Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, Welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. This is
Speaker 1: the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Hey, we're so
Speaker 1: glad you're here with us today. We are continuing in
Speaker 1: a series called Talking about Stuff that Matters Now. In
Speaker 1: this series, Rick looks into the scriptures and he's unpacking
Speaker 1: what it means to live in community, have real conversation
Speaker 1: about what matters most, and face discouragement with courage and faith.
Speaker 1: It's honest, hopeful, So stay tuned. You won't want to
Speaker 1: miss a second.
Speaker 2: So let's get to it.
Speaker 1: Here is the final part of a message called being
Speaker 1: a Disciple in the Digital Age.
Speaker 3: You know this thing about addiction? It was really funny
Speaker 3: this week Josh my Son sent me an article from
Speaker 3: Wired magazine. He knew us teaching on this, and it
Speaker 3: was an article defending the internet and online and all
Speaker 3: these different things gaming and social media to say, none
Speaker 3: of these things are really addicting.
Speaker 2: I'm going, what universe are you on? Guys?
Speaker 3: Say none of these things are really addicting? Do you
Speaker 3: know anything about dopamine? None of these things are really addicting?
Speaker 3: And then I looked at the bottom and who wrote it?
Speaker 3: And I said, I know that name. Where do I
Speaker 3: know that name from? I think he wrote a book.
Speaker 3: I think I read it about five years ago. And
Speaker 3: I went back and I went in my library and
Speaker 3: I found a book by the guy who had said,
Speaker 3: none of these things are addicting. And he wrote this
Speaker 3: book five years ago, Hooked how to build habit farming products.
Speaker 2: I'm good, busted, busted.
Speaker 3: He had written a book on how do you build
Speaker 3: Believe me, night and day. Advertisers are trying to figure
Speaker 3: out how to get you hooked so you'll keep coming back,
Speaker 3: so you keep seeing their ads. You keep seeing their ads.
Speaker 3: Let me give you one more, one more hazard. I
Speaker 3: can be distracted from what's most important. If I spend
Speaker 3: eleven years of my life looking at a screen, a
Speaker 3: phone screen, a smart screen, I can be distracted. Excuse
Speaker 3: me just a minute? Yes, hello, no, no, no, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: I'm preaching right now. Yeah yeah, okay, yes, I will
Speaker 3: bring the milk and bread bye bye, Okay. Now, you
Speaker 3: will pick up a phone any time, anywhere. And if
Speaker 3: you allow this little thing to interrupt anything else in
Speaker 3: your life, this has become your god. If you allow
Speaker 3: this to interrupt anything, you'll pick it up.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: I won't say all the things you could pick it
Speaker 3: up doing, but you could pick it up. It means
Speaker 3: I really value this more than I value anything else
Speaker 3: in my life, because nothing will keep me. I'm picking
Speaker 3: up the phone. It's become my god. Who owns the phone?
Speaker 3: Do you own the phone? Or does it own you?
Speaker 3: Who's the master and who's the slave? Which is the tool?
Speaker 3: And which is the owner the master? If this can
Speaker 3: interrupt you anytime, then this thing is running your life.
Speaker 3: It's running your life. I can allow things to distract
Speaker 3: me from what's most important. There's an interesting story in
Speaker 3: the Bible. Jesus had a friend named Lazarus, and Lazarus
Speaker 3: had two sisters, Mary and Martha. Mary, Martha and Lazarus
Speaker 3: lived together in a home in Bethany. Bethany is a
Speaker 3: small town near Jerusalem in Israel. Jesus was in Jerusalem.
Speaker 3: I've been to both these cities, of course, and you
Speaker 3: can walk from Jerusalem to Bethany in a half a day.
Speaker 3: It's just not that far you can get there. Lazarus
Speaker 3: got very deathly sick, in fact, he was almost dead,
Speaker 3: and word was sent to Jesus, Lord, come to our
Speaker 3: house in Bethany because they thought, if Jesus gets here,
Speaker 3: he can heal Lazarus. We know it, he's healed people before.
Speaker 3: And Jesus was in Jerusalem. Instead of getting there in
Speaker 3: a half day, it took him three days to get there.
Speaker 3: What was he doing. He's walking around, he's talking to
Speaker 3: other people, he's ministering to people and something like that.
Speaker 3: Jesus didn't want to get there to heal Lazarus. He
Speaker 3: wanted to get there to raise Lazarus from the dead.
Speaker 3: He wanted to do a bigger miracle, so he waited
Speaker 3: until Lazarus had died. So finally, after Lazarus dies, he
Speaker 3: shows up at Mary and Martha's house in Bethany, and
Speaker 3: as he walks into the house, Mary sits down at
Speaker 3: the feet of Jesus and just starts listening to him talk.
Speaker 2: Martha goes, we ought to.
Speaker 3: Have a meal, and she gets up and she starts
Speaker 3: preparing everything, and she's all busy and all all messed
Speaker 3: up and very flustered and worried. And here's how the
Speaker 3: story where he goes In the Bible Luke, chapter ten,
Speaker 3: verse forty to forty two, Mary sat quietly at Jesus' feet,
Speaker 3: listening to everything he said. Friends, you need to do
Speaker 3: that every day of your life. You need to sit
Speaker 3: at Jesus' feet listening to everything he says. That's called
Speaker 3: a quiet time. You sit quietly with this book and
Speaker 3: you pray and you read, and you pray and you read,
Speaker 3: and you do it every day and you say, God,
Speaker 3: is there anything you want to tell me today?
Speaker 2: And you let God speak to you.
Speaker 3: You check in with the commander in chief on a
Speaker 3: daily basis. Mary sat quietly at Jesus' feet. That's quiet time,
Speaker 3: listening to everything he said. But Martha was distracted, you
Speaker 3: might circle that word. She was distracted by all she
Speaker 3: had to do. She said, Lord, don't you care that
Speaker 3: my sister has left me to do all the work
Speaker 3: by myself.
Speaker 2: Tell her to help me. Martha is having a pity party.
Speaker 2: And Jesus, I think Jesus says it like this.
Speaker 3: Martha, Martha, Martha, Martha, you are worried and you're too
Speaker 3: distracted by many things. But really, Martha, there's only one
Speaker 3: thing that is truly important, and Mary chose it. If
Speaker 3: you have an opportunity to look at your phone and
Speaker 3: your social media, or spend time sitting quietly.
Speaker 2: At the feet of Jesus.
Speaker 3: What are you going to choose If an average American
Speaker 3: is spending three point four hours a day looking at this,
Speaker 3: how much time are you spending alone with Jesus. Something's
Speaker 3: out of whack here. Why do you spend more time
Speaker 3: with stuff you don't believe than with someone and something
Speaker 3: you do believe? The night might need to be a
Speaker 3: realignment in your life of how much input am I
Speaker 3: getting from the truth that sets me free? And how
Speaker 3: how much input am I getting from lives that make
Speaker 3: me stressed out? Three point four hours here, I don't
Speaker 3: know anybody spending three point four hours with Jesus Christ
Speaker 3: every day. Well, that shows in our lifestyle. It shows
Speaker 3: and how we're doing I can be distracted from what's
Speaker 3: most important. Now that's the negative side. I want to
Speaker 3: talk to you, and actually Tom's going to help me
Speaker 3: with this. Just quickly summarize five ways, five ways that
Speaker 3: you can use your phone for the glory of God.
Speaker 4: So, based on what Pastor Rick's been teaching us, do
Speaker 4: we need to take a sledgehammer to our cell phones?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: No, how do I use it for good? How can
Speaker 4: I use my smartphone for God's glory. I'm going to
Speaker 4: share the first few of these, and then Pastor Rick's
Speaker 4: going to come back and end this message. If you've
Speaker 4: been around Saddleback for any time, you know that God
Speaker 4: has given us five purposes to live for, not eight.
Speaker 4: Not to the Bible clear reveals five specific purposes. So
Speaker 4: my cell phone, my smartphone, how can I use it
Speaker 4: to fulfill those purposes? This is purpose driven smartphones, purpose
Speaker 4: driven technology. All right, Five things. Number one, We're going
Speaker 4: to go through these quickly. Number one, you use it
Speaker 4: to express my worship. I use the technology that God's
Speaker 4: put in my hands to express my worship. God has
Speaker 4: not told us where we have to worship. He's told
Speaker 4: us that we have to worship, and he's also told
Speaker 4: us the heart we need in worship. Look at what
Speaker 4: Jesus said about this up on the screen. Jesus taught
Speaker 4: us that true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
Speaker 4: and in truth. So that's something I need to take
Speaker 4: into my life all of my life, not just once
Speaker 4: a week when I come to worship, but true worship
Speaker 4: is in spirit and in truth all through the day,
Speaker 4: all through my life. Look at this next verse Proverbs
Speaker 4: twenty five says, all day long, I put my hope
Speaker 4: and trust in You. So because I've got my phone
Speaker 4: with me all day long, it can help me all
Speaker 4: day long to put my hope and trust in Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of different ways that you can do that.
Speaker 2: You can use songs.
Speaker 4: You can listen to songs all throughout the day. You
Speaker 4: can in your car listen to the favorite song you have,
Speaker 4: turn it up really loud, and sing along with it.
Speaker 4: When I do that, I really think I can sing.
Speaker 4: I can't sing, but if you put it up really loud,
Speaker 4: I feel like I can sing. And you should do that.
Speaker 4: You can find new songs, you can share songs that
Speaker 4: you're hearing with other people. You use it to express
Speaker 4: my worship. Worship is singing, but worship is a lot
Speaker 4: of other things. Worship is giving. I don't know if
Speaker 4: you knew that you can actually commit to give to
Speaker 4: tithe on your cell phone. Is it any greater a
Speaker 4: commitment if you make it here or you make it
Speaker 4: on your cell phone. No, it's about your spirit, it's
Speaker 4: about your heart. It's not where, it's what God's doing
Speaker 4: in your life. So yeah, use it to express my
Speaker 4: worship number two. I use it to encourage fellowship, to
Speaker 4: encourage connection with other people. The very thing that can
Speaker 4: sometimes break connection, our smartphones, we can use it to
Speaker 4: enhance to encourage connection. Robins twelve to ten says, love
Speaker 4: each other with genuine affection and take delight in honoring
Speaker 4: each other. Any time you honor someone, you are you
Speaker 4: are taking delight in something that God takes delight.
Speaker 2: In, and you're encouraging.
Speaker 4: You're enhancing fellowship, your strengthening, strengthening fellowship. Social media is
Speaker 4: not a place to show off, as Rick has been
Speaker 4: telling us. It's a place to show up in other
Speaker 4: people's lives, and it's place to show up especially with encouragement,
Speaker 4: because we all need encouragement every day. The Bible says
Speaker 4: in First Sessians five eleven, encourage each other and give
Speaker 4: each other's strength. So instead of looking to social media
Speaker 4: as a place where you can get encouragement, that dose
Speaker 4: of encouragement that you need, look to it as a
Speaker 4: place where you can give encouragement to other people. When
Speaker 4: you feel discouraged throughout the day, let me tell you,
Speaker 4: let me give you just a prescription. The best thing
Speaker 4: you can do is look for somebody to encourage. Immediately
Speaker 4: grab your phone and encourage somebody else and watch how
Speaker 4: God multiplies what God wants to do through the fellowship
Speaker 4: in your life. Third thing you can do is you
Speaker 4: use it to enhance my spiritual growth, express my worship,
Speaker 4: encourage fellowship. And number three, I use it to enhance
Speaker 4: my spiritual growth. I use it so that I can
Speaker 4: get closer to Christ on a daily basis, because I
Speaker 4: have this with me on a daily basis. Grow two
Speaker 4: Peter three eighteen says, grow in spiritual strength and become
Speaker 4: better acquainted with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: And there are so.
Speaker 4: Many ways to do this with the technology that God
Speaker 4: has given to us, so many hundreds of apps, probably
Speaker 4: thousands upon thousands of apps and websites that you can
Speaker 4: go to, places where you can do Bible studies, places
Speaker 4: where you can value God's.
Speaker 2: Word in your life.
Speaker 4: Proverbs tells us that it's better to much better to
Speaker 4: have wisdom and the knowledge than to have.
Speaker 2: Gold or silver.
Speaker 4: And when you value God's word in your life, you're
Speaker 4: valuing spiritual growth in your life. I've talked to a
Speaker 4: lot of Peo people over the years. They struggle with
Speaker 4: spiritual growth. I think all of us do. And one
Speaker 4: of the reasons we struggle is we try to grow
Speaker 4: spiritually based on one day a week. I just come
Speaker 4: one day a week, I learn it all, and then
Speaker 4: I'm going to grow spiritually and it's not going to work.
Speaker 4: It's like trying to have a meal one day a week,
Speaker 4: great big meal on the weekend. I starve the rest
Speaker 4: of the week, and I think I'm going to be
Speaker 4: physically healthy. With the tools God has given us, you
Speaker 4: can bring them into your life every day, things like
Speaker 4: daily hope. The pastor Rick has done. Bible says in
Speaker 4: Some one nineteen thirty seven, keep me from looking at
Speaker 4: worthless things and let me live by your word.
Speaker 2: So it's just this choice.
Speaker 4: Is what I'm looking at now? Is it worthless or
Speaker 4: is it worthwhile? Is it worthwhile for my spiritual growth?
Speaker 4: And then number four fourth purpose of life is ministry.
Speaker 4: So I use it to expand my ministry. I use
Speaker 4: it to expand my ministry. I start to think of
Speaker 4: social media as a place where I can serve others.
Speaker 4: Jesus said, I didn't come to be served, but to
Speaker 4: serve others. So social media is not place for you
Speaker 4: to be served. It's a place for you to serve
Speaker 4: other people. Saw I'm one sixteen twelve says what can
Speaker 4: I give back to God for all the blessings that
Speaker 4: He's poured out to me?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 4: What can I give back to others for God's blessings?
Speaker 4: Through social media? If I learn something, how can I
Speaker 4: share it with somebody else? If I read in an
Speaker 4: article it helps me grow, how can I share it
Speaker 4: with somebody else? Or Rick talked earlier about people who
Speaker 4: want to argue with you, how can you minister to them?
Speaker 4: I'll tell you how you can pray for them When
Speaker 4: they want to argue with you.
Speaker 2: You pray for them.
Speaker 4: Now, don't tell them you're praying for them because I
Speaker 4: want to argue with you about that. I just I'll
Speaker 4: promise you they will. But you just choose to pray
Speaker 4: for them, and you are ministering them as you do that.
Speaker 4: And then the fifth thing you can do, and Rick's
Speaker 4: going to come and talk to us about this write
Speaker 4: this in with me, is I use it to extend
Speaker 4: my witness.
Speaker 3: I use it to extend my witness. You know, Saddleback
Speaker 3: has always been an early adopter of every technology. When
Speaker 3: we start using When fax machines or first came out
Speaker 3: like a nineteen eighty I think there were like four
Speaker 3: fact machines in the world. I started a thing called
Speaker 3: the Facts of Life and it was a daily devotional
Speaker 3: for Business Leader. We would fax it out twenty four
Speaker 3: hours a day. We Saddleback was the first church on
Speaker 3: the Internet nineteen ninety two, is long before Internet Explorer
Speaker 3: and Netscape, or that we were using my FTP and
Speaker 3: Gopher and Mosaic. Those of you guys who knew that
Speaker 3: we were the first church on the Internet.
Speaker 2: But I have to admit that I was a.
Speaker 3: Late adapter to social media because it sounded so self centered.
Speaker 3: One of my staff, who was the director of technology
Speaker 3: at the time for saddle Back Church, pastor here brilliant guy.
Speaker 3: He wrote the Microsoft certification test and he was on
Speaker 3: staff at Saddleback Church, the test that everybody at Microsoft
Speaker 3: has to fake.
Speaker 2: And you know, he came to me.
Speaker 3: He said, Rick, there's this new thing coming out called Twitter,
Speaker 3: and he goes, it's going to be a big deal,
Speaker 3: big platform.
Speaker 2: You should get on it. You can influence a lot
Speaker 2: of people. And I said, what does it do?
Speaker 3: He said, well, in a few sentences, you just tell
Speaker 3: people what you're doing at that point in your life.
Speaker 3: I said, are you kidding me? I said, that sounds
Speaker 3: like the most narcissistic.
Speaker 2: Thing I could ever think of.
Speaker 3: I said, you know, I don't want people knowing everything
Speaker 3: I do. They shouldn't care what I do. They should
Speaker 3: be thinking about their own lives. And so I didn't
Speaker 3: go on it for many years now. He actually put
Speaker 3: my name in their reserved account. When I years later
Speaker 3: went on Twitter, I had sixty thousand followers and had
Speaker 3: never twittered anything, tweeted anything. But what changed my mind
Speaker 3: about social media because it just seemed, you know, the
Speaker 3: opposite of it's not about you, because social media is
Speaker 3: so much it's all about you, and I'm going I'm
Speaker 3: not interested in that kind of channel.
Speaker 2: But I went up and I was doing a funeral
Speaker 2: for a very well known.
Speaker 3: Christian leader, and I was doing it up in Pasadena,
Speaker 3: and the other pastor who was doing the funeral with
Speaker 3: me was a guy named John Piper, a very well
Speaker 3: known pastor from the East Coast. John's one of the
Speaker 3: most humble guys I've ever known in my life, certainly
Speaker 3: not on any kind of ego self promotion idea and
Speaker 3: he leans over to me while we're on stage. He
Speaker 3: goes at the funeral, he goes, Rick, I'm on Twitter.
Speaker 3: I looked at him and go, you gotta be kidding me,
Speaker 3: because it didn't just fit his person. And I said,
Speaker 3: what in the world do you do? And I said,
Speaker 3: I use it to mintor people ding. The light goes
Speaker 3: on and I go, that I can do. You will
Speaker 3: never see me with a picture of a celebrity on Twitter.
Speaker 3: You will never see me posting my little latte and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. What I do is I use social
Speaker 3: media to encourage people. Like a recent tweet I did.
Speaker 3: I said, sometimes God removes people from your life for
Speaker 3: your own protection, don't run after them. A lot of
Speaker 3: people needed that, a lot of people needed that.
Speaker 2: And that's the kind of thing you can do. Now.
Speaker 3: The fifth thing you can do, as Tom said, is
Speaker 3: this extends your witness The Bible says in Second Corinthians
Speaker 3: five eighteen and twenty through Christ, God has made peace
Speaker 3: between us and himself, and he gave us the work
Speaker 3: of telling everyone about the peace we can have with him.
Speaker 2: That's called witnessing.
Speaker 3: Gave us the work of telling everybody else about the
Speaker 3: peace we can have with God. So we have been
Speaker 3: sent out to speak for Christ. Look at the next verse,
Speaker 3: First Chronicles sixteen twenty four. Publish God's glorious deeds among
Speaker 3: every nation.
Speaker 2: Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.
Speaker 3: Now, friends, you and I have an advantage over every
Speaker 3: other Christian who's lived for two thousand years. You and
Speaker 3: I have an advantage over every believer who's ever lived
Speaker 3: throughout history. We have a tool that literally can go
Speaker 3: around the world. Jesus said, go make disciples of every nation.
Speaker 3: Who was he talking to you? You, every single believer.
Speaker 3: If you're a believer, you are to be a witness.
Speaker 3: You are to be an ambassador. You are to share
Speaker 3: what you know about your life with the whole world. Now,
Speaker 3: for two thousand years, to go to the whole world
Speaker 3: mean meant you had to get on a steamship and
Speaker 3: go for six months to travel to another country to
Speaker 3: tell somebody, or in recent years, get on a plane
Speaker 3: and travel around the world to tell somebody about the
Speaker 3: good news of the Lord. Today you don't have to
Speaker 3: leave your home. You can sit at home in your
Speaker 3: bedroom in your PJS and say a good word about
Speaker 3: the Lord, and it goes to the entire globe. That
Speaker 3: is a benefit, a blessing, and a responsibility we have
Speaker 3: no other Christians have ever had in history.
Speaker 2: You can talk to the whole world.
Speaker 3: You can be a witness to the whole world through
Speaker 3: social media. Jesus said, you will be my witness. If
Speaker 3: you do it on Twitter, you will be my twitness.
Speaker 3: So God wants all of us to be twitnesses, to
Speaker 3: be witnesses of the whole world.
Speaker 2: And you can do this. You can do this. Let's
Speaker 2: bower heads, would you pray?
Speaker 3: Say God, I want to be a disciple in the
Speaker 3: digital age. I don't want to waste precious time, the
Speaker 3: time of my life. I don't want to be seduced
Speaker 3: by the world's values. I want to be a God pleaser,
Speaker 3: not a people pleaser. I don't want to be drawn
Speaker 3: into unproductive arguments. Help me to not be tempted to
Speaker 3: compete and show off. I don't want to be addicted
Speaker 3: to the approval of others, and I don't want to
Speaker 3: be distracted from.
Speaker 2: What's most important.
Speaker 3: So God, help me to use my phone to express
Speaker 3: my worship.
Speaker 2: All day long.
Speaker 3: Help me to use my phone to encourage fellowship, to
Speaker 3: look for people, to encourage and show love to and
Speaker 3: to honor others. Help me to use my phone to
Speaker 3: enhance my spiritual growth, to listen to good messages, to
Speaker 3: read good material, to buy good Christian solid books. Help
Speaker 3: me to use my phone to expand my ministry. And
Speaker 3: when I'm just courage, to look for other people, to
Speaker 3: encourage and to offer a helping hand to those who
Speaker 3: need comfort. And Lord, I want you to use me
Speaker 3: to extend my witness. I want to publish the good news,
Speaker 3: and when I get to Heaven, I want to hear
Speaker 3: you say, well done, good and faithful servant.
Speaker 2: You shared the good news.
Speaker 3: With other people around the world, and so I commit
Speaker 3: to doing that Today.
Speaker 2: In your name, I pray.
Speaker 3: If you're not a believer, if you haven't opened your
Speaker 3: life to Christ, say Jesus Christ, come into my life today.
Speaker 2: I want to know you.
Speaker 3: I want to learn to trust you and love you.
Speaker 2: And I pray this in your name. Amen.
Speaker 1: Hey, if you've just prayed along with Rick to accept
Speaker 1: Jesus in your life, Rick would love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: Just email Rick at pastorick dot com. Hey, do you
Speaker 1: know someone who's graduating this year? Maybe it's your son,
Speaker 1: a daughter, grandchild, perhaps a neighbor or even a family friend.
Speaker 1: As you celebrate this important milestone and as they begin
Speaker 1: the next phase of their journey, they need to know
Speaker 1: that God created them, loves them, and has a plan
Speaker 1: for their life. So that's why Rick Warren created a
Speaker 1: special resource just for graduates called The Purpose Driven Life,
Speaker 1: Selected Thoughts and Scriptures for the Graduate. It's filled with
Speaker 1: inspirational scripture, biblical wisdom from Rick, and beautiful imagery. This
Speaker 1: unique hardcover giftbook provides a priceless reminder of the bountiful
Speaker 1: life that God has planned for your graduate, and it's
Speaker 1: going to inspire them to seek His unique plan and
Speaker 1: purpose for their life. So please don't miss this opportunity
Speaker 1: to minister to the graduate in your life today. Be
Speaker 1: sure to request your copy of The Purpose Driven Life
Speaker 1: for Graduates when you give a gift to Daily Hope.
Speaker 1: Just go to Pastorick dot com to get your copy
Speaker 1: of this great resource. That's pastorick dot com. Or you
Speaker 1: can text the word hope to seven oh three oh nine. Again,
Speaker 1: that's the word hope to seven oh three oh nine,
Speaker 1: And we thank you so much for your support. It
Speaker 1: helps us share the hope of Christ with people all
Speaker 1: around the world. Be sure to join us next time
Speaker 1: as we look into God's Word for our daily hope.
Speaker 1: This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and
Speaker 1: your generous financial support.