace of God, so I'm going to give you grace." The more legalistic you are, the more critical and the more judgmental you are. And the more you live by God's grace, the more gracious you are to other people. And legalism is a—it'll suck your life dry of happiness. It sucks churches dry of happiness. You ever go to a legalistic church? That church is not happy. There's no joy in a legalistic church. Everybody's just there out of duty, out of guilt, out of shame, and things like that.

Verse nine, Paul says this: "I no longer count on my own goodness and I no longer count on my own ability to obey God's laws. Instead, I trust Christ to save me. I relax in God's grace. For God's way of making us right with himself is through faith." In other words, the way you earn the smile of God is you don't earn it. It's not your performance; it's his pardon. It's what he's already done. So you get up in the morning and say, "Lord, I just want to remind myself I'm completely forgiven. Woohoo!" Is that a way to start the day? You think you'll be happier if you start the day going, "Everything I've ever done wrong is completely forgiven." Is that a good thing to start the day with? Yes, that's a habit of happiness. I relax in God's grace.

One of my other mentors was the founder of modern management, Peter Drucker. And I asked Peter one day, I said, "Peter, what was it that caused you to finally step across the line and invite Jesus Christ into your heart?" And he told me this—he was in his nineties by this time—he said, "Rick, the day that I finally understood the true meaning of grace, I realized I'm never getting a better deal." And it's true. And why would anybody reject the grace of God? In the Bible, the word joy is the Greek word "chara." And in the Bible, the word grace is the word "charis." They come from the same root word, "chara" and "charis." We get the word charisma from that word, or charismatic. Joy and grace go together. The more grace you live by, the more joy you're going to have in your life. That's the first habit: relax in God's grace.

Now, in the next verse, verse seven, we get the second daily habit of happiness and it's this: remember what matters most. Every day, I need to remember what matters most. When I get up in the morning, I need to remind myself what counts and what doesn't count. I should not be distracted by what's inconsequential in life, what's petty, what's trivial, what really doesn't matter, what's unimportant. Now, why is this an important habit? Have you realized or have you noticed how easy it is to lose your joy over some small thing? It's usually the small irritations that cause you to lose your happiness. Somebody cuts you off in the middle of the road, you're trying to make a turn and they won't let you do it, you lose your happiness. Or you're having a bad hair day, or the clothes you put on don't fit anymore, that'll cause you to lose your happiness real quick. Okay? And it's the little things. And yet, do those things really matter in life? No, they do not.

And so if you want to be a happy person, Paul says in Philippians three, you need to remember what matters most, not worry about all the stuff you used to think was so important before you knew Jesus Christ. Verse seven, he says this: "All those things that I once thought were so important to me, I now consider worth nothing because of Christ. All those things that I thought were so important to me, I now consider worth nothing now that I know Christ."

What was the most important thing to you before you met Jesus Christ? Some would say work, yes. Some would say career. Some would say making money. Maybe it was getting a date. Maybe it was being popular. Maybe it was having security. It could be being famous or, making a whole lot of money. Paul says, "You know what? All those things, they're just not that important to me anymore. I'm not running the rat race because even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat." And I don't need to worry about keeping up with the Joneses because they just refinanced for bankruptcy.

So, he says all those things I used to think were so important—being cool, looking cool, having the goods, looking good, feeling good—he goes, that's just not that important anymore because it's not going to matter in the long scheme of things. He says the stuff doesn't matter anymore. How do you know if you've really been saved? How do you know if you've been saved by Jesus Christ? I'll tell you how you know. Your values change. If your values haven't changed, you haven't been saved because you can't have somebody as big as God come into your life and it not change you. It changes your values. All those things I used to think were cool, I don't care about them anymore.

I gave my life to Christ as a young man and I actually remember one time a young guy coming up to me, and he was a friend of mine, and he was really into the drug scene. Every weekend he'd go party hardy, he'd get drunk, he'd take a lot of drugs, he'd sleep with a different girl every weekend. He was living a pretty wild life. And he came to me and he said, "You know, Rick, the problem with you is as a Christian, you're restricted. You don't get to have any fun. You've got all these 'don'ts' in your life. You're restricted."

And I looked at him and I said to this friend of mine, I said, "You know what? I take all the drugs I want to take. I get drunk all I want to get drunk. I party wild as much as I want to party wild. And I sleep with as many women as I want to sleep with. Here's the difference. Jesus Christ changed my 'want to.' I don't want to do those things. I don't want to do those things. They are cheap thrills. Are you kidding me? I'm on a permanent high, and I don't have a hangover from it."

Because all those things that used to seem so cool, so important, so valuable, really, they're worthless. They don't matter. Now, here's the problem. When you first become a Christian, you realize that. But as time goes on, the world around you tries to brainwash you back into thinking the stuff that's not important is important, like having the newest pair of shoes and having the newest clothes and things like that. Because here's the trap. You might write this down. The trap that's going to keep you from this habit is pop culture, the culture around us. Because every day, there are thousands of advertising messages that say you aren't worth anything until you've got our product. And this should matter to you. And even television news makes every item sound like it's the most important thing of the day. It's not.

Nothing is as worthless as yesterday's newspaper. That's why you line the kitty thing with it. Okay? Because the news is over, it's not worth anything today. And the world tells you because it's immediate and it's current, it's important. No, the urgent and the immediate and the relevant are not necessarily important. So what you have to ask yourself is this question on everything: how much will this matter in a hundred years? How much will this matter in five years? How much of what I'm worrying about right now is going to matter tomorrow?

You see, it's not going to matter tomorrow, much less for eternity. You need to live in light of eternity. Everybody and everything around you is constantly telling you that the petty and the trivial is important. And America and around the world, we're on trivial pursuit. We're living for things that aren't going to matter. And so to be counter-culture, which means you're going to be a whole lot happier than everybody else, is you've got to focus not on what's current, but what's eternal, and live in light of eternity, and realize that if this isn't going to matter in eternity, why am I worried about it? Why am I stressed out? Why am I anxious? Why am I fearful? Why am I so uptight over this? It's not even going to matter next week, much less for eternity. So the second habit is every day remember what matters most. All the things I used to think were important, says they're worth nothing because of Christ.

Look at verse eight. He says it again. Paul says, "Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." He says that's the most important thing. He says, "I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ and become one with him." Circle the word "garbage." That's an interesting word because the Greek word, the translators were kind of scared of telling you what the word really means. That's the politically correct word. That's the polite word. The proper word for that Greek word there where it's translated "garbage," how shall I say it? Manure. What Paul is saying here, he said, after I became a Christian, after I began a relationship with Jesus, I stopped the religion thing, I started the relationship thing. He says all that other stuff I used to worry about, get uptight at, get stressed at, he said, "It isn't worth poop."

Jim Elliott, the famous missionary, said, "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep for that which he cannot lose." Yeah, I'm giving up a lot of things here that other people think are really important right now. They don't mean anything to me because I'm gaining eternal life and rewards in heaven that I cannot lose.

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. Here's Rick to tell you more.

Rick Warren: If you'd like to learn more about the habits of happiness, I've got a new resource to help you. It's called the "Habits of Happiness" guided experience book. In this resource, you're going to learn how seeing things from God's perspective will help you develop the biblical habits of happiness. And you're going to discover how happiness runs deeper than any circumstance or any feeling or any relationship. Now, I'm excited because this book is filled with biblical truth, practical lessons, application exercises, and a lot of space for you to write down your responses to what God is teaching you. It's a really powerful workbook and it's a comprehensive study tool I believe is going to help you grow to your next level of spiritual maturity.

Guest (Male): 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.