Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Intro Voice: Hey everybody, we're so glad that you've dropped by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. And right now, we're bringing our series Financial Fitness to a close.

Rick has shown us some great principles from God's word about how to manage what you've been given with wisdom, faith, and purpose. And that's going to help all of us begin to experience true financial freedom and lasting peace.

So we're going to wrap up with the final part of a message called, "Where to Best Invest."

Pastor Rick Warren: You know, I'll never forget when I bought my first Bible. I was a teenager, and I thought, you know, this is the most important book to me out of any book. So I'm going to get the best one I can find.

And I went out and I did a little research and I found out these study Bibles that have additional study materials in them to help you. And I found one that I liked called the Thompson Chain Reference Bible.

And then I said, I'm going to get this one in a binding that lasts, so I'm going to get it in the nicest leather that I could find. And I remember, this is years ago. I was a teenager. And it cost me 60 bucks to buy that Bible.

Now, as a teenager, that was two entire months of my, of my allowance. And I just thought, okay, I could give up all my snacks, give up movies, and all the other things that teenagers spend their money on. And for two months, I won't have any of that, but I'll get a really cool Bible that I can use for the rest of my life. I still have that Bible.

And it's my most prized, treasured possession because I've been through it so many times and underlined it and colored it and marked it all up, and it's just, it's been personalized for me. And when I was thinking about that, I thought about this verse, Isaiah 55:2.

It says this, "Why spend your money on food that doesn't give you strength and does you no good? Listen, I'll tell you where to get food that's good for the soul." He said, "Now, you can spend your money on junk food or soul food."

Okay? This is soul food. It's food for your soul. Some of that stuff is just empty calories. But he says, "This is soul food. It's going to help you grow." Look at the next verse. "It is better, much better, to have wisdom and knowledge than gold or silver." He says, "You know, don't pile up all your wealth just to have it all piled up." He says, "Use it."

Listen, this is really profound here. Money is a lot like fertilizer. Okay, if you pile it all up, it just starts stinking. But if you spread it around, it makes things grow.

Pastor Rick Warren: Hmm.

Pastor Rick Warren: God says, use your money for a purpose. Use some of it to express love to me, that's the treasury fund. Use some of it to express love to other believers in God's family, that's the mutual fund. Use some of it to help yourself grow personally, that's the growth fund.

He says, "I want you to grow. And invest some of your money to make yourself better and smarter and wiser and a more skilled person." You see, when you do that, you can make yourself an offering to God.

You can not only give an offering, the Bible says you can be an offering. Look at this next verse. "Take your everyday ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going to work, and walking around life, and place it before God as an offering. You're actually, you become an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him."

So he's saying, "You don't just give an offering, you make yourself an offering by making yourself a better person by investing in the growth fund so that God can use you, and you become an offering."

Now, the fourth kind of fund that God wants you to invest in is what I call the equity service fund. The equity service fund. Why? Because the fourth purpose of your life is God wants you to practice serving him by serving other people.

Remember when you get to heaven, you're going to do four things: you're going to love God, so he wants you to practice here. You're going to love other people, so he wants you to practice here. You're going to grow spiritually, so he wants you to practice here. And you're going to serve God in heaven, so he wants you to practice here.

Now, one of the ways you can serve other people is by serving them financially. And so the equity service fund is the fourth way. God says, "I want you to use some of your money to help people in need." They don't have to be believers, they don't even, they can be total strangers.

But I want you to minister to them through the equity service fund. I want you to help people in need. Now, in the Bible, there was a church in, in Greece that did the same thing. They heard about another church that was in trouble, going through a famine, and so they gave them some money. Notice what the Bible says.

"They gave as much as they were able and even more than they could afford. No one told them to do it. They pleaded with us to let them share in this service." That's the service fund. "For God's people." So how do I invest in the equity service fund? We can write this down. "By using some of my money to expand my ministry."

I use some of my money to expand my ministry. Remember, everybody's got a ministry. Not everybody's a pastor, but everybody's a minister because God calls us. God didn't put you on this earth to live for yourself and be a selfish little clod.

God put you on this earth to serve other people, to make the world a better place. You're not doing that, you're missing one of the purposes of your life. And God says, "I want you to use some of your money to expand your ministry." Ministry just means meeting the needs of other people, in Jesus' name. A financial need, a physical need, an emotional need, a practical need.

Look at these verses. The Bible on the next page says this, "I want you to excel in this gracious ministry of giving." In Acts 20:35, Jesus, it tells us, "We must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, it is more blessed," that means happy, "it's more blessed to give than to receive." That's what Jesus said.

Now, imagine this. I want you to get this. Let's say you had a father who was a multi, multi-billionaire. And one day your dad brings you in and and he says, "I've got this huge fortune that I want to give to you. I want to share it with you. But I need to know if you're capable of handling it, and I need to test you to see if you can handle this amount of wealth. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to give you a set amount of money to live on. And then I want you to learn to live on less than the amount I give you. And I want you to live on less than the amount I give you, so you can give some of it away to help other people."

"Now, I'm going to be watching you to see how you manage and distribute my money." Remember, it's mine, "I'm just going to give it to you. And I'm going to watch and see how you manage and distribute it. And if you do well, I'm going to give it all to you."

Now what would you do with that money? You'd be very, very careful in how you used it. God has said the same thing to you. He said, "I want to bring you to heaven one day and I want you to share my wealth in heaven forever and ever and ever. But I'm, this is a test, folks. Life is a test. And God is watching you to see, are you going to just spend it all on yourself? Uh-uh, wrong answer. I can't trust you with it.

Are you going to be generous with what I give to you, says God? Are you going to pass it around, spread it around? Or are you just going to hoard it?" God says, "I'm watching and I'm testing." The Bible makes very clear that this life is a test in preparation for the next. How you use your time, how you use your money, your relationships, and everything else.

That's why the Bible says this in Proverbs 11:24, "The world of the generous gets larger and larger. The world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller." Here's the point. The more you give to others, the more God gives to you.

I could give you a personal testimony that would take the rest of the day on that one. The more you give to others, the more God gives to you. Now why does he do that? Because God wants you to learn to be like him.

God, probably the number one quality, or one of the main qualities of God is, he's generous. Everything you have in your life is because of the generosity of God. You would have zip, nothing, nada, if it weren't for God's generosity. You wouldn't even be alive if it weren't for God's generosity. He created you.

You say, "What about all the things I worked for and I earned?" Where do you think you got the ability to work? Who gave you your mind, who gave you your hands, who gave you your health, who decided to have you born here and give you the freedom? Who gave you all, everything you have in your life is a total gift from God. You'd have nothing without God.

And God is generous, and he says, "You know what? I want my children to be like me. Like father, like son. So I'm going to set up the universe that every time you're generous, I'm going to reward you." Because I want you to learn to be like me. I want you to learn to be giving and generous.

And so the world of the generous gets larger and larger. The world of the stingy gets smaller and smaller. Now, there's one group of people that God really, especially wants us to be generous with. You know what it is? It's the poor.

It's the poor. Over and over in the Bible, God says, "I'm watching how you handle the poor. How do you react to the homeless, to the poor, to the people who have nothing?" So he gives us promises. Here are just a couple of them. Proverbs 28 says, "Give to the poor and you will never be in need." That's God's promise.

"But if you close your eyes to the poor, many will curse you." And Proverbs 19 says, "When you give to the poor, it's like lending to the Lord, and the Lord will pay you back." The Bible says this, "That when I give to help the needs of others, it's a test."

Look at the next verse. "Suppose you see a brother or sister who needs food or clothing, and you say, 'God bless you, stay warm, eat well.' But then you don't give them any food or clothing. What good does that do? Faith that doesn't show itself by good deeds is no faith at all. It's dead and useless."

You know, the Bible calls the church the body of Christ. The body of Christ. But today, most churches have their hands and their feet amputated. And all they are is a big mouth. And people know what they're against, but they don't know what they're for. And in this church, we've reattached the hands and the legs, so we can invest in the service fund.

Pastor Rick Warren: Now, God has a fifth purpose for your life. First, you're planned for his pleasure, you were formed for his family, you were created to become like Christ. You were shaped to serve him. And number five, you were made for a mission. But because he has a mission for your life, the fifth fund is he said, "I want you to invest in what I call the Global Fund."

The Global Fund. God says, "I want you to use some of your money to take the good news to the whole world." The Bible says this, the Lord said to him, "I'm setting you up as a light for the nations, so that my salvation becomes global."

Now, how do I invest in this fund, the Global Fund? By using some of my money to extend my mission. By using some of my money to extend my personal life mission. God says, "I want you to take part of it and I want you to invest it in what I want you to do on this earth."

This is investing in yourself for the life mission God created you for. Now Luke 16:9 is probably one of the most misunderstood verses in the entire Bible. Jesus says this, "Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings." What in the world does he mean by that?

Look at that again. He says, "I want you to use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings." What does that mean? Well, here's what it means. He says, "I want you to take some of your money and I want you to use it to help other people get into heaven."

"So that when you die and you get to heaven, they will welcome you there and they'll say, 'Thank you for investing in me. I'm in heaven because of you. And I'm not your friend for life, man. I'm your friend for eternity because I'm in heaven because you cared enough. You bought me a Bible, you bought me a ticket to an event, you gave me a Christian book. You did something with your money. You helped spread the news around the world in some village that you'd never even been to. And because you gave, I'm now a follower of Christ, and I'm in heaven because of you, and I am eternally indebted to you.'"

Friends, that is the greatest possible use of your money. Is anybody going to be in heaven because of you? Have you ever used any of your money to get anybody there? To help spread the good news, to help get the word out, to know the good news and not share it? If I knew the cure for AIDS and I didn't share it, that would be criminal.

If I knew the cure for cancer and I didn't spread it as fast as I could, that would be criminal. But I know how people can have purpose in life. They're past forgiven and a future in heaven. And to not share that would be criminal.

So God says, "Invest in getting people into heaven." It's the highest use of your money to reach one more for Jesus. As I said, "Is anybody going to be in heaven because of you?"

Now, let me give you a little, if you don't get anything else I say today, get what I'm saying next. If you invest your treasure on earth, all you do is pile up treasure on earth, guess what? Every day you're getting further and further away from it because I hate to tell you this, but we're all terminal.

Okay, we're all terminal. Nobody's going to live forever. You're going to get 80 at the most, 100 years. And if you store up treasure on earth, every day of your life you're moving further and further away from it, because you're going that direction.

On the other hand, if you store up treasure in heaven for eternity where you're going to get to enjoy it forever and ever and ever, every day you're moving closer and closer to it, because that's where you're going to spend trillions of years, not here. So, where do you want your treasure to be? On earth or in heaven? It's your choice.

Now, God doesn't force you to do anything. You can shoot, you can blow it all on yourself. You can spend every single bit of it on your own comfort. Just realize that every day of your life you're moving further and further away from your treasure. But if you invest it in heaven, every day of your life you're moving closer and closer to it, and you're going to get to enjoy it for eternity.

I didn't say that. Jesus Christ said it, and he is not a liar. God says it. It's a matter of perspective. You say, "How can I afford to do this?" Look at these last few verses. Luke 16, Jesus said this, "If you're untrustworthy about handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven?"

Remember, life is a test. And God says, "I'm watching to see what you do with what I gave you." What are you doing with what God gave you? Now, your reward and your responsibility in heaven, not your salvation, but your reward and responsibility for eternity is going to be based on how you managed what God put in your hands while you're here on earth.

And it would be foolish and short-sighted to spend it all on myself now in light of eternity. Now, the Bible says this on the next page, "God gives seed to the farmer to plant. He'll also give you seed and multiply what you generously plant. In your lives," read this with me, "he will increase the things you do that have his approval."

My life is living proof of that verse. That God will increase the things you do that have his approval. God will multiply whatever you give him. And God says, "I want you to trust me in this." You see, we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

Nobody's ever remembered for anything they ever got. They're remembered for what they gave away. I would encourage you to remember the prayer of Agur. You've all heard the prayer of Jabez, forget that one and read this one.

It says this, "Lord, don't let me become too poor or too rich. Just give me what I need. For if I have too much, I might forget about you, and if I don't have enough, I might steal and disgrace your name." Now, that's what I call a balanced perspective.

You know, most people I know are willing to pray the first half of this prayer out of the Bible. "Lord, don't let me become too poor." We'll all pray that one. But we don't want to pray the rest of it, "or too rich." The bottom line is either extreme can cause you to forget God. Wealth can make me prideful and arrogant, and poverty can make me bitter.

It's not about money, folks. Life is not about the acquisition of things. That's not what life is about. Money is a tool to do good. And I can do good by investing it in the treasury fund, and the mutual fund, and the growth fund, and the service fund, and the global fund. And then I'm storing up treasure for eternity.

You know what the biggest problem people do with investing? They start too late. And then they have to play catch up. You know, I started investing, I started saving for retirement when I was 17 years old. I started putting $5 a week away for my retirement at age 17. I'm what you call a long-term thinker.

Okay, but there's a longer-term thinking that in linking in light of eternity. What is retirement anyway? Retirement is just the ability to serve God more for free. That's all retirement is. You serve, you have more time to serve God and you serve him for free. You're not, you don't have to worry about your salary.

And that's what God wants you to do. Now, you can't wait. In fact, look at the next verse. "If you wait for perfect conditions, you'll never get anything done." Anybody want to give a testimony about that verse?

Now is the time to start the investment program for eternity. What's the step? What's the first step? Oh, look at the verse. "They first gave themselves unreservedly to God." That's the first step. Give your life to God.

"Then the other giving flowed out of the purposes of God working in their lives." Purpose-driven living requires purpose-driven giving. And if you start living for God's purposes, you're going to start giving to God's purposes.

I have been investing in the treasury fund, and the mutual fund, and the growth fund, and the service fund, and the global fund. And when I get to heaven, I'm going to enjoy the returns and the investment for eternity. And I invite you to do the same.

Intro Voice: We really appreciate you joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. And Rick felt like he wanted to end today's show by sharing a word of encouragement.

Pastor Rick Warren: Jesus said, "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away." Did you hear that? The Bible is going to outlast the Earth and the universe. Why? Because God's word is eternal. Because truth never changes. If it was true 5,000 years ago, it was true a thousand years ago, it's true today, and it's going to be true a million years from today. This is why it's more important to know God's word than anything else. Opinions change, but truth never changes. It's why we focus on studying it here on our Daily Hope broadcast.

Intro Voice: Thanks for listening. And let me hear from you. My email address is rick@pastorrick.com. Now that's two R's in the middle, rick@pastorrick.com. I'd love to hear from you. And thanks again. Be sure to join me 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.