Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren.
Speaker 2: We are so glad you're here with us. Today. We're
Speaker 2: going to continue.
Speaker 1: Our series called The Keys to a Blessed Life. Now
Speaker 1: when these messages, Rick walks through Jesus' Sermon on the
Speaker 1: Mount and shows us how to live a truly hopeful
Speaker 1: and purpose filled life. All right, now, here's part one
Speaker 1: of how God blesses broken hearts.
Speaker 3: Now, the fact of life is that life is tough.
Speaker 2: Everybody agree with that. It's not easy.
Speaker 3: Life is tough, life is hard, life is difficult. Since
Speaker 3: Adam Send the world was broken and everything on the
Speaker 3: planet is broken. Nothing works perfectly. I've said this many times.
Speaker 3: Your body doesn't work perfectly, the economy doesn't work perfectly,
Speaker 3: no relationship works perfectly. Your marriage doesn't work perfectly. And
Speaker 3: life is full of losses. We have defeats and we
Speaker 3: have disappointments. This is not heaven. That's why we pray
Speaker 3: Thy will be done on earth. This is in heaven
Speaker 3: because in heaven there are no defeats, there are no disappointments.
Speaker 3: But on earth nothing works perfectly all the time. So
Speaker 3: we have trials and tribulations. We have sorrow, and we
Speaker 3: have suffering. We have problems and pressures. We have, as
Speaker 3: I said, defeats and disappointments. Now, how do you rise
Speaker 3: above the inevitable losses in your life? How do you
Speaker 3: rise above them? Well, today we come to the second beatitude.
Speaker 3: It's Matthew chapter five, verse four, and Jesus says this,
Speaker 3: God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Speaker 3: Now in the eight ways to be blessed by God.
Speaker 3: The second way. This seems so ludicrous when you think
Speaker 3: about it, so un normal, so irrational. When he says
Speaker 3: the way to be blessed is to mourn.
Speaker 2: What in the world.
Speaker 3: Does he mean by that? In other words, the way
Speaker 3: to be happy is to be sad. That just seems
Speaker 3: like a great reversal. What does he mean by this,
Speaker 3: God blesses those who mourn. Well, that's what we're going
Speaker 3: to look at this weekend on how to handle the
Speaker 3: losses of life and how God blesses a broken heart. Now,
Speaker 3: I don't know what you're going through right now. I
Speaker 3: hope you're going through a relatively easy time, but you
Speaker 3: may not. Some of you came to service this weekend
Speaker 3: all churning, inside, you've got conflicts, you've got chaos, you've
Speaker 3: got a bad health report, you just got laid off,
Speaker 3: you've had a fight with your boyfriend, girlfriend, husband, wife.
Speaker 3: The money isn't there where you need it, and you're
Speaker 3: under tension. And many people watching online right now, there
Speaker 3: are things you've had a loss in your life, or
Speaker 3: you've had a death in your life, if you had
Speaker 3: something that has caused you to have grief now this
Speaker 3: last year, as you know, I've gone through a year
Speaker 3: long journey with grief since Matthew died, and I've learned
Speaker 3: a lot. I've learned a lot about grief that I
Speaker 3: didn't even know a year ago. And what I want
Speaker 3: to do this weekend is just kind of summarize a
Speaker 3: few of those ideas. I think someday I'll probably write
Speaker 3: a book on it because I've learned so much about it.
Speaker 3: But I want to just give you a few things
Speaker 3: on how to be blessed in a broken world. Now,
Speaker 3: let me give you a couple of things. Write these down.
Speaker 3: Here's just a couple of insights before we actually get
Speaker 3: into it. One of them is this God doesn't expect
Speaker 3: me to be happy all the time. That's just a
Speaker 3: fact of life. God doesn't expect you to be happy
Speaker 3: all the time. There is this myth that Christians, if
Speaker 3: you're a believer, if you know Jesus, you should be
Speaker 3: always smiling, always happy, always cheerful, skipping the hills and
Speaker 3: picking flowers and talking about peace and love. No, that's
Speaker 3: rainbow bright, not a Christian, okay. And when you become
Speaker 3: a follower of Jesus, it doesn't mean you become a
Speaker 3: Pollyanna or an annie little orphan ane. And the sun
Speaker 3: will come up tomorrow and it's always up up into
Speaker 3: the pool and you're always happy.
Speaker 2: No, no, you're not.
Speaker 3: In fact, the Bible says in Ecclesiastes three four, there's
Speaker 3: a time for everything. There's a time for everything, and
Speaker 3: there's a season for every activity under heaven. In other words,
Speaker 3: life is a series of opposites. There's a time to weep,
Speaker 3: there's a time to laugh, there's a time to mourn,
Speaker 3: and there's a time to dance. And so the Bible
Speaker 3: says that sometimes weeping is appropriate, sometimes more is appropriate,
Speaker 3: sometimes grieving is appropriate. Because the fact is the world
Speaker 3: is filled with a lot of sadness. All you have
Speaker 3: to do is read the paper and read about little
Speaker 3: girls getting kidnapped, and fires and murders and wars and
Speaker 3: all kinds of things. There's a lot of pain on
Speaker 3: this planet, and sometimes the only appropriate logical response to
Speaker 3: life is grief.
Speaker 2: God doesn't expect.
Speaker 3: You to simply grin and barrett, to stuff your emotions
Speaker 3: and to smile in the middle of all of the
Speaker 3: storms of life. No. In fact, the Bible says, blessed
Speaker 3: are those who mourn. God blesses you when you grieve.
Speaker 3: Why why does he do that? Well, we're gonna we're
Speaker 3: gonna look at that now. A lot of people think
Speaker 3: that grief is only for funerals, like you know, if
Speaker 3: you lose a loved one, then then you grieve. But
Speaker 3: the fact is, there are a lot of losses in life.
Speaker 3: There are thousands of losses. You can lose your health,
Speaker 3: you can lose your job, you can lose your money,
Speaker 3: you can lose your reputation, you can lose your energy,
Speaker 3: you can lose a dream. There are thousands of different
Speaker 3: losses in life, and God says the only appropriate response
Speaker 3: to the losses of life is not to fake it,
Speaker 3: but to face it, and not to go around grinning.
Speaker 3: But to actually grieve. There's a time for every activity
Speaker 3: under heaven. I actually went through a study this week
Speaker 3: of what the Bible says we're supposed to mourn and grieve,
Speaker 3: and I'm not going to get into that.
Speaker 2: That would be two or three sermons.
Speaker 3: But the Bible says, i to mourn my losses, which
Speaker 3: is things.
Speaker 2: Bad things that happen to me.
Speaker 3: And the Bible says, I'm to mourn my disappointments, which
Speaker 3: are good things that didn't happen to me. To hear
Speaker 3: that good things that didn't happen to you, that's a
Speaker 3: reason to mourn. The Bible says, I'm to mourn my sins,
Speaker 3: and I'm to grieve over my sin. The Bible says,
Speaker 3: I'm to grieve and mourn over the suffering in the
Speaker 3: world and not be.
Speaker 2: Blase about it.
Speaker 3: The Bible says, I'm actually to grieve for my friends
Speaker 3: who don't know Jesus, who are spiritually lost. And there
Speaker 3: are a lot of things the Bible tells us to
Speaker 3: grieve over that God doesn't expect you to be happy
Speaker 3: all the time. Second thing write this down is that
Speaker 3: grief is essential to my health. Grief is essential to
Speaker 3: my health. It's essential to my emotional health, to my
Speaker 3: spiritual health, to my physical health.
Speaker 2: And to my mental health.
Speaker 3: In fact, if you never grieve about anything, if you're
Speaker 3: never sad about anything, it means one of three things.
Speaker 3: A you're out of touch with reality, because there's a
Speaker 3: lot of things.
Speaker 2: To be sad about in this world.
Speaker 3: Or B you are out of touch with your own
Speaker 3: emotions and you're living in denial.
Speaker 2: Or see, you.
Speaker 3: Don't love because when you love and you see sad things,
Speaker 3: that makes you grieve. Now, grief is a painful emotion,
Speaker 3: but it's a healthy emotion, and it's a helpful emotion, and.
Speaker 2: It is God's gift.
Speaker 3: It's the tool that God gives us to get through
Speaker 3: the transitions of life. I've told you this before. There
Speaker 3: is no growth in your life without change. You can't
Speaker 3: grow without change. There is no change without loss because
Speaker 3: you lose some of the old.
Speaker 2: For the new.
Speaker 3: There is no loss without pain, and there is no
Speaker 3: pain without grief. To go through life without grieving would
Speaker 3: be like a mother who says I want to have
Speaker 3: a baby without going through the pain of labor. It
Speaker 3: ain't going to happen. It isn't going to happen now.
Speaker 3: There are two unhealthy reactions to the losses of life.
Speaker 3: One is repression and the other is suppression. Repression is
Speaker 3: when I conscious unconsciously try to block a painful thought
Speaker 3: out of my mind.
Speaker 2: That's repression.
Speaker 3: I unconsciously try to block a pain painful thought out
Speaker 3: of my mind. Suppression is when I consciously try to
Speaker 3: block a pain. I'm not gonna think about that. I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna think about that. I'm not gonna think about it.
Speaker 3: When I consciously try to block a painful thought out
Speaker 3: of my mind. Both of these are denials. When you
Speaker 3: go through a tough time, when your heart is hurting,
Speaker 3: when your heart is breaking, God doesn't want you to
Speaker 3: suppress it. God doesn't want you to repress it. God
Speaker 3: wants you to express it to friends and confess it
Speaker 3: to him. And when you do that, you're on the
Speaker 3: road to healing. I want you to write this down.
Speaker 3: If I don't let it out, I will act it out.
Speaker 3: If I don't let it out in healthy ways, I'm
Speaker 3: going to act it out in unhealthy ways. Some of
Speaker 3: you were hurt many years ago growing up. Maybe your
Speaker 3: parents divorced, maybe you were abused, maybe you were hurt
Speaker 3: by something somebody said about you.
Speaker 2: And it hurt very, very deeply.
Speaker 3: But as a child, you didn't know how to grieve healthy.
Speaker 3: You didn't know how to grieve good, so you just
Speaker 3: pushed it down and you stuffed it down, and you've
Speaker 3: never grieved over that hurt. Well, you need to go
Speaker 3: back and grieve over why, because if you don't grieve
Speaker 3: the losses of life, you get stuck at that stage.
Speaker 3: Let me say that again. This is one of the
Speaker 3: most important things you're ever going to learn. When you
Speaker 3: don't grieve, when you don't go through grief and a paint.
Speaker 3: When pain happens in your life and you don't let it,
Speaker 3: you don't feel it, you push it down. You get
Speaker 3: stuck emotionally at that stage, and you spend the rest
Speaker 3: of your life reacting to something that happened a long
Speaker 3: time ago, and you're taking it out on the people
Speaker 3: around you now. And that's not fair. It's unhealthy to
Speaker 3: stuff it. You've heard me say this before. When I
Speaker 3: swallow my grief, my stomach keeps score. If I don't
Speaker 3: talk it out, I take it out on my own
Speaker 3: body or on other people. And if I don't let
Speaker 3: it out in healthy ways, then I'm going to act
Speaker 3: it out in unhealthy ways. And when you swallow negative emotions,
Speaker 3: your body gets sick. I've said many times it's not
Speaker 3: just what you eat, it's what eats you that makes
Speaker 3: you sick.
Speaker 2: David talked about this in Psalms.
Speaker 3: Notice on your outline, David says, and so I'm thirty two,
Speaker 3: verse three. When I kept things to myself, I felt
Speaker 3: weak deep inside me.
Speaker 2: And I moaned all the day long.
Speaker 3: Now circle the word moan. When you go through a
Speaker 3: loss in life. You lose a job, you lose a friend,
Speaker 3: you lose a deal, you lose something in your life
Speaker 3: that you were hoping would happen, or something you had.
Speaker 2: And you lost it.
Speaker 3: You lose a marriage, Either mourn or you can moan.
Speaker 3: Moaning is negative, Mourning is positive. Moaning is having a
Speaker 3: pity party. Mourning is calling out to God in your
Speaker 3: grief and in your pain. So I'm thirty nine, verse two,
Speaker 3: David says, I was silent and I held my peace
Speaker 3: to no avail, and my distress only grew worse.
Speaker 2: If you don't.
Speaker 3: Grieve the losses in your life, if you're too busy
Speaker 3: and you just have to stop it.
Speaker 2: I can't think about it.
Speaker 3: You try to do the Clint Eastwood, you know, strong
Speaker 3: silent type. We're just grin and bear and you press
Speaker 3: on and you don't even stop to mourn a loved
Speaker 3: one's death. If you don't do that, then what happens
Speaker 3: is he says, my distress only grew worse.
Speaker 2: So what am I saying?
Speaker 3: The things that happened to you around you, the bad
Speaker 3: things happen to they're not your choice.
Speaker 2: But grief is a choice, and it's a help choice.
Speaker 3: And when you choose to let it out, you have
Speaker 3: to choose to allow yourself to feel the sad emotions.
Speaker 3: So I don't like feeling said, no, you don't. But
Speaker 3: not everything that's helpful feels good. Not everything that's healthy
Speaker 3: feels good. If you don't mourn the losses of life,
Speaker 3: you get stuck at that stage. Now, this weekend, what
Speaker 3: I want us to look at is how God blesses
Speaker 3: broken hearts because the second Beatitude Jesus says this, God
Speaker 3: blesses those who mourn. Now, I want God to bless
Speaker 3: your life. I want God to bless your life in
Speaker 3: spite of all the bad things that have happened and
Speaker 3: in spite of all the bad things that are gonna happen,
Speaker 3: and in order for God to bless your life, Jesus says,
Speaker 3: blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Speaker 3: How does God comfort me when I grieve? I'm an
Speaker 3: authority on this one. I can speak from experience on
Speaker 3: how God comforts. And as I look back over my life,
Speaker 3: I see six ways that God blesses a broken heart.
Speaker 3: Since Matthew died, I have cried every single day since
Speaker 3: he died. That's not a sign of weakness. That's a
Speaker 3: sign of love. Deep love cares, Deep love is strong.
Speaker 3: So how do you get through You don't get over it.
Speaker 3: A lot of people think, well, I'm just gonna get
Speaker 3: over this grief. No, you're not gonna get over it.
Speaker 3: If it's serious. If you're married for a certain number
Speaker 3: of years and then you divorce, you don't get over it.
Speaker 3: You get through it. If you have a loved one,
Speaker 3: a husband or wife who dies.
Speaker 2: You don't get over that.
Speaker 3: You get through it. Now, you can't go over grief.
Speaker 3: You can't go under grief. You can't go around grief.
Speaker 3: You gotta go through the grief. And if you're scared
Speaker 3: to express emotion, and you refuse to go through it.
Speaker 3: That is said, that's where you get stuck. But how
Speaker 3: do I get unstuck?
Speaker 2: You?
Speaker 3: Let God help you, Let God comfort you. Blessed are
Speaker 3: those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. And how
Speaker 3: does God comfort us?
Speaker 2: Six ways? Write these down? Number one.
Speaker 3: The first way God blesses a broken heart is God
Speaker 3: draws us close to himself. He draws us in close
Speaker 3: to himself. Look at these verses, Psalm thirty four, verse eighteen.
Speaker 3: The Lord is close to the broken hearted, and he
Speaker 3: says those whose spirits have been crushed. When you are grieving,
Speaker 3: you often feel like God's a million miles away. But
Speaker 3: He's not a million miles away. He's never been any closer.
Speaker 3: What you feel and what's real are not the same thing.
Speaker 3: Not everything you feel is real, and not everything that's real.
Speaker 2: Do you feel?
Speaker 3: The Bible says God is close to the broken hearted.
Speaker 3: He's paying attention, he's not aloof, he's not distant. Hebrews
Speaker 3: thirteen to five. I will never leave you. Circle that never.
Speaker 3: That means even in your worst pain, It means even
Speaker 3: in your most embarrassing disgrace, It means, even in your
Speaker 3: most massive failure, even in the thing you're most ashamed
Speaker 3: of in your life, I will never leave you, and
Speaker 3: I will never abandon you. And Tewod Corinthians six 't
Speaker 3: ten says this our hearts ache. But at the same
Speaker 3: time we have the joy of the Lord.
Speaker 2: What does that mean? That's the difference Jesus makes.
Speaker 3: If you don't have Jesus in your life, then God
Speaker 3: isn't close to you at that moment, and you're on
Speaker 3: your own. You don't have any other resources. You're there
Speaker 3: to handle the pain by yourself. God never intended for
Speaker 3: you to handle the pain by yourself. First, the Bible says,
Speaker 3: God draws us close to himself. And then here's the
Speaker 3: second thing. Write this down.
Speaker 2: God grieves with us. God grieves with us. Now.
Speaker 3: The reason you have the ability to grieve is because
Speaker 3: you are made in God's image. The Bible tells us
Speaker 3: that God grieves. The Bible tells us that God weeps
Speaker 3: when he sees in humanity on earth.
Speaker 2: He weeps.
Speaker 3: When God sees a sin, he weeps. When God sees
Speaker 3: war's destroying people. When God sees his planet being destroyed,
Speaker 3: God weeps. God grieves and we're made in God's image,
Speaker 3: And the Bible says God weeps with us. In other words,
Speaker 3: sees God is a suffering God, and God is a
Speaker 3: sympathetic God. He's not aloof he's not apathetic, he's not
Speaker 3: standing on the sidelines. He suffers with us. Look at
Speaker 3: this verse up here on the screen. Isaiah fifty three,
Speaker 3: verse three says this Jesus was a man of sorrows.
Speaker 3: Have you ever seen that verse? Jesus, it's out of
Speaker 3: Isaiah's prophecy, was a man of sorrows, acquainted with bitterest grief.
Speaker 3: He knew suffering firsthand. So when you come to Jesus,
Speaker 3: it's not like Jesus, goes, I have no idea what
Speaker 3: you're talking about. When your heart is breaking and you're
Speaker 3: in pain, it's not like Jesus going, I don't understand it.
Speaker 3: I don't get that. Just buck up and put on
Speaker 3: a happy face. No, Jesus was a man of sorrows.
Speaker 3: He was acquainted with grief. Let me just give you
Speaker 3: one example there on your outline. When his friend Lazarus died,
Speaker 3: The Bible says to John eleven, when Jesus saw a
Speaker 3: lazarus sister sobbing, and he saw how all those with,
Speaker 3: all those with he was were crying. Also his heart
Speaker 3: was touched and he was deeply moved. Then Jesus started crying.
Speaker 3: See how much he loved Lazarus.
Speaker 2: They say ctricle the word love.
Speaker 3: You know, I told you that grief is actually an
Speaker 3: evidence of love. And the more you love, the more
Speaker 3: you're gonna grieve about things. If you're apathetic, if you're callous,
Speaker 3: you don't have any love in your life. You don't
Speaker 3: care what happens to anybody else, It doesn't bother you.
Speaker 3: You don't grieve about the tragedy, even your next door neighbor,
Speaker 3: if you don't love them, you don't care. The more
Speaker 3: you love, the more you're gonna understand grief. And it
Speaker 3: says Jesus started crying. You know, the shortest verse in
Speaker 3: the Bible is John eleven thirty five. It's two words,
Speaker 3: Jesus wept, John eleven thirty five. That's your memory verse
Speaker 3: for the week. Okay, everybody can do that. Say it,
Speaker 3: John eleven thirty five.
Speaker 2: And what did this say? Jesus wept? And where is that?
Speaker 2: John eleven thirty five.
Speaker 3: That's the shortest verse in the Bible. You just memorized
Speaker 3: the Bible verse. It's only two words, Jesus wept. But
Speaker 3: what does it say. It says we have a suffering God.
Speaker 3: We have a God who sympathizesus, who understands, who knows us.
Speaker 3: And the Bible says Jesus started crying. Now, let me
Speaker 3: just say to the guys. Guys, we're not very good
Speaker 3: at grief. It's not a macho thing. We don't like
Speaker 3: negative feelings. Men don't like to feel negative. They don't
Speaker 3: like bad things. They certainly don't like sorrow. And we're
Speaker 3: taught growing up. You know, in fact, parents, you need
Speaker 3: to stop teaching your kid to stuff their emotions, because
Speaker 3: one of the first things parents, stop your crying. Stop
Speaker 3: your crying, Stop your crying. Really, is that what you
Speaker 3: really want? You want to teach people to stuff their emotions,
Speaker 3: The Bible says.
Speaker 2: Jesus started crying.
Speaker 3: Sadness is not weakness. Jesus was the strongest man who
Speaker 3: ever lived. A showing for a man to show emotion
Speaker 3: is not a sign of weakness. It's actually a sign
Speaker 3: of strength. Weak men are scared of their emotions. Weak
Speaker 3: men are afraid of tears breaks them out.
Speaker 2: They go nutty. Why because it scares them. When you're a.
Speaker 3: Strong man, you're not afraid of emotion, You're not afraid
Speaker 3: to show it. You're not even afraid to cry. Jesus
Speaker 3: was the strongest man who ever lived. So never be embarrassed.
Speaker 3: Never be embarrassed by tears. In fact, the Bible says
Speaker 3: Jesus was sent to comfort us. Look at this Isaiah
Speaker 3: sixty one, verse two and three. The Bible says He
Speaker 3: has sent me Jesus to comfort all who mourn, to
Speaker 3: give those who mourn and Zion joy and gladness instead
Speaker 3: of grief, and a song of praise instead of sorrow.
Speaker 3: So the first two ways that God blesses a broken
Speaker 3: heart is he draws us close to himself. He says,
Speaker 3: I'm going to be with you. You're not going to
Speaker 3: go through this on your own. And number two, I'm
Speaker 3: going to feel it with you. The pain you feel
Speaker 3: in that separation, God feels it. The pain you feel
Speaker 3: in that loneliness, God feels it. The pain you feel
Speaker 3: in that rejection, God feels it. The pain you feel
Speaker 3: in that embarrassment, that disgrace. God feels it.
Speaker 2: He is with you, and he is feeling it with you.
Speaker 1: Such a great message from Pastor Rick today, and I
Speaker 1: hope you were just as encouraged as I was.
Speaker 2: Once again, here's Rick. Hello everybody.
Speaker 3: This is Rick and I have just returned from Amsterdam
Speaker 3: where I was at a conference where we had over
Speaker 3: six thousand church leaders pastors from all around the world.
Speaker 3: Literally one hundred and forty nations came to Amsterdam for
Speaker 3: a week of training where we were teaching them about
Speaker 3: the good news of Jesus Christ. More importantly, how to
Speaker 3: share the good news of Jesus Christ and help finishing
Speaker 3: the task around the world in the next ten years.
Speaker 3: That's the goal to get the gospel to every person
Speaker 3: in the world in the next ten years, by twenty
Speaker 3: thirty three, which is the two thousandth birthday of Christianity.
Speaker 3: And you know what was the most exciting to me
Speaker 3: is that people came to me from all around the world.
Speaker 3: Like I said, one hundred and forty nations and said,
Speaker 3: I listened to Daily Hope every day in Kazakhstan, in Bhutan,
Speaker 3: in Bolivia, in Namibia, on every continent. I heard time
Speaker 3: and time again, Pastor Rick, the Word of God is
Speaker 3: changing my life. Friends, That's what Daily Hope is all about.
Speaker 3: And for me, since I get your letters and I
Speaker 3: love to read your letters, and I love to hear
Speaker 3: your stories, but to be face to face with about
Speaker 3: six thousand people who were listening to Daily Hope on
Speaker 3: a regular basis and hearing how it's changed their lives
Speaker 3: and influenced their ministries, it just makes me want to say,
Speaker 3: to all of you who pray for this ministry and
Speaker 3: all of you support this ministry, thank you, thank you,
Speaker 3: thank you, thank you. Thank you for your prayers, for
Speaker 3: your gifts, for your support. You're making a difference. When
Speaker 3: you get to heaven. You're going to meet people in
Speaker 3: heaven who've come to Christ because you prayed and.
Speaker 2: Because you gave.
Speaker 1: Be sure to join us next time as we look
Speaker 1: into God's word for our Daily Hope. This program is
Speaker 1: sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial
Speaker 1: support