Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): 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. And now here’s part two of a message called Letting God Meet My Needs.

Rick Warren: Proverbs 12:25, the Bible says, worry weighs us down. Anybody want to give a testimony about that? Has worry ever weighed you down? Of course it has. And you think about so many things that you're worried about, you start to get discouraged. You start to get depressed. You start to get in despair.

You see, God tells us that your body was not designed for worry. Remember, it's unnatural. You weren't made to worry. And every time you swallow your worry, your stomach keeps score. Every time you swallow your worry, you say, oh, my aching back. Oh, I got a headache. Oh, my stomach's upset. Why? Because you weren't made to internalize worry.

It's unnatural and it's unhelpful, it's actually unhealthful, and it is bad for your health. People who worry don't live as long as other people. People say, well, I'm worried sick. Yes, you are. You can worry yourself sick and cause all kinds of problems in your stomach and insomnia and stuff like that. In fact, I’ll tell you this: worry causes more fatigue than work.

You can go to work, put in a full day’s work, come home, you’re tired, but you’re not stressed out. But if you go to work and all day you’re worrying, worrying, worrying, you come home, you’re not just tired, you’re drop-dead fatigued. Worry wears you out more than work. And yet the Bible says in Proverbs 14:30, a heart at peace gives life to the body. You want to be healthier? I mean, really, you want to be healthier? Stop worrying.

You’ve got to learn to trust God. Worry is unhelpful, it is unnatural, it is unreasonable. Number four: worry is unnecessary. That’s the fourth thing Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount. He says worry is unnecessary. Why are you worrying about this? He says there’s no need to worry because God has promised to take care of you. The Lord is your shepherd; he feeds, he leads, and he meets needs.

And he says there’s no need to worry because your Heavenly Father will take care of you. You know, when I was a kid, if I had any need in my life, I didn’t worry about it. I just went to my dad. I said, “Dad, I need this,” or “Mom, I need this.” And if I needed money to buy something, I’d say, “Dad, I need some money to buy this.” I never once worried about where he was going to get the money.

That was his worry. You’re worrying about a lot of things that are God’s responsibility. Worry is assuming responsibility that God never intended for you to have. Every time you worry, it’s a warning light: I’m playing God. I’m acting like God. I’m thinking that it all depends on me, that I don’t have a Heavenly Father, that I don’t have a shepherd who will feed and lead and meet my need.

So you never worry if you understand that God is your Heavenly Father and you understand the goodness, the goodness of God. Matthew 6:30 says this: If God cares so wonderfully even for the flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow—in other words, they’re only going to bloom for a few days and then they’re gone, but your life lasts decades—if God cares so wonderfully even for the flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he surely care for you?

See, what he’s saying here is that God has assumed responsibility for the needs in your life. And he cares for you because he says you are valuable. You have value. You want to know how much you value? Look at the cross. Jesus died for you on the cross. That shows how much value you have to God. You’re not junk. You’re not worthless. No, no, you are valuable to God because you’re his child.

My children are valuable to me, my grandchildren are valuable to me, you are the child of God and you’re valuable to God and he says, “I’m going to take care of your needs. I am your loving Heavenly Father. I am your shepherd.” And like the shepherd takes care of the defenseless sheep, when you need it, I’m there. What am I saying? I’m saying that worry in your life, every time you worry, it comes from the fact that you misunderstand the goodness of God.

Worry is a warning sign, it’s a yellow caution light going bomb bomb bomb that says, at this point, I’ve forgotten how good God is. I’ve forgotten the promises of God. I’ve forgotten what God has promised to do in my life to meet all my needs. He says it over and over and over: I will meet all your needs. There’s no need that God will not meet if you trust him.

Now if you don’t trust him, you’re out there on your own. But if you trust him, he says, “I will meet every need in your life.” And worry means I’ve forgotten that, the goodness of God. It comes from misunderstanding what God is really like. And you know what? We always get into trouble, every time, whenever we start doubting God’s goodness. When we start thinking God’s not going to take care of me, God doesn’t really love me, God isn’t a good God.

Every time you start thinking like that—and you know where those thoughts came from—you’re going to get in trouble. You’re going to go down a blind alley, hit a dead end, have all kinds of discouragement in your life. And it doesn’t even make sense. Most of you sitting here today are believers. You’ve stepped across the line spiritually. You’ve said, “You know, I’ve put my trust in Jesus Christ because I know heaven’s perfect and I’m not.

There’s no chance I’m getting to heaven on my own goodness because I’m not good enough.” So I’m trusting Jesus Christ to forgive me and to save me by his grace, not by my works. But I’m just trusting God to save me because he loves me, he wants to forgive me, he sent Jesus to die for me. When Jesus died on the cross for you, he solved your biggest problem. You don’t have any bigger problem than eternal salvation.

But if that’s your biggest problem, why do you doubt his taking care of the smaller things in your life? What’s the logic of saying, “I’m going to trust God to get me to heaven, but I’m not going to trust him to help me make my car payment”? What’s the logic in that? It makes no sense. Why would you trust God with something so big, eternal salvation, but not trust him with who am I supposed to marry, or am I ever going to get married, or am I going to get a job, or what school should I go to, and all the other major questions in life?

Why don’t you trust him with those things too? It doesn’t make sense to say, “Oh, I don’t doubt him for my salvation, but I do doubt that he’s going to care for my health. I do doubt that he’s going to care for my career.” It doesn’t make sense at all. If God can be trusted for salvation, he’ll carry everything else. If I were walking down a street out here, say Ortega Highway, and you come by in a car, I’ve got a backpack on my back, and you stop and say, “Hey, Rick, you want a ride?”

I say, “Yeah, I’d appreciate that.” So I get in the car with you, and about five minutes later you look over and you see I’m still wearing the backpack on my back. And you say, “Rick, you can just toss that in the back seat.” And I say, “Oh, no, it’s enough for you to carry me. I’ll carry the backpack.” That’s the kind of stupid logic we do with our lives. “Oh, yeah, God, you can save my life, but I’ll worry about my money and my sex life and my social life and my career life and, you know, all the other things, my friendships, my relationships.”

No, no, you don’t need to carry the backpack either. If he’s going to carry you to heaven, he’ll carry everything else while you’re here on earth. He’s saying worry is unnecessary. And then number five: worry is not only unreasonable, it’s unnatural, it’s unhelpful, it’s unnecessary, it’s unbelief. Number five: worry, Jesus says, is unbelief. Worry is doubting God.

God has promised to take care of every need in your life if you trust him over and over and over. And when you doubt that, you are an unbeliever at that moment. You’re an unbeliever. Every time you worry, you act like an unbeliever. Look at this verse on the screen: Philippians 4:19—love this in the Message and the Living Bible—you can be sure, that means certain, it's not a wish, not a hope, you can be sure that God will take care of most things you need.

No, it doesn't say that. God will take care of everything, everything. What’s not included in everything? Nothing. Everything you need because of what Jesus has done for us. Again, God is good to you not because you’re good. God is good to everybody. He’s good even to bad people in the world. They get the same life, they get oxygen, they get blood, they get food, they get the sunshine. God is good based on his goodness, not based on your goodness.

Now he’s saying here, if God’s going to take care of every need, every time you worry, you are doubting God. Have you ever thought about that? That’s why worry is a sin. It’s doubting God. Look at this verse: Matthew 6:32, people who don’t know God and the way he works, they worry over these things. Now let me be honest with you. If you haven’t stepped across the line, if you’re not a believer in Christ, if you haven’t made Jesus the good shepherd or the Lord is my shepherd of your life, you ought to worry.

You ought to worry. Because you’re up a creek without a paddle. You’re out there on your own. You’re not depending on your Heavenly Father. You’re not depending on God’s goodness and grace and love. You’re depending on yourself. You ought to worry. There’s a lot of reasons to worry if you don’t have God in your life because you’ve got to face all those battles on your own, you’ve got to find all the solutions on your own, and you’re not God.

And neither am I. We’re just not. And so the starting point is the humble attitude: God is God and I’m not. When I understand that, all of a sudden the worry starts draining out of my life. People who don’t know God and the way he works, they worry about these things. Non-believers ought to worry, but Christians are different because we have a Heavenly Father, a good God who promises to care for us.

And God says, “Hey, you guys, what are you worrying about? You’re not plants, you’re not animals, you’re not birds, you’re my children.” You see, it’s actually an insult to God every time you worry. You’re acting like an orphan every time you worry. You’re acting like you don’t have a Heavenly Father who has promised over and over again, over 3,000 promises in this book, to take care of your needs.

You’re acting like you’re an orphan. You know, there’s a beautiful phrase we just read. It said, “Your Father knows you need them.” He knows what you need. How many times do you act like God doesn’t know what you need? “God, do you know about my sexual needs? Do you know about my physical needs? Do you know about my social needs? I don’t think God knows about my career needs.” Really? That’s doubting God.

Worry is unbelief. You don’t think God sees it all. What I’m telling you is this: when you worry, every time you worry, you’re acting like an atheist. You’re acting like there is no God, there are no promises in the Scripture, you know, I’m just out here on my own. Worry is practical atheism. It’s saying, “I don’t really believe God will help me out of this mess,” and we start depending on ourselves and we start taking matters into our own hands and we assume that we have to figure it all out rather than just trusting.

That’s called playing God. And you know what? That’s a poor testimony. If you claim to be a follower of Jesus Christ and you’re worried all the time, that’s a lousy witness to the world. It’s saying, “You know, I’m just like you. I don’t have a God who takes care of my needs. I’m playing God.” And by the way, you know what the worst kind of worry is? When you say, “You know, things are going too good. Oh, things are—I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop because things are going too—”

That’s the worst kind of worry you could possibly have. “I don’t really believe God is a good God because things are going too good, so something is bound to happen.” That’s what Job—there’s a whole book of the Bible about that kind of worry. It’s called the Book of Job. Job was enormously successful. He was wealthy, he was well known, he was beloved, he was popular, he was famous. He’d be a billionaire today.

And he kept going, “Hmm, things are going too good.” And when everything fell apart, he goes, “That which I have feared has happened.” It was a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we get to heaven, you’re going to see how many times you set yourself up for failure by worrying instead of trusting. Do you think God’s ever worried? No. And God made you in his image. He doesn’t want you to worry.

John chapter 14, verse one, Jesus says this: “Don’t be worried.” What do I do instead of worrying? He says, “Believe in God and believe in me.” Now how do you do that? How do you trust God to meet your needs? Okay, so how do I do that? How do I trust in God? Well, it’s not rocket science, friends. It’s just three or four things, and God makes it very clear in the Bible that if you’ll do these four things, worry is going to drain out of your life.

I don’t want you worrying anymore. Every time you worry is a wasted second of your life. It’s wasted energy. As they said, it doesn’t change anything. It’s unreasonable, it’s unhelpful, it’s unnatural, it’s unbelief, it’s unhealthy. So how do I trust God for my needs instead of worrying about my needs? Well, the Bible says you do four things. Write these down. Number one, and you do this every day—it’s not a one-time thing—every day ask him to be my shepherd.

Every day I ask Jesus to be my shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. And if I ask him to be my shepherd, then he’s going to feed and he’s going to lead and he’s going to meet my need in that day. By the way, he’ll not only feed, lead, and meet your need, he can also forgive your misdeed and help you succeed if you just trust him. So what do you do?

You do this every morning. When you get up, you sit on the side of your bed and you say, “The Lord is my shepherd.” “Jesus Christ, I’m expecting you to feed me, to lead me, and to meet my needs today, help me succeed, forgive my misdeeds. I will trust you today.” And I start every day by saying, “The Lord is my shepherd. You’re a good God.” And then I say it throughout the day.

Every time you go into a meeting, “The Lord is my shepherd. He’s going to help me in this meeting.” You’ve got a parent-teacher conference, “The Lord is my shepherd. While I’m about to hear I may not want to hear, but he’s going to feed me, lead me, and meet my need.” Any, you’ve got a major decision to make, “The Lord is my shepherd.” You might say it 10 or 15 times a day.

But if you’ll start saying that phrase, your worry will go down. Every time you start to worry, you need to say, “The Lord is my shepherd. I’m asking Jesus Christ to feed me, to lead me, to meet my needs, and I’m not going to worry about it because it says, ‘I’ve promised, I will take care of your needs if you will trust me.’” Now in John chapter 10, Jesus says this, verse 14 and 15: “I am the good shepherd.”

When you say the Lord’s my shepherd, who is that? Jesus. Says, “I’m it, I’m him. I am the Lord, I am the good shepherd, and I know my own sheep, and they know me, and I lay down my life for my sheep.” That’s what he did on the cross. He gave his life for you. And if he loved you enough to die for you, he certainly loves you enough to feed, lead, and meet your need.

Every day you need to pray the prayer that David prayed. It’s this next verse, Psalm 28, verse 9: Come, Lord, save us and bless us. Be our shepherd and always carry us in your arms. He says you can pray these things. The Lord’s my shepherd, so I need to say, “Lord, I need you to save me today. I need you to bless me today. I need you to be my shepherd today. I need you to carry me in your arms.”

Guest (Male): What a great and timely message today! Let’s end our show with a closing thought from Pastor Rick.

Rick Warren: If you’ve been blessed by this message today, here’s what I want you to do. Share it. Tell somebody about it. Now there’s a lot of great ways you can share Daily Hope. One of the easiest is by posting it on social media, on Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram. But you’ll find a share button today next to the message on my website, PastorRick.com. Don’t keep the good news to yourself. It’s too good to keep to ourselves; we’ve got to pass it on to others.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening today, and join me next time as we continue to look into God’s word for our daily hope. We’d love for you to share this broadcast. Just go to PastorRick.com. That’s 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.