Today on Daily Hope with Pastor Rick Warren, we continue in our riveting journey
through the series The Invisible War. In it will explore the unseen world of
good and evil and see how it impacts our day to day existence. Join
us for eye opening biblical insights into the spiritual dimensions that influence our lives in
ways we never imagined. Right now, here's Pastor Rick Warren with part two
of a message called making the Hard Changes in Me. Number two. The
next verse tells us the second requirement for personal change, and it's this change
requires making choices. Change requires making choices, and they've got to be good
choices, obviously. But what I'm saying here is that it's not enough just
to want a change. It's not enough to just desire to change. It's
not even enough to just say I've got a dream of changing. I've got
a dream of being something else. Dreams are worthless unless you wake up and
actually act on them. So more than desire, more than dreaming, it
takes a decision. You're not going to change until you choose to change.
A lot of people think about changing, they plan on changing, they want
to change. It's a someday I'll change, or when I get around to
it, I'll change, But they don't ever actually choose to change. You
see, it's not going to happen without intention. Let me put it this
way, how are you going to be different in six months? Are you
going to be emotionally stronger? Are you going to be mentally sharper? Are
you going to be physically healthier? Are you going to be spiritually deeper?
The answer is no, unless you choose to be that way, because it
isn't going to happen automatically. You're just not going to get healthier by accident
in any category of your life. A lot of times we think we're waiting
on God to change. Just no, you're not waiting on God. God's
waiting on you, and it'll happen when you get intentional. Now, why
don't we make these choices because internally we don't think this way, but it's
we know it instinctively. There is no growth in your life without change,
and there is no change without loss. You got to let go of some
old stuff and there there is no loss without pain. It's like being a
trapeze artist in a circus. If you fly out on a trapeze bar and
you're out there over there, you know, you know, thousand feet up
from the ground, or however many hundreds feet it is. You've got to
let go of one bar and grab on to the other to get to the
other side. Now, if you think I'm going to swing out and I'm
going to grab onto the other bar without letting go of this one, what's
going to happen? Stuck in the middle with you and pretty soon you get
tired and you let go and you're falling. Some of you are stuck in
the middle right now because you haven't learned how to let go. That's a
choice, and that's the second thing that God says you gotta do. Look
at this next verse, verse twenty two. He says, throw off.
That means get rid of, let go, throw off your old evil nature
and your former way of life, all those bad habits and patterns and defects,
which is written through and through full of lust and deception, all that
stuff where you've been telling yourself it's okay, but it's not okay because it's
really messing up your life. He says, throw off that old nature.
Now, we spent an entire message on this last week talking about your old
nature. And if you miss that message, you need to go back and
listen to all three in the series that we've built on so far. Each
of your parents gave you twenty three thousand chromosomes. And because your parents were
imperfect, they gave you some of their imperfections. Have you noticed that?
Have you noticed the older you get, the more like your parents you get.
Okay, and so, and since we all came back from originally from
Adam and Eve, then what's gonna happen? It means from Adam and Eve
there has been a sinful tendency, a old nature than in all of us,
that we want to do what we're not supposed to do. And growing
up you're told, now, don't touch that stove, it's hot, and
what do you do? It's like you see a sign that says wet paint,
don't touch. What do you want to do? You know? And
it's like when I was growing up, my mom would always say, no,
Ricky, I don't want to hear a peep out of you. Every
bone in my body wanted to go peep. Okay, Why that's the old
nature, the tendency to say, nobody's going to tell me what to do.
I'm my own boss, I'm my own God, and so we have
part of the defects come from you from three. Part of your defects car
biological. Some of them are sociological, and some of them are theological.
Some of them are nature, and some of them are nurture. But some
of them come from circumstances, some of them come from choices, and some
of them come from your chromosomes. Doesn't really matter where they come from.
You need to deal with it, Okay, I want you to write this
down. Genetics explain my inclinations, but they don't excuse my sins. Genetics
explain my inclinations, but they don't excuse my sins. Just because I have
a natural inclination towards something doesn't mean I should do it, and doesn't mean
it's necessarily good. I can have all kinds of self destructive inclinations. In
fact, we all have those in our lives. For instance, I might
be born with a natural inclination to get angry. Some people, as youre
a lobbyists, have a harder time with anger than others. They're just born
that way. They come out of the womb. Trump it on a cigar,
saying I dare you. You know, okay, And some people are
just predisposed to get angry, and other people aren't. You have fears,
and you've got other problems. But let's say I've got a natural inclination to
get angry. That doesn't excuse me to just go abuse everybody verbally or physically.
There's no excuse for that. Some people are born naturally motivated and they're
ready to take on the world from day one, and other people aren't born
with a lot of motivation, and it's kind of like, let it happen.
And I may be born with a natural inclination to not really do a
whole lot, but that does not excuse me to do nothing with my life
and just be lazy. I may be born with a predisposition or a natural
inclination to be addicted to things. I might have an addictive personality and I
tend to get addicted to television or food, or drugs or alcohol or sex
or pornography. Or I might have a natural inclination and addictive personality. Some
people do, but that doesn't do not excuse me to go act it out
just because I have a tendency or a desire or an attraction or an affinity
or a predisposition does not mean that I should act on it. Now it
genetics explains my inclination. It does not excuse my acting out or my sense.
Now here's the good news, and we talked about it last week.
Once you become a believer, you have a new power in you that is
greater than those old tendencies. And that power is the Holy Spirit. You
see in changing the defects in your life. God has a part and you
have a part. It's not all God and it's not all you. It's
kind of like growing up physically. Growing up physically, there are some things
you could do that would help you grow, like eat right, sleep right,
exercise, but there are some things that are totally out of your control.
No matter how much you eat, sleep, and exercise. You didn't
get to choose how tall you're going to be. God shows that you didn't
choose your bone structure, and so part of your physical growth was God's responsibility,
and part of your physical growth was your responsibility. The same is true
with your spiritual growth. God has a part and you have a part in
your spiritual growth. Now notice this next verse. This explains Philippians, chapter
two. Continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it
is God who works in you to will and to act according to His good
purpose. Now, I want you to circle the phrases work out and work
in. This is the balance. There's a working out and there's a working
in. When there you want to make changes in your life. The working
out is your part and the working in is God's part. We are to
work out what God is working in in our lives. Now, I want
to explain this verse in details because I don't want you to misunderstand it.
Continue to work out your salvation. Notice it doesn't say continue to work for
your salvation. It says work out. Not for nowhere in the Bible are
you told to work for your salvation. You cannot earn your way to heaven.
You cannot buy your way into heaven. You cannot deserve your way into
heaven. It is a gift, and the Bible says the Ephesians two eight
to nine, for by grace God's gift we are saved through faith, and
even that is not of ourselves. It is the gift of God, not
of works. So nobody can brag about it. In other words, you
cannot work your way to heaven. You cannot earn your way to heaven.
The Bible says over and over it is a free gift. But once you
have received that gift that you did not earn, then you are to work
out your salvation, not work for, but work out. What does it
mean to work out? Have you ever done a workout? Some of you
obviously know, Okay, have you ever done? What do you do at
a workout? When you work out, you go to a gym. And
when you go to a gym, you don't go to invent muscle. You
go to develop the muscle God already gave you. You cannot create a bicep
out of nothing. But when you go and you work out in a gem,
you are developing the muscle God gave you. And when you work out
your salvation, you're not getting your salvation. You are developing. You're cultivating
your understanding the salvation God gave you. Does that make sense? Workout does
not mean work for. It means you develop what God has already given you.
My wife Kate loves to do jigsaw puzzles, and she'll buy one of
these thousand piece jug saw puzzle and she'll come home and about half the time
she'll throw it out on the kitchen table and it's just a jump a mess.
And then her job, and she enjoys doing this, is to work
out the puzzle. Now, when you work out a puzzle, did you
create it? No, you're just putting it together. She doesn't create the
pieces of the puzzle. She's not the puzzle creator. Working out a puzzle
means I'm taking all the pieces that were given to me by the creator of
the puzzle, and I'm putting together. And then when it's all done and
go, oh, look at that big picture. Isn't that beautiful? And
that's what working out your salvation means. Your many of you don't understand your
life is like a jumble of puzzle pieces, and you've got a pile of
and you go, I don't know what my life's supposed to look like.
I have no idea what my life. I just got this puzzle, the
pieces, and I got this piece and this piecet and and you start putting
them together. And when you get it all put together, by the end
of your life, oh that's the picture, that's the big picture. You
don't see the big picture. Yet. Now it helps in putting a puzzle
together to have a little picture on the cover so you can see what it's
supposed to look like. Right, this will give you a picture of your
life. And the more you read this book, the more you're going to
understand the pieces of the puzzle and what your life is to look like,
because it is to look like Jesus Christ in you. But you work it
out by putting the pieces of the puzzle together. Now, notice it says
work out your salvation with fear and trembling. What does that mean? Am
I supposed to be afraid of God? Am I supposed to be trembling at
God? I'm a believer? No, of course not. He's not being
saying to be afraid of God, but being afraid that you'll miss God's best,
be afraid that you don't take the time to put the puzzle together,
be afraid and tremble that you'd waste your life, that you could go your
entire life and never know God's purpose. He's saying, you need to take
this serious. You need to take your life serious, because you've only got
one life and it's going to have eternal implications. Whether you put the puzzle
together or not. And if you're so busy working on making an income and
working on being popular and working on and you're not working out your life and
you're not dealing with these defects and you're not growing spiritually, you're missing the
point you need to be working out and be afraid tremble that you might go
through life and waste your life. That's what you ought to be afraid of
that you didn't ever get to the point of understanding why am I here?
What on earth am I here? For? Now? It says while you're
doing the workout, it says God is working in you. You know that
word phrase working in You know what it is in Greek. It's the word
inner goths. It's the word we get energy from. Have you ever see
the advertisement where the inner gos bunny the energizer bunny. That's what this word
comes from. It says, God gives you the energy the inner gos he
works in He's putting energy in your life to change the things you could never
change. And notice what he says. It is God who works in you.
He's given you the energy to will and to act. Circle that on
your outline to will and act. God gives you two kinds of energy,
the desire and the power to will and to act. The answer to changing
your life is not willpower. It's God giving you the will and the power.
The change in your life is not going to come from I'm just going
to force myself to be happy. Is going to happen. It's not willpower.
It's a matter of God giving you the will and the power to do
it. That leads us to the third change man, it's the next verse.
Verse twenty three tells us that change requires new thinking. Change in your
life requires new thinking. Now we've talked about this a lot, and we're
going to continue because the battle for sin in your life and the battle for
the defects in your life for you so you can kind of be a better
person, it's time to go go on. Always is a mental battle.
It starts in the mind. It's one or lost. There. Let's see,
how can I say this. You aren't what you think you are,
but what you think you are. You aren't what you think you are,
but what you think you are. The Bible says, as a man thinketh,
so is he? The Bible says, out of the issues heart are
the issues of life. That the way you think. We talked about this
many times. The way you think determines the way you feel, and the
way you feel determines the way you act. If you want to change the
way you act, you don't like the way you act in a crowd,
you know you act nervous, you act goofy, you don't know what to
say. And if you want to change the way you act, you've got
to change the way you feel. Because if you're acting nervous, it's because
you feel nervous. But if you want to change the way you feel,
you've got to change the way you think. You can't focus on the feeling.
You can't fight a feeling, you can't force a feeling. But you
can change the way you feel by changing the way you think, because every
feeling is determined by a thought. Now, if you say I'm not acting
very loving to my wife because I don't feel very loving to my wife,
you need to change the way you think about your wife. And that is
a choice. You can't control your feelings, but you can control your thoughts.
And if you change your thoughts and you start thinking loving thoughts towards your
husband, towards your spouse toward whoever. It's going to change the way you
feel, and that's going to change the way you act. Now, this
is what the Bible says in verse twenty three. There must be a spiritual
renewal of your thoughts and attitudes. You're not going to change until your thoughts
change, until your attitudes change. This is why a daily quiet time is
important. Every day you need to spend four or five ten minutes at least
where you get along with God for five minutes and you sit down and you
be quiet, and you open the Bible and you read the Bible a little
bit, and you talk to God about whatever's on your mind. That's called
prayer. You listen to God through the Bible. You talk to God in
prayer. You just be quiet. You say God, is there anything you
want to say to me? That is the spiritual renewal in your mind.
If you're not doing that, you're not going to have the power to change.
Now. You know what a change of mind is called in Scripture.
You know what the theological term is. It is the word repentance. To
repent literally means to change your mind. Now, a lot of people think
repent is a bad word. No, No, it's a good word.
It's a positive word. People think repentance is this guy trying to scare people,
you know, out of hell into heaven. There's a guy with a
long beard holding a sign on the street corner saying that you know, the
end of the world is coming. Repent. He's got on a sandwich board
that says, you know, you know, repent, turn or burn,
You're going to die and fry while we go to the sky. No,
that's not repents. The word repent actually is the Greek word meta noya meta
noia means to change your mind. That's what it means, to change your
mind. It means a mental you turn. And it means when I repented,
I changed my mind. I turned from life from death to life.
I churned from sin to forgiveness. I turned from guilt to peace of mind.
I returned from pressure to joy. I turned from hell to heaven return.
I turned from my way to God's way. I turned from stress to
confidence. It was the most positive change in my life. When I repented,
I would have done it years sooner if I knew what it involved.
It wasn't something I regretted doing repented. It was the greatest decision in my
life. I turned from regret to share peace of mind and forgiveness. And
when I repented, I changed my mind about everything. I changed my mind
about me. I changed the way I saw God. He's not mad at
me, He's mad about me. I changed the way I saw life.
I changed the way I think about money. I changed the way I think
about heaven and hell. I changed the way I think about sex. I
changed the way I think about the problems I face in life. I changed
the way I think about other people. I changed the way I think about
everything in life, my parents, my past, my present, my future.
That is what it means to repent a mental U turn. How many
of you have a GPS in your car? Okay, A bunch of you
do, all right. Some of you you've got ones that speak aloud.
Mine does. And if I'm out there and I make a defective turn,
it will often tell me make a U turn as quickly as possible. Now,
the thisisdom shows up in my life on how quickly I make a U
turn. And when God says to you, a penny's saying, I want
you to make a U turn as quickly as possible, You're headed down the
wrong track. You're going the wrong way. It's not going to take you
where you want to go. It says you've got to change the way you're
thinking, and you've got to fill your mind with the truth, not the
lies. Now, why is this important to learn to think in new ways?
You even have to think in new ways about your defects. Would you
write this down? Defects are often strengths being misused. That's a new way
of thinking. My defects are often my strengths being misused. You've probably never
thought of that, But that's a repentance, that's a change of mind.
My defects are often the strengths God gave me being misused. For instance,
maybe God gave you a strength of discernment, and you've got a phony meter
in your brain that can smell out of fake, just like that. And
you know when you get around some poser and your phony meter go ding.
This guy's a fake, this girl's a fake. You know, by the
way, the only people that posers impress are other posers, because everybody else
can see through it. But maybe you have a natural discernment. That's a
good thing. But if you don't know how to use it correctly incorrectly use
You'll get judgmental, you'll be critical, you'll be tempted to judge other people
all the time. It's a good quality being misused. Maybe you have a
strengthen detail and you're detail oriented, and you could see details and you notice
things that other people. Thank God, we have detailed people in the world.
I'm not one of them, but thank God. I mean, if
I'm having brain surgery, I want that surgeon to be a detailed person.
I don't want to go, oh, what's that piece, I'll forget it,
throw it over there. You know, we don't need that part,
you know, just cram it back there in the corner. You know.
I want my brain surgeon to be as detailed as possible. Okay, But
if you're a detailed person and you misuse that, God givin get, you're
gonna become picky. You're gonna become finicky, You're going to be unpleasable,
and you are difficult to live with because you're a detailed person. On the
other hand, you may be a big picture person, and thank God for
big picture people. We need people who can see the big picture, people
who can look three, five, ten years ahead. I'm a big picture
kind of person, and I'm always trying to think ahead for you because some
of you aren't. And if you're a big picture person, that's a good
thing. But if you don't understand the weakness behind that, you will overlook
people because you're always looking at the picture. Now, God loves to put
opposites together and watch the sparks fly, so detail people always marry big picture
people. You know, as I've said many times, when people before marriage,
opposites a tract, and then after marriage, opposites attack, and all
those things that you thought were so cool about your spouse now irritates you to
death. And before you got married, you go, man, how does
she think like that? That is so cute? You know, I've never
you know, what attracted you to your boyfriend or your girlfriend is they're different
from you. It is the differences that attract you. Go wow, I've
never seen anybody who thinks that way. It's just so fascinating. Now six
months into the relationship, you're going, could you pee a little bit more
like me? I mean, that's irritating now. And so maybe you're an
amiable person. That's your natural giftedness and you're you know, you're like nobody
bugs you. It's easy to get along with you. You can just go
along to get along. You're very amiable. But if you use that incorrectly,
you're gonna let people walk all over you, and you're gonna be a
doormat. And it actually becomes a defect. A strength can become a defect.
So you got to change the way you think. Philippians two, verse
five says this, let the same mind an attitude be in you, which
was in Christ Jesus. You're listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Home. We're so
happy you've chosen to study along with us today. Why is everything in life
so hard? Why does the right thing often feel like a battle. It's
because every day there's a spiritual war raging all around you. Here's Pastor Rick
to tell you more. You know, we all face temptations every day.
It's a spiritual battle that takes place inside us, and it makes us vulnerable,
particularly if we don't know how to fight it. To overcome temptation is
absolutely essential that you know the tact that Satan uses to trip us up,
and it's vital to learn the biblical defenses that God gives us. He has
told us in his word how to handle and how to manage the attacks of
Satan. In order to help you learn how to respond to the predictable patterns
that Satan uses to tempt you, I've created a study kit called The Invisible
War Winning the Battle of Temptation. This kit, The Invisible War Winning the
Battle of Temptation, includes a DVD with seven different sessions and a simple booklet
that will help you learn how to overcome and defeat temptation in your life.
You really need this. In the series, I will teach you the three
kinds of temptation, God's antidote to temptation, and even how to avoid temptation
in the first place. It is a steady guide that you can use by
yourself, but you'll actually get more out of it if you'll gather a small
group of friends together and study it together as a small girl group. Now,
I want to send you the Invisible War Winning the Battle for Temptation study
Kit as my gift to say thanks for your support of Daily Hope with your
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hundred five thousand and four and thanks so much for your support. Be sure
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