Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): Hey everybody, welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. We're so glad you're here with us today. You know, no matter where you are in life, or what you're facing today, God has a purpose and plan for your life. And today we're beginning a new series called Building a Better Future. In this series, Rick Warren explores the lives of biblical leaders who rebuilt after seasons of hardship and captivity. And you'll discover practical biblical principles to help you move forward with hope and confidence as you trust God's plan for your life. So let's get started. Here's part one of a message called Making a Plan to Improve Your Life.

Pastor Rick Warren: There are five books in the Bible that specifically give us instructions for how to build a better future after a time of captivity. And those books are Nehemiah, Ezra, uh Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi. They're all in the Old Testament. And the first principle, it's there on your outline, if you pull out your app message notes, the first principle is this. Principle number one. You got to get dissatisfied with your current situation. If you're going to build a better future, you've got to get dissatisfied with your current situation. That's what happened with Nehemiah. Nehemiah held a very high position in the king's court in Persia, and he was the king's uh actually uh uh uh steward of the wine.

But he got a burden for his hometown in Jerusalem. And some of the captives had been allowed to return to Jerusalem after 70 years, but when they got home, they discovered that the temple and their homes and the entire city had been destroyed. And there were no walls or gates around the city anymore, so it was defenseless. Now this really concerned Nehemiah, and it made him very sad, and he he became burdened about it. Principle number two is start with what needs changing inside of me. You don't start with all the externals around you. You don't start with changing your circumstance.

You start by changing your attitude. You start with changing inside you. Now today we're going to look at the third principle of building a better future. And this principle is found in the second chapter of Nehemiah, the first nine verses. And here's the third principle. After you become dissatisfied and with what you got and you start looking inside of you what needs changing inside of me, point number three is this. You need to make a plan. If you're going to build a better future, you got to have a plan for your life. You have to have a life plan.

You need to write down a simple plan and get starting on building a better future. Now it's not going to happen without a plan. If you don't have a plan for a better future in your life, you're just going to coast. And you can't coast into a better you. You can't drift into a better future. It takes intention and it takes planning. Now I'm sure you've heard the old cliché, if you're failing to plan, you're planning to fail. Now that may be a cliché, but you know what? It's still true. Nothing's going to happen in your life till you first get satisfied dissatisfied with what you're doing.

Take a good look at what's going on inside your soul, and then you come up with a simple plan. But you know what? As followers of Jesus, we don't base our lives on clichés. We base our lives on the foundation of scripture. Everything we do is based on God's word. And fortunately, the book of Nehemiah in chapter two gives us a very practical model for life planning. And that's why I'm calling this message Making a Plan to Improve Your Life. Now before I show you Nehemiah's seven-step planning model for making a better future in your life, let me first answer the question, why?

Why should I make plans? Well, there are a lot of biblical reasons, but let me just mention three that are on your outline. First, you need to plan your life because God makes plans. Jeremiah 29:11 says, I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. Plans to prosper you and not to harm you. Plans to give you a hope and a future. Now listen, if God makes plans and he wants us to be like him, then we should make plans, too. Do you have any plans for the rest of the year? Do you have any plans for your next year?

Do you have any plans for the next 10 years? You're not living. You're just drifting if you don't have any plans. You're just existing. You're you're letting circumstances determine the direction of your life. 1 Corinthians 14:33 says this. God is not a God of disorder. So if your life has no plans, if your life has no order to it, then guess what? Your life's out of order. And that's not the kind of life that God created you to live. So God makes plans. Number two, you ought to plan because God tells me to plan. All through scripture, particularly in the book of Proverbs, the Bible talks about the value of planning your life.

Proverbs 4:26 says this. Mark out a straight path for your feet. What's that mean? Plan it. Mark out a straight path for your feet. That's another way of saying make a plan. It says mark out a straight path for your feet and then stick to that path and stay safe. In the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 14:40 says, everything should be done in a fitting and orderly way. What's he saying? God doesn't want your life to be a life of chaos. God doesn't want your life to be a life of confusion. Just drifting, muddling through life all mixed up.

He wants you to have a plan. God plans. He tells you to plan. And here's the third reason. So I don't waste my life. So I don't waste my life. Planning is a matter of stewardship. Your life is God's gift to you. What you do with your life is your gift back to God. And the Bible says this in Ephesians chapter 5 verse 15 to 17, 11 the Phillips translation. Live life with a due sense of responsibility, not as those who don't know the meaning of life, but as those who do. Make the best use of your time.

You can't do that without a plan. Don't be vague, but grasp firmly what you know to be the will of the Lord. You say, okay Rick, I got it. I realize that if I'm going to build a better future, I'm going to have to make some God-inspired plans. How do you do that? Well, that's what this message is about today. You just copy what Nehemiah did in chapter two. The seven steps when Nehemiah got a burden, when he got a vision, when he set up a plan, he did seven things in his plan. It's found in Nehemiah chapter one verse 11 to chapter two verse nine.

Now again, background. Nehemiah desperately wanted to return to his home, the land of Israel, and rebuild the city of Jerusalem and the walls of Jerusalem. But he has a very important and actually a very comfortable cushy job in Persia serving in the royal court of a king called Artaxerxes. And he couldn't just offhandedly suggest to the king just let him go without a plan. So he comes up with a plan. And he gives us a model of seven steps that you need for life planning in your life. I want you to practice these seven steps this week as you think about building a better future for your life.

All right. This is going to be a very practical message. All right. Here's step one in developing a life plan. Step one. Pray and ask for God's favor. Pray and ask for God's favor on your life. God's favor is God's grace. This is the first thing that Nehemiah does in his life plan. Nehemiah chapter one verse 11 he says this. He prays, oh Lord, please let hear my prayer. And listen to the prayers of all your servants who love to honor you. That's all of us. Give your servant success today. Is it okay to pray for success?

Nehemiah did. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the king's presence. And he says, I prayed this prayer. He says, in those days I was the king's wine steward. Now that probably wasn't a very stressful job. I mean, you're just serving the king wine, okay? Now you may be thinking, I have no idea what I should be doing with my future. I have no idea what I should be doing in the next six months. I don't know what to do with my life, so I don't have have any idea what to pray about.

Well, you know what? You can pray about that. You can pray that you don't know what you should be doing. James chapter one verse five says this. If you want to know what God wants you to do, just ask him. And they'll gladly tell you, for he 's always ready to give a generous supply of wisdom to all who ask. So you go, I don't even know what my vision, what my dream, what my goal, what my target, what my plan is. Start saying, God, I don't have a plan. What's your plan for my life?

Once you start asking God for wisdom and direction, you know what? He's going to put eventually an idea in your mind or a burden in your heart. You're going to look around and you're going to see something that needs changing. When Nehemiah started praying, God gave him a dream, gave him a vision, gave him a burden of seeing his hometown rebuilt and restored. So let me ask you, what needs to be rebuilt in your life? What needs to be restored in your life, in your family, in your job, around you, in your nation, in your city, in your community?

What do you see out there in the world that needs to be changed? Let God give you that burden and keep praying and keep talking with about other mature believers about it. And you know what? Eventually God is going to put something in your heart. That's the first step in life planning. Get a burden for something God wants to do in your life or through your life in the world. Now here's the next step. Ready? Step two. Once you start praying and you ask God for his favor in your life and show me what you want to do, step two is this.

Prepare for an opportunity and then wait. Okay? Whatever you say, you know, I think God wants me to do something about this problem in society, or God wants me to do about this something problem in my company, or in my home, or in my community, or in my church. You start preparing for an opportunity to do something and then you wait. You don't just sit around waiting for God to do something. You start preparing for that opportunity. Now the Bible says in Nehemiah chapter two verse one, four months later, this is after he had prayed this prayer, four months later, when king Artaxerxes was dining, I took the wine to him.

Now notice, when you start praying for a vision, for a dream, for a goal, for a plan, it doesn't come instantly. God is not a vending machine. He's waiting to see if you're serious. And he says, four months later, all of a sudden I get the opportunity. What was he doing during those four months? Preparing for the opportunity to ask the king, could he go do what God had called him to do? Now Nehemiah had gotten this burden four months earlier, and for four months he's been waiting for something to happen. And now something happens.

What had been happening between that time when Noah I mean Nehemiah got his first idea about rebuilding the wall and rebuilding Jerusalem? And when he actually gets the opportunity to present the his idea to the king, what he been doing? He been praying. But he also had been planning, and he had also been preparing. Now we know that by the way he responded to the king when the king said, what do you want me to do? Nehemiah knew exactly what to ask for because he had been preparing for the opportunity. He'd been thinking about it.

Howard Hendricks once said, nothing's more profitable than serious thinking. And nothing is more demanding. If you're going to be a leader in this world, you need time to think. You need think time. You need time to get away. Leaders make time for think time. That's a law of leadership. Proverbs 13:16 says this. A wise man thinks ahead. Are you doing that? Are you thinking about the next six months? Are you thinking about the next year of your life? You thinking about the next five or 10 years of your life? A wise man thinks ahead. A fool doesn't and even brags about it.

See, it's wise to spend time thinking about your life. And what do you say what do I think about? Well, ask yourself some questions like, where am I now? Where do I want to be? How will I get there? That's what Nehemiah did. He's thinking it through. He's praying for four months, but he's also planning and preparing for an opportunity to present his plan to the king. What happens when you pray and plan? God gives you a vision. But during this time, you're also preparing. And when opportunity knocks, you'll be ready to open the door.

You see, all of life's full of opportunities. There are opportunities all around you. You just overlooking them. You are not seeing the opportunities that are all around you. Why? You're not praying. You're not preparing. You're not planning. A lot of times we're just not ready for the opportunities and they pass us by and then they're gone. So pray. All right. Start preparing for the opportunity and then wait for the opportunity to come. God will provide it right time. Step three. Expect fear, but don't let it stop me. This is the third thing we see in Nehemiah's plan.

Expect fear, but don't let it stop me. Nehemiah says, you know, after four months I get the opportunity to serve some wine to king Artaxerxes. And in verse one and two of Nehemiah two it says, when king Artaxerxes was dining, I took the wine to him. Now he had never seen me look so sad before. So he asked, why are you so sad? Your heart must be troubled. And Nehemiah says, that made me very afraid. Now this is the moment Nehemiah is waiting for. He's been praying for an opportunity to present his idea to the king.

He's got an opportunity now to state his case because he been planning, he's been preparing. He's ready for the answer. But notice he has a sad face. He has a burden he can't hide. He says, I want to do this, but it's not opening up. I'm not getting the opportunity. He had a burden he couldn't hide. He's getting a little discouraged by now. It's been four months. God, aren't you going to do anything about this wall? I've been praying for the opportunity to go home and help restore and rebuild my my city. Finally the king king says, what's wrong, Nehemiah?

And notice it says Nehemiah says, I was afraid. He's literally scared to death. Why? Because in those days, listen, it was a capital crime to be sad before the king. Kings are very fickle in those days. They didn't want any downers around them. They didn't anybody want want anybody raining on their parade. If you frowned in the presence of the king, you could get your head cut off. If you were depressed in the presence of the king, that was it. And notice it says this is the first time I had ever appeared sad. He'd always been upbeat around his boss.

It's a real gamble to show his true emotions. Not only that, Nehemiah is going to ask permission for a leave of absence. Now in those days, if the king doesn't like your request, it means he doesn't like you. So no wonder Nehemiah is frightened. And on top of that, he's going to ask permission to go rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. And the king himself had said the walls could not be rebuilt. He'd said that earlier. So he's standing before a king who has the power of life and death. He's got a reason to be afraid.

Here's the principle. If you're going to be used by God, you're going to have to move ahead in spite of your fear. All right? Leaders move ahead in spite of the fear. There's a myth that that people who are walking with the Lord are never afraid. That's nonsense. I I I I've said many times that every major decision in Saddleback's 42-year history that I had to make, I was scared to death to do it. I just did it anyway cuz I was not going to let fear dominate me. We're going to do the right thing.

Never let fear stop you. Courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is moving ahead in spite of your fear. If you're not afraid, you don't need courage. You only have courage when you're scared to death and you do it anyway. Now notice what Nehemiah did with his fears. He did two things. And when you start going after your plan that God gives you, it's going to be so big, it'll scare you to death. And you're and so what do you do with your fear? Number one. First, he admitted his feelings. Verse three. He says, I was scared.

Okay, he's admitting, I was scared. I was scared to death cuz I I could lose my head making this request to the king. I could lose my head just being sad around the king. But he says, I replied. And here's what he replied. Long live the king. Good idea, Nehemiah. Start with a compliment. God live God long live the king. Then he says, why shouldn't I be sad? For the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins and all its gates have been burned down. Why should my face not look sad? The cities where my fathers are buried lies in ruins.

The gates have been destroyed by fire. He chooses his words very carefully. He first he assures the king of his loyalty. May the king live forever. Remember this guy is also a bodyguard cuz he's like testing the wine so he can't get poisoned. If he's sad, maybe he also knows some assassination plot. The king's asking, why is my number one guy upset? So he admits his feelings. You're never going to get anywhere if you stuff your feelings. You got to admit what you're feeling. If you're discouraged, admit it. If you're sad, admit it. If you're grieving, admit it.

That's how you grow. But the second thing he did is he prayed quickly before speaking. Now this is the second time he prays. There are actually 11 prayers in the book of Nehemiah. And here's the second one. He prays he prays before he meets the king. Said, God, give me this opportunity to present my plan. And then when the king says, hey, what are you what are you what's the problem with you? He stops and he prays what I call a lightning prayer where it's really one word. Help. Help me, Lord. Nehemiah 4:2 he says, the king replied to me, well, what is it you want?

And it says, then I prayed again to the God of heaven. Sometimes a prayer can just be one word. Help. And the king says, what do you want? You're obviously upset. And Nehemiah again prays the second time. Now this isn't the four months of prayer he's already done. This is the quick prayer. It's the silent quick on the spot prayer. I got the opportunity. God give me the wisdom. Help me to know what to do. Help me to know what to say right now. It's interesting that Nehemiah appeals to the eastern respect for ancestors. He says, my father's graves are in ruin because eastern guys were in to take care of their ancestors' graves.

And the king's response was, what do you want?

Guest (Male): 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.