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. And now here's part two of a message called how much you matter to God.

Pastor Rick Warren: Now there's a third thing that we lose when we're spiritually lost and it's found in the story of the lost coin and it is this: I lose my potential. When I'm disconnected from God, that's what it means to be spiritually lost. When I'm disconnected from God, I lose my potential. My potential to do great and good things in the world are dramatically limited when I'm disconnected from God.

Now I'm holding right now an American quarter. This coin right here during its lifetime will pass through thousands and thousands of hands. In fact, scientists tell us the dirtiest thing you own is money because no telling how many people have handled it and all of the places that it's been. They've even done some tests and sometimes find actually drug powder on coins that have been passed through for drug sales and things like that.

Now this coin, as I said, will be passed through thousands of hands and it has great potential for good. Coins put together can do a lot of good. I mean this coin and given enough of them you could feed a family with these coins. You could build a business with these coins. You could save a life. You could create beauty. You could pay for enjoyable experiences. You could leave a legacy. There's a lot of good things you could do with these coins.

But it can't do any of those good things if it's lost. If it's lost, it can't do anything good and make a good impact because it's just lost. Now if I lose this coin, a lost coin isn't worthless, it's just wasted. Do you understand the difference? It's still worth a quarter, twenty-five cents. It hasn't lost any of its value, but it has lost its potential to do good and it has lost its ability to make a difference. Its worth is wasted when it is lost.

God made you to do great things, far greater than you could ever possibly imagine. If God showed you what he could do with your life if you gave him one hundred percent of your life and lived for him all the time, it would blow your mind. Because you have listened to so many tapes from your past where people said, "You can't do that, you shouldn't even try that, who do you think you are, what makes you think you could do that?"

Everything in society has told you to limit your vision, to limit your dreams, to limit your expectations, to not expect so much, and on and on. You have no idea what God could do through your life if it was completely placed in his hands. And then he could do all kinds of things. Only your creator knows fully what you're capable of. You don't even know fully what you're capable of because there's parts of you you don't even know about that you don't even understand.

But what I'm saying is that if you're disconnected from God, you are spiritually lost, then you lose all that potential. You can't be what God wants you to be if you're not even connected to God. You'll miss what God has planned for your life and that's a wasted life. The Bible says it like this in 1 Corinthians 2:9, "No one has ever seen or heard or even imagined—in other words, you can't even think of how great this is—even imagined the wonderful things that God has prepared and arranged for those who love him."

He's not just talking about an eternity, he's not just talking about heaven. He's talking about here and now. You can't even imagine what God could do with your life if it was totally given to him every moment of your life. You lose your direction, you lose your protection, and you lose your potential. Number four, the fourth thing I lose when I'm spiritually lost is I lose my happiness.

We find this in the story of the lost son, these three stories that Jesus told one right after another. Bam, bam, bam. And when the younger son chooses to rebel against his father, "I'm leaving home, I'm striking out on my own, I want half of my family inheritance now, I'm not going to wait, I'm impatient." Well, the Bible says that he went out and he wasted it and then he lost all that God wanted to do in his life and he lost his happiness.

Luke 15:14, "The younger son wasted all he'd been given and eventually he became miserable and lonely." Circle that word "miserable". Eventually he loses it all. Now why was he miserable? Well, I'll tell you this: nothing destroys happiness faster than conflict in relationships. And he had a conflict with his dad. Let me say that again. Nothing will destroy your happiness faster than conflict in relationships.

It's almost a cliché when we talk about Hollywood that you can find all kinds of people there who are rich and famous and miserable. Why? Because many of them have not learned how to build lasting relationships. And they go through serial marriages one after another and relationship one after another and on and on. They don't know how and they have conflict in their relationships because when you're out of fellowship with God, you're going to be out of fellowship with other people.

When you're in harmony with God, it gives you the peace to be in harmony with other people. And you can't be in harmony with other people long-term without being in harmony with God. So this creates strained relationships. This creates disharmony. It creates tension in our lives. It creates conflict, resentment, guilt, regrets, all these things in our relationships. You see, you weren't designed to live in conflict with God.

When God your creator made you, he wired you to be at peace with God. So when I thumb my nose to God, say, "God, I'm going to be my own god, I'm going to do my own thing, I'm going to go my own way, I'm going to rebel just like the son did against his loving father, and I'm going to go and do whatever I want to do and live my way instead of living your way," that creates conflict between you and your creator and your body does not handle that very well at all.

Do you feel close to God or do you feel separated from God? Somebody saying, "Well, Rick, I used to feel close to God but I don't feel close to God like I used to." Well, guess who moved? God didn't move. He's the unmovable. You moved. I've said this many times that you're as close to God as you choose to be. And if you're far away from God, he didn't move, you did. And you chose to move away from God. So I lose my happiness.

Then finally, the fifth thing I lose is I lose my home in heaven. When I'm spiritually lost, I lose my home in heaven. Now God allows people to rebel and to disobey him on earth. He gives us a free choice. God gives you the freedom to say, "I don't want to worship God, I don't want to love God, I don't want to live for God." You don't have to live for God. You can live for yourself the entire rest of your life.

You don't have to love God. You can just love yourself or anything else you want to love. You don't have to love God because if God forced you to love him, it wouldn't be real love. So you were created in God's image and you were given the freedom to make choices. The problem is that's our greatest blessing and it's our greatest curse because we make bad choices all the time.

And we choose to love ourselves instead of love God and we choose to go our way instead of God's way and we choose to do our thing instead of God's thing. And God says, "Fine, do it." God is like Burger King, have it your way. Have it your way. And your entire life God will say to you, "Have it your way, have it your way." But one day you're going to die and you're going to stand before God and he's going to say, "Well, have it your way.

You clearly didn't want me in your life on earth, why in the world would you want me in your life in eternity? You clearly wanted to live separated from me on earth, so I guess you can live separated from me for the rest of eternity." It makes no sense to reject God's will, guidance, power, love, mercy in my life all my life and then want to die and go live in his house. That's illogical.

If you don't like God now, what would make you think you're going to love him in eternity? Heaven, God allows people to rebel, just like the son was allowed to rebel against his father. But there are no rebellion in heaven. There are no rebels against God in heaven. And so one of the things you lose is you lose your home in heaven. Preparing for the next life is the most important thing you can do in this life because you're going to spend far more time there than here.

Jesus said in Luke chapter 9 verse 25, "What good is it for a man to gain the whole world if he loses his soul?" What good is it if you get your picture on the cover of Time magazine or you make a million dollars or you reach every goal on your bucket list but you lose your soul because you're in rebellion against God? Let me ask you, what are you acting like is more important than eternity? What right now is more important to you than knowing and loving and pleasing God? Whatever that is is your god.

Now these three stories that I just shared with you that Jesus taught actually tell us the reasons or the ways people get spiritually lost. For instance, like sheep, we can be lost by nature. It just comes naturally. You don't have to do anything. If you're a human being, it's natural to get—we naturally go our own way. We naturally want to be our own boss, we naturally want to ignore God. By human nature we want to be God. And so we wander and we drift and we lose our direction. And so like sheep, we can be lost by nature.

But like coins, in the lost coin, we can be lost by circumstances too. This one comes in too. In other words, here's a coin and it inadvertently gets kicked off the table, knocked off the table. Nobody meant to, but it got knocked off the table. And of course in those days they didn't have tile floors or wooden floors, often it was dirt floor with straw on it. And if you knock a coin off a table, how are you going to find it in a floor full of straw?

That might take a long time. And so it's difficult to find. But circumstances can knock you off the table. Has an unfortunate circumstance separated you from God? You know because of what we do through the peace plan, I'm often on the scene at some of the major disasters like Katrina and the earthquakes and fires and floods and stuff like that. And what I've noticed is that when a disaster hits an area, some people turn to God and some people turn away from God.

I don't know why, but it just happens. Some people turn to God and find comfort, some people turn away from God. Why they turn away from God I don't know because he's the only one who can give them comfort. But the point here is that coins can be knocked off and lost by circumstance. And you might have had some tough circumstances in your life that have caused you to turn your back on God. Don't do that. That's just not very smart.

Don't do that. There are outside forces around you that don't want you to be connected to God, that don't want you to know God. There are people, there are things, there's Satan, there's values, there are events that can pull you away from God. Then the third way we can be lost is like the son, and that's I can be lost by my own choices. He chose to leave home. He chose to turn his back on the loving father.

This young kid goes, "I think I know more than my dad does." A lot of people think, "I think I know more than God does. So I'm just going to do what I want. I know what will make me happy more than God does, so I'm going to do what I say to do rather than what God says to do." And we make choices. So I can lose all of these things. But the one thing all three stories point out is this, and write this down: I don't lose my value.

I may be lost spiritually, but I have not lost my value. I may have lost my direction, I may have lost my protection, I may have lost my potential, I may have lost my happiness, I may have lost my home in heaven, but I have not lost my value. And that's why Jesus said, "I've come to seek and to save that which is lost" because you are valuable. You're worth saving. You're worth Jesus said dying on the cross for. I came to seek and save those who are lost. As I said earlier, in art when you lose a masterpiece, the value actually goes up.

So here's the bottom line, what I'm saying so far. We're all disconnected from God. We're disconnected from God by our nature, by our circumstances, and by our choices. And when we're disconnected from God, we lose those five things that we just went over. But the good news is that because of God's mercy—and that's what we're talking about in this series—because of God's mercy, Jesus came to earth to seek and to save that which is lost. He's not waiting on us. He takes initiative to seek and to save the lost.

So what does God's mercy do when I'm lost? In other words, how does his mercy save me? You've heard this word many, many times: salvation. And you'll hear people say, "Well, I'm saved," or "Before I was saved," and you hear this phrase all the time. What does that mean to be saved? What is salvation? Well, it's a big word. And it's like a multi-faceted diamond and there are many, many, many, many other words in the Bible to describe salvation besides the word salvation.

The Bible uses words like forgiveness. The Bible uses words like freedom. The Bible uses words like fulfillment, pardon, peace, power, redemption. In these three stories, we find three additional words and they are the word rescue, recover, and reconnect. And each of these stories shows us an aspect of salvation. So why don't you write these down? What happens when I am saved? How does God's mercy save me and what happens?

Well, number one, salvation rescues me from myself. Salvation rescues me from myself. And you know what? I need to be saved from me more than I need to be saved from anything else. I don't know if you've realized this, but you are your biggest problem. Not other people, you are your biggest problem. I talked to a guy the other day and he'd been through eight or nine relationship failures.

And he said, "I don't understand." I said, "Well, what do you think's the common denominator in all those relationships? It's you, buddy." And you can go to another nine relationships and they're not going to work out any better until something changes in you. You are your own biggest problem. You always will be your biggest problem. Your own fears, your own anxieties, your own misconceptions, the stuff you believe about God, about you, about life, about others. You are your own biggest problem. And a lot of times we need a savior to save us from ourselves, to rescue us.

1 Timothy 2:5, the Bible says Jesus is the only one, the only one who can bring us to God. Nobody else can bring you to God. Did you see that? Jesus is the only one who can bring us to God. He became a human being—he was God, became a human being—and gave himself to rescue all of us. Circle the word rescue. Now I know some of you may be thinking, "Well, Rick, I don't really need to be rescued from anything." Oh really?

You have no pain in your life? Zero pain? No pain in your life, huh? You have no problems in your life, right? No problems? No, you have no pressure in your life. Your life is at total peace. You have no worries, you have no fears, you have no anxiety, you have no guilt, you have no regret, you have no resentment, you have no conflict. Oh no, you don't need any rescuing from anything except you're out of touch with reality.

And you do need help from that because you have problems that you can't solve. If you could've, you would've. But you can't, so you don't. And there things in you that you don't like about you and you'd like to change but you can't. You need to be rescued. And that's one facet of salvation. Jesus came to rescue all of us. Now some of the problems you have in your life, you say, "But Rick, I've tried and I've tried and I've tried and I've tried."

Some problems will never be solved by trying. They're only solved by trusting. They're not solved by trying—you trying harder. They're solved by you trusting God to do what he can do that you can't do in ways that you don't have and in manners and methods that you don't even have access to. Salvation rescues me from myself. You've got to trust, not try.

Psalm 50 verse 15, "Trust me," God says, "in your times of trouble and I will rescue you." There's that word again. "I will rescue you and you will give me glory." He will set you free. So like a shepherd going after the sheep, who takes initiative, salvation rescues me from myself. That sheep needs to be saved from itself. It just doesn't know enough how to get back to the pen on its own. Shepherd's got to get out there and say, "Come on little lammy, we're going back this way," and point them back in the right direction.

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.