Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

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. Let’s lean in for part one of a message called God’s Mercy and My Failures.

Rick Warren: Because we are an imperfect people and we live in an imperfect world, we all experience failures in life. The night that Jesus Christ was arrested and before he went to the cross, two of his best friends had massive failures. Judas had the failure of betrayal, and Peter had the failure of denial. They are actually the exact same sin. They both denied Christ, but they are just different expressions of it.

Judas rejected the mercy of God and later went out and killed himself, took his life. Peter accepted the mercy of God and later went out and became the leader of the church. What I want us to do this weekend is look at God’s mercy and your failures. I want us to learn some lessons from the life of Peter in this massive failure that he had.

I want us to ask three questions. First, what causes personal failure in your life? We’re going to look and actually see that three things that Peter had in his life are the three most common causes of failure in your life: financial failure, business failure, marriage failure, relational failure, and all the other areas of failure are caused primarily by three things. There are many other ones, but these are the three biggest ones.

Then we’re going to look at not only what Peter did wrong, but what he did right. How do you recover? What does God want you to do when you’ve had a failure in your life? Then, most important of all, we’re going to look at how does Jesus respond to our failures in how he shows us mercy.

So let’s get right into it. First, what causes our personal failure? Three things that Peter did wrong. The first thing, if you’re taking notes, is this: we overestimate our strengths. This is a big cause of failure in your life. When you think that you’re stronger than you really are, you think you can handle more and you think you can handle temptation.

The story begins in Matthew chapter 26. Now they’d just had the Last Supper where Jesus said, "I’m going to be arrested, I’m going to die, but three days later I’m going to come back to life and I’ll meet you in Galilee after that." In verse 31 of Matthew 26, Jesus says this to the disciples. Jesus said, "Tonight every one of you will desert me." He’s talking to the twelve, his small group that’s been with him for three and a half years. "Every one of you will desert me, for the scripture says that when the shepherd is killed, the sheep will be scattered. But after I’ve been raised from the dead, I will go ahead of you to Galilee and I’ll meet you there."

Then Peter boasted, "But Lord, even if everyone else fails you, I will never deny you." Jesus replied, "Peter, the truth is that before this night is over and before the rooster crows at dawn, you will deny knowing me three times." Peter insisted, "But Lord, I would never do that. Even if I have to die with you, I will never deny knowing you." And all the other disciples vowed the same thing. They all made the same. You may have never seen that, but they all said, "We would never do this, Lord."

Jesus said, "You’re going to do it tonight. When they take me and arrest me, you’re going to fall to pieces. You can count on it." Now notice three times Peter says, "I’ll never deny you, I would never do that, and I would never deny knowing you at all ever." This is overestimating our strengths.

A lot of businesses fail from overestimating their strengths. A lot of battles are lost because armies overestimated their strength. A lot of students flunk out of school because they overestimated their strength. A lot of spouses fall into affairs because they overestimated their strength. "I can handle this. It’s just a harmless little office flirt, nothing’s going to happen from it. I can handle this."

Beware of thinking this could never happen to me. First Corinthians 10:12 says this: "If you think 'I’m strong! I can handle this! I’d never fall for that temptation,' then be careful, for you could easily fall too." The Bible says one of the reasons we have so many failures in our lives is because we think we’re stronger than we really are. He says don’t be naive. Don’t be self-confident. None of us are exempt. Given the right situation, I am capable of any sin, and so are you.

The Bible says the heart is deceitful and we should stop kidding ourselves. Not only do we have failures in our life because we overestimate our strengths, but also we misuse our strengths. You see, you tend to guard your weaknesses. You know what you’re weak at. You go, "I’ve got to stay away from that because I’m weak at that."

But you don’t pay any attention to your strengths. When you don’t pay attention to your strengths, they become weaknesses too. In fact, write this down: an unguarded strength is a double weakness. The very area you think, "Man, there’s no way I’d mess up on that," you’re setting yourself up. The Bible says for failure there’s a sense of pride there.

The very area you may have just had a major victory may be exactly where you stumble next. Sometimes it’s after a big success that then you have the failure. Sometimes it’s after you’ve been through a very strong spiritual crisis and you came out of it and you actually made it that you let your guard down. Jesus was tempted in the desert immediately after his baptism, which was a big experience. Peter had his biggest failure, denying Christ, right after the Last Supper, which was a very intimate, important, powerful experience. So never presume that you know where temptation is going to come from. We overestimate our strength.

The second reason we fail, and this one’s even bigger: we fear the disapproval of others. You may not realize it, but this causes more problems in your life than almost anything else. We fear the disapproval of other people. Every time you make a decision based on what other people would think, you are sowing the seeds for failure in your life.

When you worry about what will other people think, when you fear disapproval, you go with the flow even when you know it’s the wrong thing. You go with the flow to go along to get along, and you become a people pleaser, and you become a coward, and you make commitments that you can’t possibly keep simply because you’re trying to make everybody happy.

We see this as the second reason Peter stumbled in his denials. In Matthew chapter 26, verse 58 and 69 and 70, the Bible says this. After they had left the Last Supper in the upper room, Peter followed Jesus at a distance. Now there’s a problem right there. That’s a major problem, following Jesus at a distance. But he followed Jesus at a distance to the courtyard of the High Priest’s palace, and he went in and he sat down with the guards, the Roman guards, to see what was going to happen to Jesus. He’s being arrested, he’s going to be tortured. Peter wants to know what’s going to happen.

As Peter was sitting in the courtyard, a servant girl came up to him and said, "You, I recognize you. You were with Jesus of Galilee, weren't you?" But standing there in front of everyone, now that’s the operational phrase, standing there in front of everyone, Peter denied it. "I don’t even know what you’re talking about," he said.

Think about this. Peter has just spent three and a half years with Jesus Christ, the Son of God. He’s lived with him for three and a half years, and the first time the rubber hits the road, he’s in the clinch. He’s in the crisis. He denies him. "I don’t even know what you’re talking about." He’s more worried about what other people think than he is about identifying with Christ.

How many times have you had the opportunity to admit you were a Christian at work or somewhere else and you said nothing because you were worried about what other people think? This thing actually happens in our life all the time, not just with witnessing about our faith, but in so many areas. You stumble and you have failures because you are thinking more about what somebody else thinks than about what God thinks.

He said, "I don’t even know the person." Peter struggled with people-pleasing his entire life. I could give you many examples in his life. One time Paul had to actually rebuke him and said, "Hey, Peter, you’re acting this way with this group over here and you act this way with this group over here. You’re trying to please everybody. You can’t do that."

Before we go on, let me just ask you to consider some questions personally. Are you following Jesus at a distance? You say, "I want to be a follower of Jesus, I just don't want to get too close to him. I don't want to be a radical. I don't want to be a fanatic. I want to follow Jesus at a distance." That is a setup for failure. It’s trying to have a foot in both worlds. It doesn't work that way.

The Bible tells us that Peter was just sitting around waiting for something to happen. Do you find yourself doing that, sitting around waiting for something to happen? That’s a setup for failure in your life. And then Peter was worried about what other people thought. Let me ask you this. Whose opinion matters to you more than God’s?

Whose opinion matters to you more than God? And you’re more worried about what they think than doing the right thing or saying the right thing. When you let anybody else be more important than God in your life, they become your God, and that’s called an idol, and that’s a setup for failure.

More important even than that, whose opinion matters to you more than God is this question: have you ever asked yourself why the opinions of other people matter so much to you? Have you ever even asked yourself that, why you cringe at any criticism? Why you hate it so much? Why it just turns your stomach in a knot if somebody disagrees with you? Have you ever asked yourself, why am I such a coward when it comes to being different? Why do other people’s opinions matter to me so very, very much that I’ll even do the wrong thing in order to please somebody maybe I don’t even like?

Have you even asked yourself why that happens, why it matters to you so much? Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. I say the unexamined life is a setup for failure because the part of me that causes me the most trouble is the part of me that I don’t know about. When I live in denial of an area of my life, I don’t know why I do what I do. If I’m in the dark about why I do what I do, I’m never going to grow out of it. I’m going to be stuck in that rut the rest of my life.

The same thing is true with you. The parts of you that cause you the most problem are the parts of you you’re afraid to look at. The parts of you that you are in denial about, the parts of you why you act the way you do. You maybe have never even asked, why am I so controlled by the opinions of other people? Why is it that I can’t handle the disapproval of anybody else? It just makes me sick. It upsets me. I’ll do almost anything to avoid somebody disapproving of me.

Why does that matter so much? Until you figure that out, you’re going to keep stumbling and stumbling and falling and failing in that area. The answer is the reason why you’re worried about the fear of disapproval is there’s always a wound behind that. A hidden wound is always behind the fear of the disapproval of other people. There’s something that triggers in your mind that fear, and it maybe was a rejection in the past. Maybe it was an unmet need that you had growing up. Maybe it was some hurt. Maybe it was a trauma that happened in your life, a pain or an injury, some kind of unmet need. But there’s some pain and it’s a deep pain and it’s so deep it’s hidden in you. I call it soul pain.

The worst kind of pain is soul pain. That’s the kind of pain you don’t even know why you’re in pain. You don’t even know why you do what you do. That soul pain is always related to your identity. If you don’t know who you are as a woman, if you don’t know who you are as a man, you will be manipulated by the disapproval of other people the rest of your life. You’ll find yourself backing down when people say, "Are you a Christian?" "Well, yeah, you know." And you won’t stand up for what you believe and you won’t do the thing that’s right because you don’t know who you are.

The Bible says in Proverbs 29:25, "It is a dangerous trap to be concerned with what others think of you, but if you trust the Lord, you will be safe." He said I’m already a goner. I’ve already fallen into the trap if I’m more worried about what other people think than doing the right thing or what God says is the right thing to do or say or think or feel.

Peter overestimated his strength. "I would never do this! It’ll never happen to me! I can handle this temptation. I know what I’m doing. I’m an adult. I can watch these kind of things and it doesn't bother me." Who are you kidding? "I can go to these kind of places and it doesn't bother me." Who are you kidding? "I can listen to this kind of stuff and it doesn't bother me." Who are you kidding? We all worry about air pollution, but you ought to worry about mind pollution, the stuff you allow in your brain. Garbage in, garbage out.

When you think you're strong and you’re not, when you’re worried about the approval of other people, you’re going to have failures in your life. Then there’s a third one that we see in Peter’s life, and this one’s the biggest of all. We fail, one of the causes of personal failure is we speak without thinking.

This may be the most common cause of all failure in your life. We put our mouth in motion before we put our mind in gear. We speak impulsively and we speak rashly and we speak in haste and we speak thoughtlessly. We don’t pause to consider the damage of what we’re about to say, what it’s going to do in the lives of other people or even in our own lives, and we just speak impulsively. The true reason is we don’t think rationally, we think emotionally.

Most of the time when you talk, you’re not thinking about what you’re talking about. You’re not thinking rationally. You’re not thinking, "What’s the unintended consequence of what I’m about to say?" You’re never stopping to say, "Lord, do you want me to say this?" You’re not asking God, "Is this the right thing to say at the right time in the right way?" No, you just say whatever you feel.

People say, "Well, I just say whatever I feel," as if that’s a mark of courage. No, that’s a mark of immaturity. Children do that. They say whatever they feel. Adults need to learn to have a governor on their mouth. So when you feel envy, you speak in envy. When you feel jealousy, you speak in jealousy. When you feel insecure, you say things that reveal your insecurity. When you’re frustrated and when you’re angry, you say things in anger. When you’re afraid, you say things in fear, not even thinking about the consequences. The reason why we have so many failures in our lives is because we speak without thinking.

Guest (Male): Wow, some powerful words from Pastor Rick. And now this really is one of my favorite parts of the broadcast: letters from our listeners. Here’s Rick.

Rick Warren: Hi everybody, today I want to share with you a special testimony from Delia. Delia says that Daily Hope has helped her with deep anxiety, but then she also shared about what happened as she began to share Daily Hope with her parents. And she writes this:

"Pastor Rick, a couple years ago I found myself pretty lost. My company had a merger, and all the senior management were changed overnight, and I was among them. At the same time, my long-term relationship ended. Then a couple months later, my father was diagnosed with colon cancer. I was in shock and I fell into a deep depression from all these changes. In fact, every day I experienced a panic attack. But then I found your teaching on Daily Hope, and it just seemed that you understood every emotion that I was going through, emotions that I didn’t even know how to verbalize to other people. But it was Daily Hope that helped me get out of bed every morning and gave me the strength to get through each day. Through your teaching on Daily Hope, Pastor Rick, I was able to experience God’s love and power like never before. You know, I even translated the Daily Hope devotional for my parents who don’t speak English, and they accepted Jesus too!"

That’s amazing, Delia. I’m so grateful for you and the team at Daily Hope because it has become the morning routine that I can’t live without. Now, Delia, you have been through more pain than I can possibly imagine, some very challenging times. I’m sorry, I really am. I’m sorry.

Sometimes we experience multiple traumas at the same time, and when that happens, that’s when we really need the hope of Jesus Christ. I’m so glad you experienced that, that you found God’s love and found God’s power. What a blessing that you translated the Daily Hope devotionals for your parents and then they accepted Christ. What—that’s amazing. I am celebrating with you that they are now in the family of God. It’s stories like yours that just encourage me and keep me going. So thanks so much for taking the time to write and share your story. By the way, anybody else listening, if you have a story, please write me. I would love to read it and love to share it if I can with others. You’ll encourage other people with your story. God bless you.

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.