Pastor Rick's Daily Hope

Pastor Rick Warren: Hello everybody. This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren. I'm really glad you're here.

Guest (Male): 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.

Guest (Male): And let's join Rick right now in the final part of a message called Why You Don't Need to Fear the Future.

Pastor Rick Warren: You have opposition in your life. There are some people who don't like you. There's somebody who's gunning for your job. There's somebody who just doesn't like you because of what you believe. There are some people who are just mean. They're opponents. You have competitors.

These people, the generous people, are confident and fearless in facing their opposition because they give generously to the needy. They will have influence and honor. I want you to hear a testimony of how instead of choosing worry and complaining, you choose generosity and gratitude in your life and what it does. These are miracle-working attitudes. Give a warm welcome to Phil right now.

Phil: Hello, Saddleback Church! I'd like to share my story about God's goodness and the power of gratitude. Like many other couples in our church family, for several years after we were married, my wife Connie and I tried unsuccessfully to start our family. We really wanted to have a baby, but it just didn't happen.

We prayed, we waited on the Lord, and we tried literally everything. With each year passing, we became more frustrated and discouraged. While we knew the promises of God, our experiences seemed to contradict those promises. Truthfully, there were many days and sleepless nights where we felt hopeless and really just wanted to give up.

I want to tell you if you're currently in this situation wanting to have kids but not seeing any way that it might happen, Connie and I understand your pain. As the childless months turned into years, we could have easily given in to Satan's temptation to become bitter and to just throw in the towel, to give up believing in God's goodness and mercy and just walk away from running the race with Jesus.

But we didn't do that. We did not give up believing in the goodness of God, and we chose to take specific steps that demonstrated our faith in God and our trust in his perfect timing. First, we began just to simplify our lives, both spiritually and financially, to prepare ourselves for the hope of becoming parents. We wanted to remove any hindrances or barriers that could prevent us from keeping our lives solely focused on Jesus regardless of what happened.

One of the things that we decided to do was to have Connie stop working at her job. This would lower her stress, but it also was a visible demonstration of faith. Second, we decided to sell our house. It was a big decision. We moved into something smaller so we could afford to live off one income while paying for the very expensive infertility treatments. We would do whatever we could do while trusting God for what only he could do.

I stand here today, and honestly, I wrestled with the feeling that we were moving backwards financially in order to move forward towards our dream of starting a family. But during this time of trusting and waiting, God led me to a verse in the Bible, as he often does, about praising God and being grateful for the good things that God had already given to us.

Isaiah 25, verse one, is a bold statement both of gratitude and faith, and it's where the Lord directed us. It says, "Lord, you are my God. I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness, you have done wonderful and good things, things planned long ago." This verse really is the exact opposite of complaining and worrying and being frustrated about the things that you don't have. Instead, it taps into the power of gratitude.

This verse became our anchor. We would be grateful for all the good things God had already given to us, and in faith, we would express our gratitude in advance for the good things that we believed God would provide for us in the future. In other words, we would trust the goodness of God, and we would keep telling God how grateful and how thankful we were.

It was our faith in the goodness of God that gave us the courage to put up our house on the market. Two months later, our house sold, and we moved into a teeny-tiny one-bedroom condo. It was at that very moment that my wife surprised me with the best news ever: that we were finally pregnant with our first child.

Our beautiful baby Ross was born this year on January 13th in that little condo, and my hands were the first hands to hold her. So I want to testify that God is good and God is faithful. If you look up on the screen, this is from last month. This is Connie and I's first Mother's Day. Obviously, you can see that I out-punted my coverage with my wife. She's beautiful. God gave her temporary blindness to marry me. She's a gift from the Lord.

But looking back, we can now see all the lessons we learned through all the days of waiting and delays. We often wanted to give up, but our trust in the goodness of God kept us going and also kept us growing and becoming more like Christ. Faith, like a muscle, only grows when it is tested and stretched.

But I also want to be clear that even if we had not received our miracle baby, we would still believe in God's goodness and we would still be grateful because everything we have is a gift from God's goodness. God has not guaranteed that we will get everything we want in life, but God has guaranteed that he knows and wants what is best for us, and everything he does for us is good.

In closing, I want to urge you to practice the power of daily gratitude and thanking God for his goodness. As Pastor Rick teaches, gratitude to God has the power to change everything. It releases miracles, it can break through barriers, and it can make the impossible possible.

So I urge you to develop the daily habit of being grateful for God's goodness to you. When you feel like something you really, really want will never happen, I challenge you to decrease your doubting and increase your thankfulness for all of the good things that God has already done for you. Then watch what happens. God bless you, Saddleback Church family. This is a good place. Connie and I are grateful for you and we love you dearly. Thank you.

Pastor Rick Warren: You know, another study that I read shows that if the first thing you do in the morning is you just mentally go through a list of things you're grateful for—you know, make a list of ten or twelve things and you get up, you sit on the side of your bed and you thank God for these things—actually starting your day with gratitude actually changes your brain chemistry. It actually transforms your mind for the better. You'll think clearer during the day if you will start your day not with complaining, not with bad news, but with things you could be grateful for.

So let's do a little experiment. I dare you to do this. How about for the next 30 days we make a commitment together that we're not going to complain about anything? You catch yourself complaining, you just cut yourself off. We're not going to complain about anything, and we're not going to worry about anything. Instead, we're going to be grateful and we're going to be generous.

You think you'd be any better in 30 days? Hello! Now here's the problem. When I say get up in the morning and make a list of things you're grateful for, sometimes you're a little blurry-eyed and you can't even think about what you're grateful for. I thank God for my doggy, that I woke up, thank God for sun and moon and breakfast and my spouse. Yeah, but what about all the spiritual blessings that you forget God does for you, all of his goodness and mercy every day?

So I've made a tool for you to use. Inside your program, I want you to pull it out. I made this just for you. It's called My Daily Gratitude Reminder. If you're watching online or you're listening on Daily Hope, you can go to the Daily Hope website and get this, or you can email me at the Daily Hope website and we'll send this to you. My Daily Gratitude Reminder is a list of God's goodness to me from A to Z.

I just went through the alphabet. What I want you to do is I've filled in the spiritual side, and I want you to fill in the material and relational. There are spiritual blessings in your life, there are material blessings, and there are relational blessings. So for instance, you Lord, spiritual blessings:

You, A, are always with me. Thank you for that. You anoint me with your grace. Thank you for that. You, B, bring good out of the bad things that happen to me. You bless me with ability. C, you care about my problems. You calm my worries and fears. You call me your friend. D, you designed my life for your great plan and purpose. Thank you, God. E, you empower me with your spirit. You empathize with what I feel.

F, you forgive and forget my sins. You free me from shame. You fill my life with meaning. G, you give me what I need. You guide me in the right way. You guarantee my salvation. Thank you, God. H, you hear my prayers. You heal my hurts. You help me grow every day. Thank you, God. I, you inspire me with ideas. I need some today, Lord. You invite me to depend on you. You include me in your family. Thank you, God.

J, you justify me. Justify means just as if I'd never sinned. So you say there's no condemnation in my life because of Jesus. Thank you, God. K, you know what's best for me. You keep your promises. You keep me saved and secure. Thank you. L, you love me unconditionally. You lift me up when I'm down. M, you made me to be loved by you, and you meet all my needs. N, you notice what I don't see. You nourish my soul.

Thank you, God, that O, you open doors of opportunity for me. You overflow my life with blessing. P, you protect me when I'm attacked and I'm overwhelmed, and you're patient with my doubts. Thanks. Q, you quiet my mind and my heart when I trust you. R, you remain faithful to me even when I'm unfaithful to you. You renew me when I'm tired.

S, you sacrificed your son for me. You show me your mercy. You set me free from myself, not just my habits, hurts, and hang-ups, but the biggest enemy of you is you. T, you teach me your truth through your word. You transform my life with loving discipline. U, you understand my pain. You use it to help others. You uphold me when I want to give up.

V, you valued me enough to send a savior for me. Thank you, God. W, you wait for the right timing to answer my prayers. Thanks. You warn me of traps. Thank you, God. X, you express your favor over me as your child. Y, you yearn for fellowship with me. You want to spend time with me. Whoa, thank you. And Z, you zoom in on every detail of my life. You miss nothing.

You can use this. Now here's what I want you to do. Take this and then over here in the material, you can just put A, B, C, D, give something you're grateful for, a material, physical thing. A, thank you God for air! Have you ever thanked God for air? You wouldn't go very far without it. B, you could put Bible. Thank you God for the Bible. Thank you God for all the beauty in the world. Thank you God for books and all the things I've learned. Thank you for my eyes and ears.

Just gave you some examples. Over under T, I have thank you God for taste buds. What if God hadn't given you taste buds? Everything would taste like oatmeal. Have you ever thanked God for your taste buds? Say thank you God that you created taste buds, and then you made Cinnabon.

Okay, and so you could where I live, just make a list. Then over under relational, I've given you a couple categories. Thanking God for your church. Under P, I put thank God for pastors, because I want you thanking God for me. Thank God for S, my small group. But you can just go down the list, put family members, friends. A, thank you God for Amy, my daughter. Thank you God for B, Bobby, my mother-in-law. Thank you God for Claire and Cole and Cassie, three of my grandkids.

You can just write them all down. Write that down, put it by your bedside, and the next 30 days before you get out of bed, you develop the attitude of gratitude. It will blow your mind. It will change your life. It will reform your brain. It will do all kinds of health, mental, physical, and spiritual benefits if you develop the attitude of gratitude because God's goodness and mercy are following me every day of my life. You can do that.

Now let me be quick on the other two things you need to do in light of these three commitments. Because I have to be grateful and generous because God is good and generous with me, here's the next thing. Second thing, after I stay grateful and generous, I have to be gracious to everyone. Write that down. I have to be gracious to everyone because God is so gracious to me. The more gracious you are with other people, the less fearful you're going to be in life. Grace and fear don't reside in the same brain.

God wants you to pass on the good things. Here's what the Bible says in Ephesians 4:32: "Be gracious and merciful to everyone." Why? Because God's gracious and merciful to you. "Be gracious and merciful to everyone and forgive others just as God has forgiven you because of Christ." God cuts you a bunch of slack. Who are you still holding on the hook? Who do you refuse to forgive? Who do you refuse to let off the hook? Who do you refuse to let go? Who do you refuse to just wipe the slate clean and say, "Okay, you're off the hook. God was gracious to me, God has forgiven me, and I'm going to be gracious to you and I'm going to forgive you"?

You know what being gracious is? It's another name for love. The more gracious you are, when you're gracious to somebody, you're loving to them. Love, the Bible tells us, is an antidote to fear. Next verse, 1 John 4:18: "There is no fear in love. Instead, perfect love drives out all fear because fear has to do with punishment." I don't think God will be merciful or gracious. He's going to punish me. Fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears has not matured in love. Every time you invite God's love in the front door of your life, fear goes out the back door.

Every time you invite fear into the front door of your life, love goes out the back door. Why? Because fear is focused on you and love is focused on God and others. It's gracious. Now how do you know when somebody doesn't understand the grace of God? They're not gracious to anybody else. Ungracious people are un-graced people. They don't realize how much they've been forgiven, so they want to hold it over everybody else's.

If I don't feel forgiven, if I feel guilty and I feel ashamed, I certainly want you feeling it too, because I don't want you feeling better than me. But if I remember how much God has forgiven me and I remember how much God has wiped out my guilt and wiped out my shame, I can be pretty gentle with you. I can be pretty gracious. I can let you off the hook. I can cut you some slack. Anytime you see somebody who's ungracious, know they're walking around with a ton of guilt.

You may have a mother or a mother-in-law or father or father-in-law or friend or a neighbor or brother or sister, and they can't let anybody off the hook. It's because they feel guilty. As long as they don't feel grace, they're not going to be gracious. But the more grace you feel, the more you know you've been forgiven, the more gracious you're going to be with other people.

So I gotta stay grateful and generous because God is so good. And I've gotta stay gracious to everyone because God is gracious to me. Here's the third one. Finally, to live fearlessly, to live fully and fearlessly, I need to live my life for God's glory because he's going to share his glory with me someday. Right now, you live for the glory of God, and one day you will receive the glory of God forever and ever and ever. He says he's going to share it with you in heaven.

Now how do you do that? How do I live for God's glory at work? How do I live for God's glory at school? How do I live for God's glory in the neighborhood? How do I live for God's glory with my family? Matthew 5:16, Jesus says this: "Let your light shine before others so that they may see your good works"—that's the key, the good works—"and give glory to your Father who is in heaven." You just try to do your best living for God, and he says that brings glory to God.

What happens when you do that? What happens when you live for God's glory? It opens up your life to more of God's goodness, to more of God's mercy, to more of God's grace, to more of God's glory in your own life. The Bible says this in 1 Peter 1, last verse on your outline, verse three: "God in his divine power has given us everything we need for living a godly life." Because of his goodness and mercy, he gives you everything you need. You've got it all to live a godly life. "Now this power is given to us through knowing Jesus. And," the benefit, "he has called us to share in his own goodness and glory." One day you will share in God's goodness and God's glory.

Let me wrap this up. When you think about the future, when you think about the next six months, the next year, the next ten years, the rest of your life, how do you see it? Is your mind filled with doubt, confusion, anxiety, fear, worry? It means you're not focused on the last verse of Psalm 23: "Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever." It's the antidote to the three biggest fears about the future.

Really, you have a choice. You don't get to choose what's going to happen to you the rest of your life. You don't. But you do get to choose how you respond. You can face the future as a cynic, as a critic, as a pessimist, as a doubter. You can face the future experiencing the worst and expecting the worst. You can face it being ungrateful. You can face it being stingy. You can face your future being ungracious to other people, and you can live for the glory of yourself.

Or you can face the future with gratitude and generosity and graciousness and the glory of God. Which one do you think will make you happier? Which one do you think will make you more successful? Which one do you think will bring the smile of God and the reward of heaven? You know, it's amazingly how different you feel about life when you begin to live in the goodness of God and you begin to live for the goodness of God.

As I said, there are going to be a lot of events that happen in your life you can't explain, but you can face them confidently because you know surely goodness and mercy are going to follow me. God will bring good even out of the bad, no matter what, the loss of a loved one. God will bring good out of the bad. Surely goodness and mercy. And I may screw up in the future big time, but God is merciful. I may be facing all kinds of problems in my life, but ultimately I win because I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever, and I'm going to share in God's glory one day.

Why? Because I deserve it? No, because he loves me. Now in Psalm 23, you need to hear all these messages if you haven't. There are twelve expressions of God's goodness for you. But they're not for everybody. All of these things only happen—goodness and mercy don't follow everybody. They only follow the person who can say, "The Lord is my shepherd."

So who's your shepherd? That's the question of the hour. Who's your shepherd? Are you your own shepherd? Who's running your life? Who's managing your life? Who's the boss of your life? Who is your shepherd? If you're saying, "I'm my shepherd," goodness and mercy aren't following you, and you will not dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This is for people who say, "I'm in the flock. I'm a sheep in God's family. The Lord is my shepherd." And when you can say that, you can say with confidence, "And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."

Let's bow our heads. Some of you have been attending for months, weeks, or even maybe even years, you've been listening online, but you've never stepped across the line spiritually. You need to do so right now. You need to say, "I want the Lord to be my shepherd." And I'm going to ask everybody who's already done that to be praying right now for everybody else who hasn't done that.

If you've never made that decision, say right now in your heart, thank God for his goodness and mercy to you. Say, "Dear God, thank you that you give me what I don't deserve. You give me good things. You are a good God. And God, thank you that you don't give me what I do deserve. You give me mercy. And then say, Jesus Christ, I want you to be my shepherd and I want you to be my savior. And I want to follow you the rest of my life with your sheepdogs, goodness and mercy, coming up from behind keeping me on the right path.

"And say, God, I humbly ask you to reserve a home for me in heaven because Jesus died to make that possible. As much as I now know how, I ask you, Christ, to come into my life and transform me. And I want to be a person who's grateful and generous and gracious and lives for your glory because you are so good to me, and you're so generous with me, and you're so gracious to me, and you're going to share your glory with me one day. That is amazing. Thank you. 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, at 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): We're so glad you've joined us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Would you like to get the A to Z gratitude list that Rick talked about today? It's easy! Just go to pastorrick.com and click on the menu icon in the top right corner and select free resources. And now, here's a closing thought from Pastor Rick.

Pastor 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. Thanks for listening today, and join me next time as we continue to look into God's word for our daily hope.

Guest (Male): 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.