Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Pastor Rick Warren: Hello everybody. This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren. I'm really glad you're here. Today, we're continuing our series from Psalm 23 called Living in the Goodness of God. It's all about how God's goodness meets you right where you are and brings hope even in difficult seasons. As we get started, here's part one of a message called, How God's Goodness Can Restore You.

Welcome to part four in this series through Psalm 23 that we're calling Living in God's Goodness. Now, you know, it would really be a waste of us for us to study Psalm 23 and not memorize it. Oh, it's only six verses, and you've heard it all your life. So, you need to get this down.

But I want you to take your outline and let's just read the first three verses aloud together, okay? The Lord is my Shepherd. Let's start over. The Lord is my Shepherd. I have everything I need. Now, stop there.

The original King James Version says, I shall not want. But literally, it means in the Hebrew, which it was originally written in, I don't lack anything. I have all I need. And almost every modern translation translated, The Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything that I need, okay?

So, let's say that one again. The Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything that I need, okay? Now, you already know one verse, so turn to the person next to you, you're brilliant, okay? You're brilliant. You got one verse down. These are not long verses anyway. Now, let's read verse two.

He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters, all right? And then, the next line is the beginning of verse three. So, let's read that. He restores my soul. Now, what you just read talks about what the good shepherd, your Heavenly Father, and Jesus calls himself the good shepherd, wants to do in your life.

And he says, I want to give you rest. I want to give you refreshment. And I want to give you restoration. He says, first, I want to give you rest. He makes me lie down. And he says, first, I want to give you rest. Then he says, I'm going to give you refreshment. He leads me beside still waters. Quiet waters. You know, it's why people like to go to parks and sit by a lake. It has a tranquilizing effect in your life.

And then he says, He restores my soul. So, rest, refreshment, and restoration. This weekend we're going to look at the third. But let's get into it right here at the beginning. Now, he says, He restores my soul. What does that mean? First, what's your soul? What is your soul? Well, the Bible says that you have a spirit, you have a soul, and you have a body.

Just like the tabernacle and the temple were three-part dwelling place of God, the inner court, the outer court, and the Holy of Holies. God dwells in you in three parts, in your spirit, in your soul, and in your body. What's the difference between your spirit and your soul? Well, the Bible even says itself that only the Bible can discern the difference, that it is the word of God that is sharper than a two-edged sword, dividing even asunder, a soul and spirit.

And so, I don't want to get into that, but I do want to tell you what your soul is. Your soul is your mind, it is your will, and it is your emotions. So, why don't you write this down if you're taking notes, My soul is the part of me that thinks, chooses, and feels. My soul is the part of me that thinks, that chooses, and that feels. It's your mind, it's your will, and your emotion.

Now, if you don't have a soul, you don't have a whole lot. But these three parts of who you are, the way you think, the way you feel, and the choices that you make, your mind, will, and your emotions, really determine who you are. And it's very easy to get these damaged. Can your mind be damaged? Of course it can. By what you put in it, by experiences, by trauma, chemistry, all kinds of things your mind can be damaged.

You don't always think straight, and neither do I. And how about your emotions? Can your emotions be damaged? Yes. And your emotions can get raw, you can get depleted emotionally, you can be out of emotion, you could be overemotional. And yes, our minds are broken, our emotions are broken, and actually, can your will be broken? Yes. Can it be damaged? Yes.

Have you ever had a chance to look at your life and you think, I really know the right thing to do, and I want to do the right thing, but I never do choose it, because our choosers are broken. Our choosers are broken. We're all flawed in many ways. And that's why there are addictions. And that's why you do things that you don't want to do and you don't do things that you want to do.

That's part of your willpower doesn't always work. How many of you agree, willpower doesn't always work? Right. And so, when we talk about our soul, the way we think, the way we feel, and the way we choose, the decisions that we make, God says, I want to restore that in your life. I want to restore you to wholeness. I want to restore your mind and will and emotions to health.

That's one of the things the good shepherd does for the sheep. The Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything I need. Well, sometimes I need to think straighter. And sometimes I need to feel correctly, because my emotions aren't always right. Sometimes they lie. And sometimes I need my will fixed because I don't have enough willpower to do what I need to do.

Now, what is it that damages your soul? What I want us to do this weekend is ask a couple of questions. What damages our soul? Because you can't get it restored unless you know what's causing the problem. What damages my soul? Well, we'll look at that. And then we're going to look at what Jesus does to restore it. How does Jesus restore right thinking, right feeling, and right deciding?

And then finally, we'll look at just very briefly, how do I make the right decisions to let my soul be restored? In other words, what's my response to what God wants to do in my life? Okay? Now, let's begin with, what is it that damages your soul? Why don't you always think right? Why don't you always feel right? And why don't you always choose right?

There are many things that could damage your soul, but I want to focus on the three most common. Three most common. You might write these down. Number one, the first thing that damages the way you think, the way you feel, and the way you decide is under or unaddressed grudges. Unaddressed grudges. When you get resentful, when you get bitter, when you start thinking about retaliation or revenge from somebody who's hurt you, it damages your soul.

Now, there are a lot of verses about this. But let me first talk about the background. The fact is in life, you're going to be hurt. Why? This is not heaven. This is earth. And we're all broken people. We're all imperfect. Sometimes we hurt each other intentionally. Sometimes we hurt each other unintentionally. But the truth is, you're going to be hurt in life.

And sometimes people hurt you, and sometimes you hurt them. And so, when that happens, we start to build up grudges. Now, let me just start at the bedrock. Life is not fair. God never said that life would be fair. This is not heaven, where everything is done perfectly, God's will is always done instantly, perfectly, and completely. On earth, a lot of times we choose not to do God's will.

That's called sin. And because life is unfair, the Bible tells us that innocent people suffer. This is not something new. Everybody can see it, that good guys don't always win. Bad guys often are successful. That there is injustice in the world. There's racism in the world. There's prejudice in the world. There is unfairness in the world.

And every one of us, in different ways, have experienced unfairness or prejudiced treatment against you in some way. And you shouldn't be surprised by that because the world is broken, everything is broken. What I'm interested in is not so much the fact that you're going to be hurt in life. I'm sorry for it, but what I'm more interested in is how you respond to it.

Because your response to how you get hurt in life is far more important than the hurts you have. Because they can either make you bitter or they can make you better. And when God wants to restore your soul, he wants to take all of the bitter things in your life and turn them into better things in your life. We'll come to that in just a minute.

Now, when you have grudges, when people hurt you, you can either let it go, or you can start dwelling on it and stewing and spewing and worrying about all things. And you start planning how to retaliate, how to resent them, how to get even with them. When you, somebody hurts you, that puts them beneath you morally, when they hurt you. But when you try to get even, it just puts you on the same level.

You're no better than they are. When you let it go, when you forgive, it actually puts you in a superior position. You don't want to ever get even with people, because that means you're the same as they are. If you get even with them, you're no better than they are. So, what do you do when you're hurt? Resent, retaliate, seek revenge? No. No, you don't. Let me show you why.

A couple of verses, Job 5:2 says this, To worry yourself to death with resentment would be a foolish, senseless thing to do. And in Job 18:4, it says this, You're only hurting yourself with your anger. You're only hurting yourself. We've talked about this many times, that when you, when you hold on to a grudge, it's not hurting them.

It's only hurting you. They're out there having a good time, they're watching movies, they're going to nice restaurants, they're, you know, going to ball games, they're having a whole lot of fun. They're totally oblivious. Who gets hurt when you're resentful? You do. It's like drinking poison and hoping it kills them. It's like taking fire into your, you know, into your stomach or your chest and hoping they get burned.

Resentment is worthless. He says, to worry yourself to death with resentment would be a foolish thing to do. Now, the Bible does say that one day God's going to even the score. The Bible says that there is a judgment day, and that God is not just a loving God. He's a just God. If God was not a just God, people like Hitler could get away with everything they did.

I'm glad that God is a just God. Now, you can get around that judgment by accepting the grace of God and accepting the salvation that Jesus Christ paid for your sins. But there's going to be a judgment day for everybody. And God is going to be just in measuring out what, what people deserve based on their, their, their sinfulness.

God says, I don't want you to have to go through the judgment. God doesn't like to judge. He likes to show mercy. All through scripture, God is very patient, and God is very, um, reluctant to judge. And he he'll wait and wait and wait and wait before he judges a nation or a person, things like that. He'd rather be merciful.

But there is a judgment coming one day, and God is going to even the odds and people who were mistreated and and misjudged and treated unfairly. There will be an equalling out, a time of of justice. But that's not your job. If you try to show justice yourself and you take matters in your hands and get revenge, God says, fine, that's all we're going to do on that.

So, what do you do in the meantime? You let it go. You say, but Rick, you don't know how much they've hurt me. You let it go. Why? Not because they deserve it. They don't. You don't deserve to be forgiven. You don't deserve to be forgiven at all either. But God has forgiven you. You forgive people not because they deserve it.

You forgive people because you don't want to carry the pain around anymore. You don't want to be stuck with unaddressed grudges because it's not going to hurt them, it's only going to hurt you. You know, Martin Luther King once said, Bitterness is blindness. Bitterness is blindness. And I like that because when I get bitter against somebody over here, I get blind to a whole lot of other things.

I get blind to how much God has done good in my life. I get blind to the truth. I get blind to all of the needs of people around me. I'll just say this, you're never going to stop hurting. Your soul will not be restored until you learn to forgive and you let it go. You got to drop it. We'll come back to that in a minute.

The second thing that destroys your soul from the inside, I said first, unaddressed grudges. The second is unconfessed guilt. Grudges and guilt are two of the biggest things that warp your soul. And grudges have to do with what people have done to you, and guilt is what you've done to other people. And we have both. We've hurt others and other people have hurt us.

And so, unconfessed guilt, nothing damages your life more, your soul more. Nothing will rob your happiness quicker than to go around carrying a load of guilt. A lot of people have a misconception of God. They think that God wants us to walk around feeling guilty. He does not. God hates guilt. In fact, God loves to forgive guilt. God doesn't want you to be guilty all the time.

In fact, he didn't make your body to handle guilt. You should only handle guilt for about five seconds. That's long enough to realize that was wrong and I confess it to God and I let it go. You don't carry all your sins around in your life unconfessed. If you do that, it's like carrying a garbage bag of junk with you into the each new year.

Many years ago, I remember there was a couple in our church who were singles and they found each other in our church and they got married. And that's when the church was much smaller and I actually was able to do their wedding. About 10 years later, they came back and we, they said, can we take you out to dinner? And we had a dinner with them and I said, so tell me what's happened in the last 10 years.

And I remember the woman told me, she said, You know, Rick, I never realized that when I was walking down that aisle in that beautiful white dress, that I was carrying a sack of garbage with me into this marriage. We all do that. Now, listen closely. Marriage does not create problems. It reveals them. It reveals them. And the things that need correcting in your life show up real quick when somebody else is living with you.

And what what needs correcting in their life shows up real quick when they live with you. Marriage doesn't create problems. It reveals things that need to be worked on. And the purpose of marriage is not just to make you happy. It's to make you holy. And the number one tool, if you're married, the number one tool that God uses in your life is your spouse.

You, oh, brother. My my spouse isn't even a believer. Doesn't matter. God will still use them in your life. And so, we start having guilt over all of the things that we've done to other people. Look at this verse. Psalm 38. David talks about guilt. He says, My guilt has overwhelmed me like a burden too heavy to bear. God doesn't want you to carry that around.

I've I'm bowed bowed below, down, and I'm brought low and all day long I go about mourning. Now, there's a couple of problems with guilt. One of them is, every one of us have a good reason to have it. It's legit, because we don't always do what's right. We always hurt other people. We do selfish things. I don't know if it bothers you, but it bothers me.

I often say the most unkind things to the people I love the most. I'm just being honest with you. Did ever happen to any of you? Or are you all so holy? Oh, no, I never say anything mean to my kids, or my spouse. Yeah, right. Yeah. Why is that? Because at root, we're selfish. I want what I want when I want it. And your spouse wants what they want when they want it.

And when two very self-centered people get together, it's going to cause problems. And that creates guilt. And you cannot have two imperfect people and all of a sudden they're going in the same direction, and they're going to create a perfect relationship. There are no perfect relationships. And that's why we need forgiveness because unconfessed guilt causes a lot of problems.

Now, look at this verse. Proverbs 20:27 tells us the other reason why we have problem with guilt. It's because we run from our own consciences. Proverbs 20:27, The Lord gave us a mind and a conscience, and we can we can't hide from ourselves. You see, you can hide all kind of stuff from me and I'll never know about it.

You might even hide a whole bunch of things from a friend, or your boss, or your spouse, or your kids. But you're not hiding anything from God. And not only that, you're not hiding anything from yourself. And when you try to hide it, it just starts eating you on the inside. Because the Lord gave us a mind and a conscience. We can't hide from ourselves.

And if you think, well, you know, I I I just feel bad. I'm going to go to, you know, take a vacation, but you take yourself on vacation. And so, you take that same stress that's in your mind, the grudges you have toward other people, and the guilt that you have about the stuff you've done wrong. Now, what do you do with guilt? What do you do with guilt?

Well, the answer is the same thing as grudges, and it's forgiveness. In grudges you got to forgive them, but in guilt, you've got to ask God for forgiveness, then you got to forgive yourself. Now, normally, we do everything except that. Let me let me show you all the ways that don't work and why our soul, the way we think, the way we feel, and the way we choose is often broken.

Because when you are feel guilty, you don't make smart decisions. And neither do I. Now, sometimes we just try to deny our guilt. We just pretend like it it doesn't exist. And and what we do in denial is we just try to pretend that it doesn't exist, and we say, you know, I'm just going to bury my past. You know what the problem with burying your past? It resurrects itself at the most inopportune times.

And it comes back. And it resurrects and it comes back to haunt you like the living dead. And something that happened 20 years ago, all of a sudden, it's back in your face again. So, denial doesn't work. Sometimes we just try to minimize it. And when we minimize our guilt, it's kind of like, well, it's no big deal. I mean, everybody else does it. You know, it wasn't that bad. It's just a little teeny, tiny, teeny, tiny sin.

If it's so tiny, why do you still remember it? Wow, some powerful words from Pastor Rick today. And now this is really one of my favorite parts of the broadcast. This is letters from our listeners. And now here's Rick.

Hi, everybody. Today I want to share a very powerful letter from a listener named Michael. Michael experienced terrible trauma as a child. But he says that Daily Hope is helping him overcome his past and now he's looking to the future with his kids. Let me read you just a little bit of Michael's story.

Dear Pastor Rick, You and Daily Hope have brought God into my life and it has saved me. I am a 29-year-old father of five children, and I try my hardest to teach my children to know God and to love Jesus and how to pray. And I do my best to be a good example and be worthy of all the good gifts that God has given to me.

But you know, because of my childhood and the insecurities and abandonment issues that were created in my life from years of mental abuse, physical abuse, verbal abuse, and yes, even sexual abuse, I've always had a hard time trusting God. I woke up every day feeling unworthy. And I suffered from feelings of anxiety and depression. And I felt like God couldn't possibly love me because no one else had ever loved me.

And I carried that pain inside of me for so long, craving for a close, better, intimate relationship with God. Now, listening to Daily Hope has helped me achieve that and more. I'm not only better, but I'm now better for everybody else around me, spreading all that I've learned and the good news of Jesus Christ. I know God better than ever, and I now have more faith than I ever knew possible because I feel his love.

Thank you so much. Daily Hope does such a great work in the name of Jesus, and I will forever be in your debt for bringing the fire of faith into my heart and helping me know God. I love you, and I hope you continue to bring change in the world through the message of Jesus Christ.

You know, Michael, I absolutely love how you're teaching your five kids to know Jesus. That is a real man, a real dad, a real father. It's so important to pass it on to the next generation. And I'm encouraged that Daily Hope is helping you with the trauma of all your past and helping you work through those issues and keeping you growing in the love of Jesus Christ.

You know, stories like the one you wrote to me are what keep me going. It's why we do this. Changed lives. Now, I want to pray for you. I want to pray, Dear Lord, pour out your love on Michael. Help him to sense your love so that he never doubts it. Pour out your blessing and your peace on his family. I pray that they will continue to grow in their faith and that they will experience the peace that passes all understanding as they follow you.

God, I want to thank you for his faithfulness. In Jesus name I pray. Amen. You know, if God is blessing you through Daily Hope, would you share your story with me? Write me, Rick at Pastorrick.com. 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.