Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

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. Right now, let's take a look at part two of a message called How God's Goodness Can Restore You.

Guest (Male): The third way we try to deal with guilt that doesn't work is we rationalize it. I've said before, to rationalize means to tell yourself rational lies. You're trying to convince yourself in your head what your heart knows is wrong. That's to rationalize. We live in a society where everybody rationalizes everything. If I shout enough, or affirm it enough, or march for it enough, then I'll think it's okay, but inside your heart's going, it's not okay.

Rationalizing doesn't work. Trying to convince your heart with your mind doesn't work. Your heart's going to win out every time because there's an inbuilt conscience in our lives that God put there. We say, I'm going to rationalize it away, but it doesn't make it right and your heart still knows. You go around saying, "Why doesn't everybody accept me? Why doesn't everybody believe in me?" That's a rationalization. You need to listen to your conscience.

Another way we try to deal with guilt is compromise. That's the whole idea of, "Well, I'm feeling guilty and here's the standard, so what I think I'll do is I'll just lower my standard and then I won't feel guilty anymore." I'll say, "I don't believe that's a sin anymore." How's that working for you? Again, it's trying to convince your heart what your conscience knows is wrong. In compromising, maybe if I just do it enough, then it won't be a sin anymore. Get back to me on that one.

Here's another one we try to do. When we feel guilt, we blame other people because if we can put the blame on them, it gets the focus off us. Couples do this all the time—boyfriend, girlfriend, husbands, wives, parents, kids. It goes like this: there's a scale in your mind, and on one side is blame and on the other side is guilt. In this, the only way you can feel good about yourself is if it's balanced.

When you do something wrong like this, you have to have somebody else to blame because you did that, but you did that. You did that, but you did that. You did that, but you remember that really big thing you did? There are people whose spouse had really gone over the edge in a wrong way, but they've come back and they've said, "I'm sorry, I apologize, I want to rebuild trust, I want to make this marriage work." But this person won't let them off the hook, the other one.

No matter how many good things this person does, they always say, "Yeah, but you did that." If you're doing that with a spouse, you're killing your marriage because you've become unpleasable. You're acting like you're God. You're not. Anybody could hold you accountable for stuff you've done, too. So blaming doesn't work. We say blame is spelled b-lame, and it just makes you lame when you do that. Every time you blame, you are being lame.

You blame others and you've got this scale in your mind, which is, by the way, why people don't want to forgive. Because if I don't forgive you, then I can keep blaming you for that. If I'm trying to balance between guilt and blame in my life and all of a sudden you ask for forgiveness and that sets me off balance and I say, "Sure, I forgive you," now I don't have anything to blame anymore on this side. What happens? The scale tilts toward me and I feel bad.

So I don't want to forgive you because then it's all on me. There's nothing to even the scales. You keep yourself in tension all the time. Your soul needs to be restored. It's being chipped away at. It's being eaten at like little bacteria, like a virus, just working on your heart and making it smaller and smaller and smaller.

One other way that doesn't work. We've talked about rationalizing, compromising, minimizing, blaming. One is, well, I'll just beat myself up. For the rest of your life, you're trying to atone for your own sins. You're trying to make up for it. A lot of people actually sabotage their own success and don't realize they're doing it because they feel guilty about something in the past and they feel unworthy. Because they feel unworthy they go, "Well, this is too good, I shouldn't be getting this much blessing. I know what I've done. I know all the things, I'm not worthy of this."

As a result, you start setting yourself up for failure. You beat yourself up because internally you go, "Well, I've done something wrong, somebody's got to pay for it." Subconsciously, we try to pay for our mistakes and our sins by getting sick or failing, and it can cause all kinds of stuff. Guilt can make you depressed. It can make you despair. It can set you up for failure. I don't deserve to succeed. None of those things work.

There's only one thing that works to get rid of unconfessed guilt. Confess it. Just admit it. The word confession in the Bible in Greek is the word homologeo. Homo, we know what that means, means same. Logeo is the word to speak. Confession simply means to agree with God. "You're right, God, that was wrong." I don't deny it, I don't minimize it, I don't rationalize it, I don't compromise it, I don't blame other people, I don't belittle myself, I don't beat myself up. I just admit it. We'll come back to that.

Number three. The third thing that destroys your soul is not unaddressed grudges or unconfessed guilt, it's unprocessed grief. Unprocessed grief. Now, you're going to have grief in life because you're going to have losses. There is no growth in life without change. There is no change in life without loss because you give up some old to get some new. There's no loss without pain, and there's no pain without grief.

So you've got to learn how to grieve good. Grief is not a bad thing. Guilt's a bad thing. Grudges are a bad thing. Grief is actually a good thing. It's the way we get through the transitions of life. What is a bad thing is unprocessed grief. You haven't learned how to deal with it, how to go through the stages of grief. In Psalm 31:9, David says, "Lord, have mercy because I'm in misery." He's grieving. "I'm in misery. My eyes are weak from so much crying and my whole body, whole being is tired from grief."

If grudges don't get you, guilt will, and if guilt doesn't get you, grief will. All of us can have these things that eat away at our soul—the way we think, the way we feel, and the decisions we make. Now, the question is, how does Jesus, our good shepherd—"The Lord is my shepherd, I have everything I need"—how in the world does he help me with my grudges and my guilt and my grief?

Three ways he does it. Here's how he does it. First, when we are hurt by others, Jesus turns my hurts into holiness. I need to explain this. Jesus turns my hurts into holiness. What I'm saying is that God brings good out of bad. He brings good out of evil. He has a way of turning things around. The stuff that happens to you, it's not all good. There's a lot of bad stuff that happens to you, but God says, "I can turn it around. I can transform it. I can bring good out of evil."

Let's look at some verses. It is the goodness of God that allows us. One of the most famous verses in the Bible is Romans 8:28. We keep coming back to this verse. Why? Because you keep getting hurt. You have guilt, you have grief, and you have grudges. So you need to understand that God says, "Yes, I know that happened, but I can bring good even out of that." Romans 8:28, one of the greatest promises in the Bible.

"We know that in all things"—circle the word "in"—"that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him." Let me stop right there. This is not a promise for everybody. It's a promise for those who love him and have been called according to his purpose. We know that not everything that happens to you is good. There's a lot of bad things that are happening to you—decisions that you make that are bad, and decisions that other people make that are bad for you, there's diseases, there's all kinds of accidents and things like that.

Nobody is saying God is a Pollyanna optimist who says the sun will come out tomorrow. It doesn't always come out tomorrow. Reality is the sun does not always come out tomorrow. That's the difference between optimism and hope. Hope is based on a certainty, but optimism is based on just wishful thinking. It'll come out all right. We know that in all things God works for the good. It's not all good, but God says, "You know what? I can take even that."

Can God take the bad things people do against me and use it for good? Yes. Can God even take my own sins and bring good out of them? My own mistakes and bring good out of them? Yes. Can God take my own weaknesses, and my damaged will, and my damaged mind, and my damaged heart, my emotions and the way I think? Can God work even in that for good? Yes. Now, not everybody else could do that. Anybody can bring good out of good, but God specializes in bringing good out of the bad in your life. And he turns my hurts into holiness.

Sitting down this morning, I just started thinking of all the different ways God uses bad things in your life for good in your life. I actually made a list. He turns my hurts into holiness. He turns my wounds, the things that hurt me, into wisdom. You're a lot smarter after you've gone through that. He turns my pain into gain. He uses correction to bring me to perfection.

He uses offenses to remove my pretenses. You're a lot more humble if you get criticized. He uses my bruises for good. They're not good, those bruises aren't good, but he can use my bruises for good. And when others want to bash me, God uses it to bless me. That's the kind of God God is. He's a good God. The Lord is my shepherd. He knows how to bring good even out of bad.

Now, Romans 8:28, all things work together for good, is a wonderful promise, but it makes no sense at all unless you read Romans 8:29, the verse right underneath it, which explains why God uses everything for his purpose. And what is his purpose? His purpose is to build your character. He uses the conflicts and the crises to turn you and your character, and he wants to make you like Jesus.

Look at verse 29. Romans 8:29 says this: "God knew his purpose from the very beginning." So it's not a big surprise to God. Before you were even created, he knew what he wanted to do with your life. He planned in advance that all of us in God's family—here's the key—would become like Jesus, his own son. God wants a family for eternity, and God wants you to be his child. He sent Jesus to show what a child of God is like.

You want to know what God wants you to become like? Look at the character of Christ. Now listen. God is far more interested in your character than he is in your comfort. People act like, "Well, I don't understand, things aren't going good for me and I'm trusting God." Did God ever promise that everything will go the way you want it to go? No, because if it did, you'd be a selfish little snot.

This life is preparation for the next. In heaven, there's no sorrow, there's no suffering, there's no sickness, there's no sadness. No people throwing arrows and barbs at you. This is the preschool. This is the character development stage. God wants you to grow up before you go to heaven. So when you go through tough times, you should never ask, "Why is this happening?" I'll tell you why: Romans 8:29, to make you like Jesus.

The question you should ask anytime you go through any difficult time is not, "Why is this happening?" or "Why is this happening to me?" or "Why is this happening now?" The question you should be asking is what. What do you want to teach me, God? What character development do you want me to grow like? God is far more interested in your character, what you're becoming, than he is in your comfort.

Yes, God wants you to be comfortable, but he's not going to give you comfort at the expense of character. You're going to be comfortable for trillions of years in heaven. Right now, he wants you to become like Christ. So what is Jesus like? Romans 8:28 says he wants to make me like Christ using all things, verse 29. Well, the perfect picture of Jesus is called the fruit of the spirit. It's Galatians 5:22 and 23.

In Galatians, it says nine qualities. The fruit of the spirit is love—God wants you to be loving. Joy—God wants you to learn real joy. Peace—God wants you to learn real peace. Patience—God wants you to learn patience. Goodness and gentleness and faithfulness and self-control. There are nine qualities there, and when you look at those nine qualities, you know what they are? A perfect picture of Jesus. Jesus is total love, total joy, total peace, total patience. You can wake up every morning and say, "Well, Lord, I don't know which one of these you're going to teach me today. Patience?"

How does God teach you patience? Waiting. Have you ever had to sit in God's waiting room? Have you ever been in a hurry and God wasn't? The number one way God teaches you patience: Department of Motor Vehicles. So God often teaches you those qualities in the exact opposite situation. You learn love being around unlovely people. You learn joy in the middle of grief. You learn peace in the middle of chaos.

But if God's going to teach you real peace, he'll put you in the middle of chaos. Some of you are in it right now. Patience, gentleness. How does God teach you gentleness? With people who annoy you to death. Don't look at them, but you know who they are. He's teaching you how to be gentle. Self-control. There are lots of ways he teaches you self-control.

And so God says, "I want to turn your hurts into holiness." What's the purpose? Put Romans 8:29 back on the screen. God knew his purpose from the very beginning and he planned in advance that all of God's family would become like Jesus. That's the number one goal God has for your life—not comfort, but character. Be like Jesus, his son.

Now, God's son is the firstborn of restored humanity. There's that word restoration. Restored. He restores my soul. We're all broken. We all have broken relationships, broken minds, broken emotions, broken wills. We're all broken. God says, "I want to restore humanity to the original position I created it to be in the Garden of Eden." So I'm sending Jesus to come and die for your sins.

It says then on the screen: so we see the intended shape of our lives in him. Look at Jesus and you'll know what God wants to do in your life. We see the intended shape of our lives in him, and he will have many brothers and sisters in God's eternal family. Like father, like son. Like father, like daughter. He wants you to become not a god, but godly.

Now Genesis 50:20 explains why God allows people to hurt you. Knowing what God's goal is, Genesis 50:20 says, "You intended it to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." This is a quote from a guy named Joseph.

Joseph had every reason to have unaddressed grudges because his own family sold him into slavery. He was one of the youngest kids in the family and his older brothers didn't like him. They thought he was pompous; they didn't like him at all. So they took him and threw him in a pit and told the father that a bear had eaten him. And then he's living in this pit by himself.

Some slave traders come by on their way to Egypt and the brothers pull him out, sell him into slavery. He's taken down to Egypt and he's hired out as a slave to a guy named Potiphar. Potiphar's wife is a seductive woman and she gets the hots for Joseph. She tries to seduce him, and he says, "I'm not going to do that, I have integrity, I serve the God of the ages, I serve the Almighty God."

So she's spurned, she's scorned. What does she do? She screams and claims that he's taken advantage of her and, falsely accused, he's thrown into prison. The first 40 years of his entire life, nothing goes right. Some of you might identify with that. He's thrown into a pit, he's rejected by his family, he's sold into slavery, he's taken to a foreign country, he's falsely accused, he's put in prison.

God had him exactly where he wanted him to be. The second half of his life looked a whole lot brighter because out of that, through a series of circumstances, he's raised up to be the second most powerful man under Pharaoh in Egypt, which was the most powerful empire in the world at that time. He not only saves Egypt from a famine, but he saves all of the Middle East from a famine.

When he finally comes face to face with his brothers many years later and they come to buy grain from Egypt, he looks at them and he says, "You meant it for bad. Let's don't beat around the bush, you didn't like me, you meant it for bad. But God meant it for good." God's bigger than you, and God can bring good things out of even bad things. When you learn that, you will begin to rebuild your soul: the broken thoughts, the broken emotions, and the broken decision making in your will. God says, "I will turn your hurts into holiness if you will trust me."

Rick Warren: Hey, if you're looking for daily encouragement from God's word, I'd like to invite you to download the Daily Hope app. It's designed to help you grow in your faith every day. It has easy access to devotionals, audio messages you can listen to anywhere, and video teaching right at your fingertips. You can even search for topics that matter to you and set a daily reminder so you never miss time with God. Just search Daily Hope in the Apple App Store or Google Play, and I hope it's a real blessing to you. 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.