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. Next is part two of a message called Showing Mercy to Your Family.

Rick Warren: Now, in every family, we have what I call VDPs. When I talk about family, I'm not just talking about a mom and dad and kids, a nuclear family. I'm talking about your brothers and sisters, your moms and dads, your aunts, your uncles. Everybody has an extended family. And in that extended family, you have some VDPs, which I call very draining people. Don't look at them right now, but you know who they are.

There are difficult people, and difficult people are hard to work with. They're irresponsible. They're immature. There are demanding people who are pushy. They're self-centered. They always want everything their way. They're aggressive. They're often rude. Difficult people, demanding people. There are destructive people. There are people who are abusive in relationships and they hurt everybody and they're manipulative.

And then there are disappointing people. Those are people in your family who break their promise and they tell you they'll do something and they don't. Sometimes they're disloyal and you can't depend on them. They're disappointing. How do you deal with these kind of people? The Bible says this in 1 Corinthians 13:4 and 7: "Love is patient. Love is kind. Love is always supportive." Are you always supportive? Are you always supportive of people whether they deserve it or not?

You say, "Well, how can I be more patient? How can I be more kind? How can I be more supportive?" Well, here's the answer in the next verse, Proverbs 19:11: "A man's wisdom gives him patience." Now here's the key. If you want to be patient with anybody, learn more about what makes them tick because if you understand their fears, you're going to be more patient with them. If you understand their hurts, you're going to be more patient with them. Hurt people hurt people.

Anytime somebody's hurting you, it's because they're hurting. We don't just automatically hurt other people. You hurt people when you are hurting. Other people hurt you when they are hurting. And if you understand their hurt, you're going to be a lot more patient with them. You look past the anger and look at their fear. You look past their anger and you look at their pain and you go, "Oh," and you cut them some slack.

Like the people you work with. There are people you work with you just go, "That person's a VDP, a very draining person." And if you actually knew where they've come from, you'd be a lot more patient with them. You see, when we look at people, we always go, "Look how far they've got to go." But instead of saying, "Look how far they've come." And if you knew, "Well, man, if I had their parents, I'd probably be messed up too. If I had that situation growing up, I'd probably be full of pain. I'd probably be more insecure."

When you have wisdom, when you understand why people do what they do, you're a whole lot more patient with them. You're much more patient with a toddler because you understand them better than they do, and so you can be patient with them. A man's wisdom gives him patience. Now the Bible says in Proverbs 3:27, "Whenever you are able, do good to people who need help." Circle the word "need." It doesn't say do good to people who deserve help.

There are a lot of people in your life, and particularly in your family, they don't always deserve your kindness. They haven't been kind to you. But you give them what they need, not what they deserve, which by the way is what God does with you. God doesn't give you what you deserve. God gives you what you need. That's called mercy. And when you're being merciful, you give your kindness to people when they need kindness even though they've been rude to you, even though they've been mean.

They come home and they've had a really tough day and they start taking it out on you. Your response is to start defending yourself instead of going, "They've had a tough day. I'm just going to be kind to them. They don't deserve it because they were just rude to me. I didn't cause their bad day, but they had a bad day and they're taking it out on me." And you just be kind to them anyway.

Earlier in this series, when we did the first small group, we talked about the Samaritan, the Good Samaritan. If you're driving down the road and you see somebody on the side of the road and they're bleeding to death, you don't go up to them and say, "Do you deserve my help?" No, you just help them. You don't say, "Was this your own fault?" You don't say, "Did you cause this?" You don't say, "Are you here legally?" You don't say a lot of things. You just help them.

That's called mercy. Mercy doesn't say, "Do you deserve it? Was it your fault? Could you help yourself?" No, you just help them. Which, by the way, is what God, as I said, does with you. Now the Bible gives a lot of reasons for being kind, and I won't go into all of them. I did once a study through the whole Bible. The Bible says you ought to be kind because God's been kind to you. He's kind to you every moment of your life.

You ought to be kind because kindness is an act of worship. When you're kind, God says, "That's like worshiping me." Kindness makes you happy. The Bible says kindness makes you attractive. Did you know that? Write this verse down. Proverbs 19:22: "Kindness makes a man attractive." So forget the Botox, just be nice. And you'll be a lot more attractive if you're just a nice person. If you're a kind person, you're going to be attractive.

Kindness makes other people want to be kind to you. The Bible says that over and over. And the Bible also says that God blesses kindness, and when you're kind to other people, God is kind to you. You say, "But Rick, what about that family member who has never been kind to me?" Some of you have a sibling, a brother, a sister, they've never been kind to you. It's kind of like the Mary and Edith relationship in Downton Abbey. Mary was never kind to Edith.

And some of you grew up and you had parents who, frankly, were emotionally incapable of being kind to you. What do you do with that? 1 Thessalonians 5 says this in the Bible: "Don't be hateful to people just because they're hateful to you. We'll talk about that in future weeks. Rather be good to each other and to everyone else." Would you give a warm welcome to Patricia?

Patricia: Pastor Rick has asked me to come and share what I'm learning about how mercy is kind to people when they least deserve it. I grew up in a home in a military family, living in multiple states and abroad with two alcoholic parents where there was no love shown, no kindness expressed. Instead of feeling valued, I experienced both mental and physical abuse. My mother and I never had a warm mother-daughter relationship as I grew up.

Looking back, I wondered if it was because my mom was raised by her aunt, who did not know how to demonstrate love either and seemed to have a lack of feeling. Then eight years ago, my stepfather passed away in Florida, which left my mother alone. But mom stayed in Florida for another year until it became obvious that she could not take care of herself. My adopted brother was not capable of caring for her either.

But because of the painful experience in my youth, I did not want to bring her to California to live with my family. So my mom went to live with my sister in New York City. But it soon became obvious that my sister, who had experienced all the same hurts and rejections that I did growing up, neither intended to take care of my mother. Instead, she wanted to get even with my mom for all the years of hurt she had experienced. So my sister basically ignored our mother and neglected caring for her.

One day, I received a phone call from my cousin, who lived near my mom and sister on Long Island, and she told me that my mother was not being taken care of and was losing a lot of weight. My husband said we have to bring her to California to take care of her. But in the back of my mind, I was thinking, "This is not a lovable person that I want back in my life." But we made the merciful choice to be kind to someone who had been unkind to me.

When my mom arrived in California, I saw immediately that she needed physical, dental, and mental and eye examinations. So I began the task of making doctor appointments. Honestly, from the day she arrived, it was never my plan for my mom long-term. I saw it was an emergency to help her. My husband and I downsized three times and we were enjoying being empty nesters.

But to shorten the story, fast forward six years, of course we're still caring for my mom. We've supported and sustained her through two broken hips, each time right before hubby and I would be leaving on a mission trip. But God enabled us both to care for my mom and to fulfill our mission commitments. About a year and a half ago, my mother had a stroke, which has rapidly advanced her Alzheimer's condition.

We continued to care for her during my second bout of breast cancer a year ago, and even while I was going through chemotherapy and radiation treatments. In this series, several times Pastor Rick has defined mercy as underserved forgiveness and unearned kindness. It is not a feeling. It is a choice to be kind even to people who have never been kind to you. That's not easy.

Now you might expect that my kindness towards my mom would have softened her heart and maybe even given her the ability to show love back. But with my aging mom's deteriorating mental and physical health, she is not able to love back. So mercy is not dependent upon the other person's response to it. It chooses to continue to show kindness and love to her because it is the right thing to do.

And although I've never received the love and need from her, I am grateful that she gave birth to me, that I am alive because of her. So at least I can honor her for that. I cannot sugarcoat this. Mercy is often difficult and inconvenient. I have admitted many times that I believe God sent her to me because I did not want to take care of her in my home and I need to learn the lesson of mercy. And you know what? Revenge and retaliation against those who hurt you never makes you happy. I don't know who my story is intended for, but I will tell you this: the pathway to peace is through the miracle of mercy. Thank you.

Rick Warren: You know, Patricia used a phrase that caught my attention in that testimony. She said, "When my stepfather died, it left my mother all alone." There are literally tens of millions of women living alone today because their husbands died. We know that women outlast, they outlive their husbands, wives outlive their husbands in a general rule because they take better care of themselves.

And it brought back kind of a very embarrassing, but I'm going to share it with you anyway, experience for me last fall that was kind of a turning point for me. I was having a conversation with Kay one day and I was complaining about my physical aches and pains. And Kay said, "You know, if you don't take care of your health, you're going to die before me." Now I'm embarrassed to admit this, but in my mind I was thinking, "And what's wrong with that? Sounds good to me."

I don't want to be living here after I've spent 40 years with this woman. I don't want to be by myself alone. I'd much rather that I go first than my wife go first. And I'm embarrassed that's what I thought. But you know, the more I thought about it, I thought that is an incredibly self-centered way of thinking. Certainly not loving. It's thinking of me, not her. Thinking about what's best for me, not her. It was incredibly insensitive, incredibly unmerciful.

And the more I thought about it, the more I thought I've got to change. I've got to repent. And I began to think about, you know, I saw what Kay and I went through when we lost a child. And I watched the deep, deep grief in my wife when she lost a family member. And I thought, "I don't want her going through that again and losing me." And I thought the unselfish thing is for me to put up with the grief rather than her to put up with the grief.

And so I made a commitment to her. I said, "Okay, I'm going to do the best I can to get healthy, to be in shape, and to not prematurely die so that I'm here as long as you are here." That's an unselfish thing. And I vowed to get healthy. I've gotten healthy many, many times, but a lot of times it was for personal benefit. But this was really an act of love. It was more for her benefit. I didn't want her living by herself alone. And love became my motivation.

Did you know that 97%—this is a health statistic in America—97% of all dads are not taking good care of their health. 97%. Now here at Saddleback a few years ago, we started the Daniel Plan. We have literally thousands of people involved in a plan to get healthy in five different areas. And when we started out, we had a good number of men as well as a good number of women, 15,000 people signed up, but the men dropped out.

And today, about 80% of the people doing the Daniel Plan at Saddleback are women. That makes me embarrassed for my gender. I'm going, "Oh great, I'm going to get to be the pastor of fit moms and flabby dads." So men, man up. All right? The best thing you can do for your mother or your wife this year is get healthy. If you want to do the unselfish, loving thing for your wife, you need to get in shape. You need to get healthy.

All right, let's go on. Third way that we can show mercy to our family members is by letting go of past hurts. By letting go of past hurts. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13:5: "Love, real love, keeps no record of wrongs." Do you do that? Do you keep a mental record of every wrong your husband's ever done, or your wife's ever done, or your parents have ever done, or your kids have ever done? And you're keeping a mental record so that when you do something wrong, they go, "Well, you did this." "Yeah, but you did that." "But you did this, but you did that."

The Bible says love doesn't do that. Love doesn't keep a record and store up all the bad things, the hurts, the offenses so that you could pull them out as ammunition and you can nourish yourself with them. Don't do that. Love keeps no record of wrongs. I heard a guy say one time, he said, "You know, I went home last night, my wife gave me an earful. She got historical." His friend said, "You mean hysterical?" He said, "No, historical. She told me everything I've ever done wrong."

Write this down: Don't repeat it, delete it. Don't repeat it, delete it. Let go of the past hurts. Love keeps no record of wrongs. When you hold on to a hurt, you are not being loving. Don't repeat it, delete it. Now that means three things. It means when somebody, your spouse hurts you, you don't rehearse it over and over in your mind, "But he said this to me, she said this." You don't rehearse it over and over and over. You don't get resentment. You don't keep bringing it back up as a relational weapon. "But you did that." You don't hold it over their head. And you certainly don't tell other people about it. That's called gossip. You let it go.

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: Hey everybody, today I'm going 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 of 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. I am 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, very challenging times. And 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. And I'm so glad you experienced that, that you found God's love and found God's power. And what a blessing that you translated the Daily Hope devotionals for your parents and then they accepted Christ. 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. And 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.