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.

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. Today, we're going to hear part two of a message called Why you don't need to fear the future.

Another picture I think of when I think of God's goodness and mercy will follow me is a mother of a toddler. And any mother of a toddler knows how many messes a toddler who's just learned to walk can make in 45 minutes.

And if you go to the house of a mother of a toddler, she is walking behind that child picking up all the messes, picking up all the messes that they're making. You have no idea how many messes you created in life that God cleaned up.

Because God's goodness and God's mercy were following you. And you made a flippant decision, and it was a stupid decision, but you made it. And you went going on not realizing the chaos you left behind. And God's goodness and mercy are right behind picking up your messes.

God has picked up more messes in your life than you could possibly even imagine. Why? Because he's good and he's merciful.

He gives you what you need and he doesn't give you what you deserve.

Mercy will follow me all the days of my life. If you've taken notes, circle that word all.

Because God's goodness and God's mercy is not just some days. God doesn't say, okay, on Monday, Wednesday, Friday we'll have goodness and on Tuesday and Thursday we'll have mercy and on Saturday and Sunday you're on your own.

No. He is always merciful every moment of every day. He is always good to you every moment of every day. And when you fully understand that God is never not good to me and God is never not merciful to me, when you face your future, all of a sudden your fear level goes down, you go, so what? I don't you don't know what's going to happen next week, much less next year or in the next 10 years.

But I do know this, God's goodness will be with me and he'll be bringing good even out of the bad stuff. And I know God's mercy will be with me. He's going to be forgiving me, no condemnation with all the bad stuff.

So what are you worried about? What are you afraid of?

Fear comes when you fear punishment or fear comes when you fear you won't have what you need when you get there. You don't have all the resources you need. God's goodness and God's mercy will be with me all the days of my life.

It says all of the days. Now you say, well, I don't always feel God's goodness in my life. I don't always feel God's mercy every day of my life. Who said anything about feelings?

Feelings are unreliable. Feelings come and go. God is not a feeling.

God is always good to you whether you feel it or not. And God is always merciful to you whether you feel it or not. It's based on who he is, not how you feel.

Everything, absolutely everything in your life you owe to the goodness and mercy of God.

And it's going to follow you all the days of your life if the Lord is your shepherd.

Now, here's the third reason you don't need to fear the future. God's goodness is watching over me.

God's grace is working in me. Here's a big one. God's glory is waiting for me.

God's glory is waiting for me. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

That's heaven.

Now, if you're taking notes, circle that little word and.

Goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life and I'll dwell in the house of the Lord forever. That's the little word that connects today with tomorrow.

Even after you've lived a life of blessing here on earth, it's not the end.

Friends, this Psalm is building to a crescendo.

I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

That's a big ending. That's a big ending. That means I don't have to fear death and that's the number one fear people have.

Because death is not the end, it's a transition, it's a transfer. We're going to heaven. God saves the best for last.

If you love and know Jesus, if the Lord is your shepherd, it just gets better and better because even if I have a tough life here on earth, I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever where there is no more sorrow, no more suffering, no more sin, no more sickness, no more sadness.

No more problems, no more pain, no more pressure. It's unbelievable.

With Jesus it keeps getting better and better. The best is yet to come.

Now this is so important, next weekend I'm going to spend an entire message just on this, on heaven.

And I'm going to answer all the most common questions because just like with angels, there's a lot of myths about heaven, misconceptions, lies, legends that just aren't true.

Now, I just this weekend want to ask one question and it is this, what makes heaven heaven?

Why is it so different?

What makes heaven heaven?

Well, there are a lot of things that are different about heaven. But one of the biggest one of all is this, it's the home to God's full glory.

The home to God's full glory. And God's glory is all the good things that he does for you. It's his character, it's based on who he is.

Now, we can see a glimpse, a little glimpse of God's glory right now. When you look at the heavens, the Bible says the heavens declare the glory of God. You look at all the stars. Whoa, God is pretty big, God's pretty powerful.

You look at the sun and the moon. When you look at all of the tens of thousands of plant varieties and animals and the varieties of animals and species that God created, you see the glory of God, that God is a creative God. When you see the beauty of a sunrise and a sunset and a waterfall, you see the glory of God.

The glory of God, we see a small glimpse of it here even on a broken planet. There's a lot of beautiful stuff on this planet.

The Bible says that I can see God's glory in you, just a glimpse, because you carry the image, the image of God in you. It's broken, but you you carry that image. You could see God's glory in me.

But the Bible says one day when you get to heaven, whoa, now you're going to see the full glory, the full goodness, the full greatness, the full beauty of God.

You don't see it now. You just see a speck. We get we see through the glass darkly.

So we're going to look at at that in detail, but let me just show you a couple verses. The Bible says this in Isaiah 63 verse 15, Lord, look upon us from heaven where you live in your holiness and glory.

God's complete glory is in heaven, unhindered by anything.

And then the Bible tells us that in Acts chapter 7, Stephen was the first guy who was killed for his faith, for following Christ. He was the first Christian martyr. And as they were stoning him, throwing stones at him, and he was dying in Jerusalem, it says that Stephen was dying, he looked up toward heaven. He got a vision as he's dying in his final moments and he saw God's glory. Why? Because God's glory is complete in heaven.

The Bible tells us that when Jesus was resurrected, it says this, Jesus returned to his glory in heaven.

One day you will too. You're going to see God's glory.

Now, we cannot even imagine the details of heaven. I can share some of the stuff. We get little glimpses, we get little sneak peeks of what heaven is like in the Bible, but the truth is, none of us can even understand how cool heaven is because we don't have the brain capacity for it.

We live in a three-dimensional world. Einstein proved there are many other dimensions we don't even know about, that we're not even aware of besides the three dimensions we live in.

And for you to understand how great, how glorious, how beautiful, how incredible heaven is, would be like an ant trying to understand the internet. You don't have the brain capacity.

And every description, pearly gates, streets of gold, those are so far inferior as to what heaven's going to be like. They're just metaphors. They're just metaphors.

It's not going to be white with clouds. You think of the greatest, most beautiful scene you've ever seen on earth and multiply it by a trillion times where there's no sin, no sadness, no sorrow, no suffering. That's heaven.

We cannot imagine all the details of heaven, but we know do know this, it will be glorious. Why? Because God's glory will be there in its full completion.

Here's what the Bible says. Look on the screen.

First Corinthians 2 verse 9, No eye has ever seen, no ear has heard, no mind has ever imagined, you can't even imagine what God has prepared for those who love him.

But surely I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. What in the world are you afraid of? Why are you afraid of death? You're going to be in a better place if the Lord is your shepherd.

Now, we we don't get a full picture of what heaven's going to be like. But God does give us some little secrets, and they're scattered through the Bible. If you're reading the Bible, they're not secrets.

But he does give us some hints. And one of the things God tells us is that because he is a good God, and he is a merciful God, and because he made you to love you, that his plan for you, this is for you. God's plan for you began at the very beginning of time. Before he even created the universe, God thought you up. He wanted children.

God thought you and is God's plan for you, and he prepared this in advance, is that he's going to share his glory with his children.

Whoa. That's just too hard for me to comprehend. Me, an imperfect, frail sinner, God's going to share his glory with me?

Yeah, and you too.

We're going to cover this in depth in next week's message. So you don't want to miss that message.

Romans 9:23 says this, God wanted to reveal his abundant glory. God wanted to show how loving, how good, how kind, how merciful he is. God wanted to show it.

And so he wanted to show his abundant glory which was poured out on us, that's you, that's me, who are the objects of his mercy. You, my friend, are an object of God's mercy. As a woman or as a man, you are an object of God's mercy. He doesn't give you what you deserve.

God wanted to reveal his abundant glory which was poured out on us who are the objects of his mercy, and whom he has prepared in advance. He's prepared you in advance. He's already prepared this. This is talking about you. Whom he has prepared in advance to receive his glory. One day you're going to do that.

This is a terrible, terrible, poor, inferior example of it. But what does it mean for you to share God's glory?

Imagine a giant screen in front of a theater that says, you know, this movie's playing, starring this person and co-starring this person.

In heaven, imagine a giant screen that says, now playing for eternity, starring Jesus Christ, co-starring your name.

Whoa.

That's what God has prepared because of his goodness and his mercy and his love and his grace. That's what he wants to do.

Now, what are the implications of these three truths? I mean, for you right now, between now and when you go to heaven, what does all this mean? What what does it mean that God's goodness is watching over you and that God's grace is working in you and that God's glory is waiting for you?

What does that really mean for Monday morning?

Well, what I just shared with you are the antidotes to your three greatest fears.

And if you understand them, if you fully grasp what I'm trying to teach you this morning, you will be fearless. You will have a new level of confidence in your life. You certainly won't be anxious about the future because God's goodness and grace and glory are all involved in your future.

If you get anxious about the future, if you have a problem, you get nervous thinking about what's going to happen tomorrow, you need to take notes right now as if your life depends on it, because it does.

It does.

Let me give you the three implications. How should I live knowing what God is like, knowing God's goodness and grace and his mercy in my life? You want to write these three things down.

This is how you live fully, and this is how you live fearlessly. Number one, I must stay grateful and generous because God is so good to me.

God is generous with me and God expects me to be grateful and generous with others the rest of my life. My first response to God's goodness, my first response to God's mercy should be gratitude, and my second response should be generosity. Let me show you some verses.

Psalm 118 verse 29, Give thanks continually to our Lord because he is so good and because his mercy will never run out. There's goodness and mercy right there. His goodness is good and his mercy will never run out. Continual mercy deserves continual thanks.

You need to develop for the rest of your life an attitude of gratitude. Now in one of the past messages in this series, I told you that there have been scientific studies, many, many, many, many scientific studies that show that gratitude is the healthiest human emotion. More than any other thing, that if you develop the attitude of gratitude, if you walk around with gratefulness in your heart all the time, you're going to live longer. Studies have proven this.

You're going to be healthier. Studies have proven this. You're going to be happier. Studies have proven this. Grateful people tend to be more successful in life than ungrateful people. There are many, many, many benefits of the attitude of gratitude. And most of all, gratitude is an antidote to fear.

Do you have panic attacks? Do you have fear? Do you have anxiety in your life? Do you have fears about the future? You cannot be grateful and fearful at the same time. It's impossible. You just can't.

So when you're fearful, at that moment, you're not being grateful.

And when you are when your life is filled with grateful, you can't be fearful.

Because you they they oppose each other. Why? Because fear, when I'm fearful, I'm focused on me. When I'm grateful, I'm focused on others and God. What they've done for me, what God has done for me. You get the focus off yourself, the fear and the anxiety will go down.

Gratitude is one of the four antidotes to fearfulness in your life.

The Bible says this, Hebrews chapter 12 verse 28, We have been given possession of an unshakable kingdom. This is the kingdom of God. Okay, unshakable means you don't need to be afraid of this. I can't lose this. You can't lose your salvation. It's unshakable.

Therefore, let us be therefore be grateful and use our gratitude to worship God the way that pleases him with reverence and awe. So you need to develop a daily habit of being grateful for everything and anything and all things around you.

Now the second response, and this is also an antidote to fear, is not gratitude, but it's generosity. And God says, I want you to pass on others the same kind of goodness. I'm good to you, I want you to be good to others. I'm generous with you, I want you to be generous with others. I give to you, I want you to give to others.

The Bible says this, Matthew 10 verse 8, You have been treated generously by God. So live generously. Give as freely as you have received. Now this is interesting because scientific studies have also shown that the more generous you are, the less fearful you are.

The the more giving you are, the more at peace you are, the more confident you are, the less anxious, the less fearful you are. And the Bible actually confirms this that generosity is another antidote to fear.

Because you get generosity you get to you know, the focus off yourself and on helping other people. Here's a good example. Psalm 112 verse 5-9. Good will come to him. Let me stop right there.

Everybody who's listening to me right now, do you want good or bad to come to you in life? Well, I want good to come to me. Well, okay. Here's how you have good to come to you.

Good will come to him who is generous. Such people lend freely. In other words, hey, you need my car? Take my car. You need a place to stay tonight? Stay at my place. Need some money for food? Here, here's some money for food. You need a babysitter? Let me babysit for you.

What do you need? You need me to drive you to the doctor? Let me take you to the doctor. You need me to bring over a meal, your family's sick tonight? Let me let me generosity in every area of your time, your talents, your treasure, your money, your motivations. Generous with your praise, not stingy with praise, generous with compliments, not stingy with compliments.

Good will come to him who is generous. Such people lend freely. They conduct their affairs honestly. They will never be shaken.

They don't fear bad news because they trust the Lord to care for them. They are confident and fearless. You want to be confident and fearless, become more generous.

Guest (Male): Man, I love hearing Pastor Rick. What a great message. We also love hearing from our listeners. Here's Rick with a very encouraging letter.

Pastor Rick Warren: Let me close this broadcast by sharing a letter from a listener in Rome, Italy. Her name is Hishan. And she says, Pastor Rick, I've relocated to Rome, Italy, where I'm currently working at the World Food Program.

I really love listening to your sermons and I also love reading your daily devotionals which I share with many of my colleagues serving in the field offices in Africa and in other hardship duty stations. They appreciate receiving the message very much. God bless you, Hishan in Rome.

Now, did you get this? A message that is starting in Southern California in the United States of America is being sent to Europe, in Rome, Italy, and then it is being re-sent out to other continents like Africa. That is the amazing age of technology that we live in today.

And that's why your gifts go much further than they used to go even 20 or 30 years ago. Our ability to reach listeners like Hishan and her friends, not just in Europe, but in Africa, is a direct result of your prayers and your support for Daily Hope. So, thanks so much.

And by the way, join me next time when we continue looking into God's word for our Daily Hope.

Guest (Male): This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.