Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Guest (Male): Hey everybody, welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Well, we're talking about your money. That's right. We're continuing a powerful series called Financial Fitness. Rick is opening God's Word and showing us how to manage what we've been given with wisdom, faith, and purpose. And I know if you apply these biblical principles, you'll start to experience true financial freedom and lasting peace.

So let's jump right in for the final part of a message called The Foundation of Financial Health.

Rick Warren: God expects me to use what I've got, not to hoard it, not to sit on it, not to hide it, not to bury it, not to deny it. But money is a tool and it is meant to be used. It is not meant to be stockpiled. Money is like manure. If you spread it all around, it helps things grow, like fertilizer. But if you pile it up, it just starts stinking.

And money is like fertilizer. You don't pile it up. He says money is to be used. Now, God expects me to invest what He loans me. Now this third guy, what's the problem with him? He's cautious. He's conservative. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. And what's he do? He just sits on it. And he takes what his master's given him and doesn't do anything with it.

And does this upset the master? Are you kidding? The master says, "You wicked, lazy servant." Doesn't that seem a little strong to you? He says, "I was afraid of losing it, so I didn't do anything with it." And God says to him, or the master says to him, "You're wicked." Now that's not a word we would usually use for money management or mismanagement.

But what He's saying here is this: this is a serious sin. See, when we think of the word "wicked," we think of rape. We think of murder. When I think of "wicked," I think of child abuse. I think of sex trafficking. I think of forced slavery and bondage. I think of those things as wickedness.

But you know what God says? He's saying, "Rick, it's wicked anytime you misuse or abuse the resources I gave you, and you don't use them wisely. That's wicked." This is a test. I put you on earth to see if I could trust you. And if I can't trust you in heaven with greater responsibility, if I can't trust you on earth with some serious money management issues.

He said doing nothing is inexcusable. Now that's true with everything. Doing nothing with your talent—you just sit on it and you don't use your talent. Doing nothing with your money—you just sit on it and you don't use it. Doing nothing with your time—you just sit on it and you use it, instead of using it.

You don't invest it. The greatest use of your life is to invest it in that which will outlast it. He says, "Man, at least you should have put it in the bank. You didn't even try. You didn't even make any effort. You've done nothing." What did you do with it? He goes, "Well, I buried it." What do we do when we bury something? We bury things to forget them.

He says, "I don't want to think about this. I don't want to face it. I don't want to deal with the responsibility. Money is too big of a responsibility, so I don't even—I'm not even thinking about it." And that's why how a lot of people get deeply in debt. They don't want to think about it. "I know I'm not making it, and I know I'm going deeper and deeper in debt every month. So I just won't think about it."

"I'll just pretend it doesn't exist. I'll bury it. I'll bury my financial problems and just ignore the fact that my credit card is getting bigger and bigger and bigger every month." Now, friends, easy credit plus ignorance and being in the dark about your finances is guaranteed disaster.

And one of the points we're going to look at, one of the laws, is knowing where your money is coming from, knowing where it's going, knowing where you got it, and knowing what you're doing with it. Now, what is He saying here in this story? Why is He telling this story? Because He's saying you can't please God with your life by doing nothing.

You say, "Rick, are you telling me that I could do nothing and that would be wicked?" Yes. Because God did not put you on earth to do nothing. He put you on here on earth to use your time, your money, your energy, your intelligence, your personality, and all those things for good and for God. To get to know God, to get to know others, to love others, to love God.

Doing nothing with what God has given me is inexcusable. In fact, God would rather have you try and invest your life in something and have it totally fail than do nothing and succeed. Because God wants you to learn to live by faith. Now, before we move off of this point, let me ask you this question. Notice which of the three people—the five-talent person, the two-talent person, or the one-talent person—is most likely to bury his talent?

The one talent. Why? Because when I only have one talent, I look out and I go, "Look at all these five-talent people. They don't need me. I'll just sit on the bench and watch." Because I'm not a superstar, I won't do anything. Well, because you may not be a superstar does not excuse you to do nothing with your life.

You say, "Well, I don't have the brains she does. I don't have the looks he has. I don't have the background he has. I didn't have that head start with the family that guy did. I didn't become a Christian until later in life." Or now you can give me a thousand excuses. No, no, no, that's not it. Remember, now God's not going to judge you and evaluate you and audit you according to anybody else. He's going to say, "Hey, when you finally got the picture, what'd you start doing with it?"

When it finally the light clicked on and it dawned on you that I'm here for more than just me, did you ever actually do anything about it? If you didn't develop that talent, He says that's not good. The one-talent person says, "Since I'm not a superstar, I'll just sit here." But just because you can't be the best doesn't mean you can do nothing.

The reason I'm belaboring this point is because some of you have lost your joy. And you're really just kind of going through life, going through the motions. Same place, same thing. And there's no joy in your life. There's no energy in your life. There's no enthusiasm in your life. You're just kind of putting in the hours and punching the clock and hoping for the weekend.

You are missing the life God intended for you to have. God meant for you to do more than just punch a time clock or to go through life little by little. No spark, no enthusiasm. The reason why you have no spark, no enthusiasm—you are playing it safe. You're burying your talents in the ground.

I don't know what they are. Maybe you don't even know what they are. Well, that's why we have a class called Class 301 to help you discover all the different talents in your life: your SHAPE, your abilities, who God made you to be. But if you're living for yourself and you're not using your talents for God's purpose, you're not going to be joyful. You're not going to be happy.

Now, why do we do this? God comes along and said—I mean, it wasn't like the one talent was nothing. It was $1.8 million. And he buried it? He buried it? You got to be kidding me. So what does that mean? Why do we do that? Why do we hide talents and we don't let other people know about it?

And why don't we do what really go out on a limb with God and trust Him in faith? I'll tell you why. It's one reason: fear. And that brings us to the next law. The fifth law of financial freedom and financial fitness is the law of motivation. And it is this: if I'm going to be successful in life, I must move against my fears.

I must move against my fears. I have to do the very thing I fear the most. Because with every talent, there is a corresponding fear to keep you from using that talent. If you have a talent at singing, there will be a fear that nobody will like it. If you have a talent at business, there will be a fear that what if I fail?

And if you have a talent in any other area, there will always be the "what ifs" in the back that keep you from stepping out and doing what God created you to do with your life. Investing in your life. What keeps us from investing our lives? What keeps us from moving to financial freedom? Well, I'll tell you what it is: it is fear.

You see, in this book, there are principles that God guarantees, not me, God guarantees that if you do these financial principles, you will be blessed. The problem is some of them are counter-culture. It's exact opposite of what you feel like doing. And so then God says, "We're going to make this a test. Do you trust Me or do you trust yourself?"

And the reason why a lot of people never get out of debt is because they are unwilling to trust God in the steps to getting out of debt. They are afraid to do what the Bible says to do. And because they're afraid to do what the Bible says to do, they just go year to year to year constantly in debt, living from hand to mouth, barely getting by, overspending and being overstressed.

Now, God promises that if I follow the commands—and we're going to look at these in the book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes starting next week, the laws of financial stability—God says if I do these, I will find blessing and benefit in my life. But they require faith. And that means I'm going to have the fears coming in going, "I'm afraid to do what God tells me to do."

Now this happens in lots of areas. People get afraid of doing it God's way. "I'm afraid that if I don't sleep around, I'll never get married. I'm afraid I'll never get out of debt if I do the eight or ten, twelve, twenty principles God says to do." And God says these fears will hold you back. He says, "I was afraid. I was afraid. I was afraid, and I hid your money in the ground."

Now we're getting to the real issue. Now there are multiple kinds of fears that can hold you back. There's self-doubt: "I could never do that." You've always had a dream of starting a business: "I could never do that. I'm not qualified." There's the fear of failure. How many of you when you were in school had the fear that caused you to hesitate raising your hand? Yeah, you still have it.

There's the fear of self-doubt. There's the fear of self-consciousness. "What will other people think?" The Bible says the fear of man is a trap. If you worry about what other people think about your life, you will never be a success. You gotta not worry about what other people think. And then there's the fear of self-pity when you just say, "Oh, you know, I've failed in the past, so I'm never going to try again."

Well, that's kind of dumb. Just because you failed doesn't mean you give up. Everybody fails. That's the only way you learn what works. Don't call it a failure; call it an experiment. Call it an education. And if failure is an education, many of us are quite educated. We know what doesn't work. And go, "Okay, well, we'll do that, okay."

But God uses ordinary people who just keep on going. You know one of my favorite stories is the way two of the disciples handled failure? You know there were two guys who followed Jesus in the twelve who denied Jesus at the cross. There were two of them. Judas denied Jesus, and Peter denied Jesus.

They both committed the exact same sin. No one was more worse than the other. They both denied their Savior, Jesus Christ. What made the difference was the way they reacted to their failure. Judas had a pity party, went out, got depressed, and took his life. He hung himself. He committed suicide.

Peter realized what he'd done was wrong. He went to God. He prayed. He asked forgiveness. He repented. And Peter, the guy, the biggest failure among the twelve, was the guy Jesus chooses that forty days later after the resurrection, He says, "That's the guy I want to preach on Pentecost," and starts the church and 3,000 people are saved the first day.

And Jesus looks at Peter and says, "Upon this rock, on your faith, I will build the church." He chose the biggest failure in the bunch to build the church on. I like that. What a God. He didn't choose the superstar. He chose the guy who'd blown it the most.

And so you start saying, "Well, you know, I'm having this pity party. I really messed up financially in the past." Yeah, okay, doesn't matter where you've been. What matters is the direction your feet are right now. Now, you're not going to get out of debt overnight. You didn't get in debt overnight.

One of the principles we're going to look at in the next few weeks is called the little-by-little principle. It's kind of like losing weight. You know, I stood up in January and said, "You guys, I need to lose a bunch of weight." I've lost about forty-five now, but look, it's taken me eight, nine months.

I'm not through, and I'm going to keep on, but it's little by little. Why? I didn't gain it overnight. You're not going to lose eighty pounds in a week. You didn't gain it—and you didn't get in debt overnight. You're not going to get out of debt—I can tell you, if you'll stick with me, I can tell you how to get out of debt.

In fact, one of the things I'm going to do is I'm going to share my financial testimony because what I'm going to share with you is not only what's in the Word of God, but how I started practicing it at age seventeen. And that's why for the last nine years, I haven't taken a salary from Saddleback Church. I didn't need to. Why?

Because when I was seventeen, I started practicing the 10-10-80 principle. And I started putting away—even when I was seventeen, I started putting away fifty cents a week toward my retirement at seventeen. That's called the power of compounding interest. It is the most powerful influence in the world.

The power of compounding interest, Einstein said, is the most powerful factor in the world. It is geometric and exponential. And if you start little by little, it expands and expands and expands. But you got to do it God's way. What does that mean? It means you're thinking more long-term than short-term.

It means you're thinking about the future, not here and now. We're going to talk about the legacy of leaving a legacy to children and leaving a legacy to grandchildren. And how do you do that? But you've got to do it God's way. And so fear is always attached to this desire to do God's way, and Satan's going to try to get you to not do it.

Now this guy didn't move against his fear. And so we come to the next principle. And the next principle we find look in verse 28. The master says this: "Okay, this guy didn't use what I gave him, the little bit I gave him. Take away the money from this servant who had one talent and give it to the one with ten talents."

You gotta be kidding me. You're going to give the guy who's got a lot more? Yep. To those who use well what they are given, even more will be given, and they will have an abundance. But for those who are unfaithful, even what little they have will be taken away. This is the law of application. And here it is: if I don't use it, I lose it.

That is a principle of the universe that you cannot deny. If you don't use it, you will lose it. And if you're not using what you got, you don't get what you got. And God has the right to take away anything that I don't use to invest for Him because it's all His in the first place.

Now this is a universal law. If I don't use it, I lose it. If I refuse to exercise, I lose muscle. If I refuse to think, my mind goes dull. If I refuse to practice, I lose that ability in sports or music or any other area. I lose that talent. If you don't use it, you lose it.

On the other hand, the flip side is the good side and that is this: if I do use it wisely, God gives me more. I am Exhibit A of this principle that if you use it wisely, God gives you more. Whatever you need more of, you give it to God. If you need more time, you give God your time. If you need more energy, you give God your energy. If you need more brains, you give God your brains.

If you need more money, you give God your money. That's what He blesses. Whatever you sow, you will reap. And we'll look at that—one of the laws is the law of the harvest. Now when you sow a seed, you don't get one seed back. You always get exponentially, geometrically more. If I sow one kernel of corn, plant it in my backyard, I don't get one kernel of corn back. I get a stalk of corn with hundreds of kernels on it. I always get back more than I sow. That is the law of sowing and harvesting.

Now there's one more law: the law of compensation. And the law of compensation is this: God will reward me for good money management. God will reward me for good money management. Money is the acid test of your faithfulness. God uses it more than any other thing in your life to test your faith. Why? It's because it's the thing we have the hardest time with.

Now look at the rewards that God gives for wise money management. In verse 21 He says this, the master replied to the guys who had used their money well, He said, "Well done." That's the first thing. "Well done, good and faithful servant." That's the first reward. He says, "You've been faithful with few things, I will now put you in charge of many things." That's the second reward.

"Come and share your master's happiness." That's the third reward. If you want to write this down, it's three words: affirmation, promotion, celebration. Affirmation, promotion, celebration. First He says the first reward is affirmation. God says to you, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Good job. That's my boy. That's my girl. You passed the test. I was testing you to see what you would do. Could you be trusted with what I gave you? And you passed the test. Well done, good and faithful servant."

"You have been faithful with a few things, I will put you in charge of more." That's the second—promotion. First affirmation—"good job"—promotion—greater responsibility. Did you know that what you do in heaven—your job, your responsibilities, your roles, your rewards—are going to be determined by how you used what you were given here? This is the test. This is the test.

And then celebration—come and share God's happiness. He says, "Come on in, it's party time in Dana Point. Come on down, we're going to have a party." Money is the acid test of how much you trust God. It's why we're going to spend some weeks on this, not just to get you out of debt, but because I want you to learn to trust God more.

Here's what Jesus said. Look here on the screen: "If you are untrustworthy with worldly wealth—it means if you don't manage your money here on earth, you don't manage it well, you're always in debt, you never have any able to give away to share with anybody else because your own needs aren't met—if you're untrustworthy with worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?"

He said, "If I can't trust you with real money here on earth, how can I trust you with heavenly money, the true riches in heaven? And if you're not faithful with other people's money, why should you be trusted with money of your own?" This is Jesus talking. No one can serve two masters. For you will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and money. Now notice He doesn't say there you should not serve God and money. He says you can't. It's impossible. Nobody can serve two masters. So you're going to have to decide what's going to be number one in my life: God or making money. You can only have one number one in your life.

Whatever's number one in your life is your god. Whatever's number one in your life is what you love. The Bible says you cannot serve God and money. As I said earlier, money is a terrific servant; it is a terrible master. When it masters you, you're always under stress. It's always controlling you. You're always worried. You're always uptight about it. When you are the master of your money, when it is your servant, it serves you. When money works for you instead of you working for your money, then you have peace.

Now let me just close by asking this question. If God did an audit of your life right now on your finances, what grade would He give you? A? B? C? Whatever it is, my goal is to move you up the scale in the next couple weeks. Because this issue is an eternal issue. If you are not faithful in unrighteous mammon, money management, who will trust you the true riches of heaven?

I want you to have the good roles, the good responsibilities, the good rewards in heaven. And as your pastor, I'm praying that you'll learn these principles and apply them not just so you get out of debt. I want you out of debt. I want you to succeed. I want you to prosper. But more than that, I want you to be what God wants you to be.

Let's bow our heads. Would you pray this prayer in your heart? "Dear God, I realize that everything I have belongs to You. Nothing is really mine; You just loaned it to me. I realize that everything I have is a gift from You and comes from You. And one day it will all return to You. And I realize, Lord, that one day You're going to do an audit on my life and You're going to ask me to give an account of what I did with what I was given. I want to practice these principles. I want to wisely use Your money. I want to learn the principles of financial fitness. And then I want to move against my fears and do the right thing whether I feel like it or not. Lord, I didn't get in the mess I'm in overnight, but I want to learn the little-by-little principle. And as we talk about these areas, I want to not just be spiritually free and emotionally free and relationally free, but I want to be financially free. I realize that if I don't use it, I'll lose it. But I also realize that if I use it wisely, that You have promised to reward me for good management."

With our heads still bowed, an unmanaged finances are simply a symptom of an unmanaged life. And what you need is a life manager, and His name is Jesus Christ. That's what it means to make Jesus the Lord of your life. It means to put Him under new management, put your life under new management. Jesus Christ, become the manager of my life. Say that: "Jesus Christ, I want You to be the manager of my life from this day forward. I want to follow Your will and Your way. In Your name I pray, Amen."

You know, if you just prayed that prayer for the very first time, or you just recommitted your life to Jesus again today, would you let me know about it? There's something real about sharing your commitment. So write me, rick@pastorrick.com, and say, "Rick, I prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ." And I'll send you some material that'll help you on your journey with Jesus, and I'll also pray for you. God bless you.

Guest (Male): 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.

Rick Warren: Hi everybody, today I want to read part of a letter that I received from June, who is a prisoner that was given a second chance by God. He wrote this: "I'm a prisoner here in the national penitentiary serving my sentence. I came to know the Lord inside my cell thirteen years ago. And now I'm serving the Lord as an inmate pastor. Rick, I always use your Daily Hope preaching and devotionals in sharing the words of God to my fellow prisoners. And I see people come to the Lord in many, many ways. You know, before I was in prison and I came to know the Lord, I was a high-ranking police officer. And I was about to commit suicide because of the numerous charges filed against me. But when God saved me physically and spiritually, my journey in prison became the most wonderful vessel used by God to manifest His love to me. He never leaves me nor forsakes me, and may His name always be glorified. Thank you, Pastor Rick. You're an inspiration and encouragement to all of us."

Well, June, it's amazing to know your story and to hear that you're using the Daily Hope messages to teach your fellow inmates about Jesus Christ. That is fantastic. I couldn't be more happy. They need to hear that God gives second chances. They need to hear that He still has a plan and purpose for their lives, even though they're in prison. Your story is a great reminder that any one of us can use what we learn through Daily Hope podcast, devotionals, and we can take these things and teach others about God's grace and forgiveness and unconditional love. Keep it up, my friend. God bless you.

Guest (Male): You know, I share Pastor Rick's Daily Hope all the time. And whether it's a friend or someone you meet in a restaurant, everyone needs hope and encouragement from the Bible every day. So tell the people you know and love about Daily Hope. 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.