Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren.
Speaker 1: We are so glad you're here with us today. We're
Speaker 1: going to continue our series called The Keys to a
Speaker 1: Blessed Life.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: In 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. Let's jump back in. This is
Speaker 1: part two of it depends on who you depend on.
Speaker 3: Now. I've put down here a couple verses that I
Speaker 3: would encourage you to memorize. One of them is for
Speaker 3: when you're young, and another one is for when you're old.
Speaker 3: But the first one everybody can memorize. Us. It's only
Speaker 3: one sentence, Psalm seventy one sixteen. Look at this verse,
Speaker 3: I walk in the strength of the Lord. I walk
Speaker 3: in the strength of the Lord. That's an affirmation, Psalm
Speaker 3: seventy one sixteen. In fact, let's memorize it right now.
Speaker 3: Let's say it together, Psalm seventy one sixteen. I walk
Speaker 3: in the strength of the Lord.
Speaker 2: And where is that verse?
Speaker 3: Psalm seventy one sixteen. And what a Psalm seventy one sixteen, say,
Speaker 3: I walk in the string of the Lord. Here's what
Speaker 3: I encourage you to do. Write that verse on a
Speaker 3: card and read it over and over and over till
Speaker 3: you got memorized, so you can say it ten times
Speaker 3: a day. And here's what you do. You make it
Speaker 3: the most important affirmation in your life. And when you
Speaker 3: get up in the morning and you want to go
Speaker 3: right back to bed, and you're worn out, and you go,
Speaker 3: I don't even have enough energy to get started today.
Speaker 3: You sit on the side of your bed and you say,
Speaker 3: I walk in the strength of the Lord. And then
Speaker 3: when you get up and you go to school or
Speaker 3: you go to work, whatever you're doing, and you have
Speaker 3: that first conflict with somebody, you say, I walk in
Speaker 3: the strength of the Lord. And later in the afternoon,
Speaker 3: when you get a phone call and it's bad news
Speaker 3: and it's terrible, and you're frustrated and you're scared, and
Speaker 3: it creates anxiety and stress, you say, I walk in
Speaker 3: the strength of the Lord. When late in the day
Speaker 3: you're just running out of energy and there's still a
Speaker 3: whole lot more to do, you say to yourself, I
Speaker 3: walk in the strength of the Lord. And when you
Speaker 3: go to bed at night, as you put your head
Speaker 3: down on the pillow and all of the things that
Speaker 3: you didn't get done, and all of the worries and
Speaker 3: the fears and loneliness and any other thing that tends
Speaker 3: to pile in you say, I walk in the strength
Speaker 3: of the Lord. That is the kind of woman, God
Speaker 3: bless us. That is the kind of man, God bless us.
Speaker 3: I walk in the strength of the Lord. I don't
Speaker 3: just depend on God's wisdom and do the right thing.
Speaker 3: I do the right thing with the right power. I'm
Speaker 3: not doing the right thing under my power. I'm doing
Speaker 3: the right thing under God's power. God, I need you
Speaker 3: to give me the energy I need to plug into
Speaker 3: the power. When you get older, you're going to face
Speaker 3: the pains and problems of aging, and that gets pretty frightening.
Speaker 3: Just talk to somebody who's getting up in age and
Speaker 3: asking that, And here's a good verse for then. When
Speaker 3: maybe your body isn't working like it should, and your
Speaker 3: mind isn't as sharp as it used to be, and
Speaker 3: maybe you're starting to get a little alzheimer, a little
Speaker 3: dementia saw him seventy three twenty six, as this, my
Speaker 3: health may fail and my spirit may grow weak, but
Speaker 3: God remains the strength of my heart, He is mine forever.
Speaker 3: That's a great verse to remember. Everything may else fall
Speaker 3: a part of my life, but God is the strength
Speaker 3: of my heart. He is mine forever. One of the
Speaker 3: most famous Christians of the nineteenth century was a guy
Speaker 3: named Hudson Taylor. He was a very famous missionary to China,
Speaker 3: and he was a spiritual giant, a brilliant man. Later,
Speaker 3: though in age, he lived to be an old man.
Speaker 3: And in his old age he lost his health and
Speaker 3: became very, very weak. And he wrote this letter to
Speaker 3: a friend, and it said this, I am so weak.
Speaker 3: I can no longer work. I am so weak, I
Speaker 3: can no longer study. I'm so weak, I can no
Speaker 3: longer read my Bible. I cannot even pray. I can
Speaker 3: only lie still in the arms of God like a
Speaker 3: little child, and trust that's good enough. Sometimes in your
Speaker 3: life you're gonna be so weak you can't even pray.
Speaker 3: Sometimes in your life you're gonna be so weak. You
Speaker 3: can't read the Bible, you can't go to a Bible study,
Speaker 3: you can't work, you can't do anything. What do you
Speaker 3: do in those moments you're just laying there in bed
Speaker 3: so weak. I rest in the strength of the Lord
Speaker 3: in his arms like a little child, and I trust you. See,
Speaker 3: weakness can actually be a good thing in your life
Speaker 3: if it causes you to depend on God. Look at
Speaker 3: this verse up here on the screen. This is from
Speaker 3: Saint Paul. Paul says this Tewod Corinthians twelve. Well, three
Speaker 3: times I begged God to take away my weakness. And
Speaker 3: you got some weaknesses you'd like God take away. You've
Speaker 3: probably asked them to. And each time God said, my
Speaker 3: grace is all you need. My power works best in
Speaker 3: your weakness, so you don't anything else, You just need me.
Speaker 3: My power works best in your weakness. So Paul says,
Speaker 3: I now gladly boast. I boast about how weak I am.
Speaker 3: I used to hide my weaknesses. I used to be
Speaker 3: ashamed of my weaknesses, Paul says, not anymore. I'm proud
Speaker 3: of my weaknesses. Why because when i'm weakness, the power
Speaker 3: of Christ works in me and shows up through me.
Speaker 3: And when I'm weak, then I am strong. See that's
Speaker 3: the paradox of depending on God. The more you're weak,
Speaker 3: the more you depend on God. The more you depend
Speaker 3: on God, the stronger you get. And you do the
Speaker 3: right thing. But you do it in the power of God,
Speaker 3: not in your own power. Now there's a third one
Speaker 3: is big one where you can learn dependence. Being porn
Speaker 3: spirit this week so God can bless you. And Tom's
Speaker 3: gonna come talk about it. To be blessed by God,
Speaker 3: I depend on God's wisdom and I depend on God's strength.
Speaker 3: But the third thing is I depend on God's timing,
Speaker 3: not mine. I depend on God's timing, not mine.
Speaker 4: The older I get, the more I understand how timing
Speaker 4: is so important in every area of life. Look at
Speaker 4: it in sports you can see it easily. The difference
Speaker 4: between a professional pitcher and an amateur is timing. The
Speaker 4: difference between a professional golf player and an amateur is timing.
Speaker 4: You can see it in things like cooking. A professional
Speaker 4: cook knows that it takes thirty seven seconds in the
Speaker 4: toaster for the perfect pop tart. They know that if
Speaker 4: they're a real professional. You just see it in all
Speaker 4: kinds of areas of life. You see it in your life.
Speaker 4: God's timing, the right timing is God working in the
Speaker 4: right way in your life. The Bible's really clear about
Speaker 4: the fact that there are seasons to our life and
Speaker 4: the fact I don't like this. But the fact is
Speaker 4: one of those seasons that God talks about again and
Speaker 4: again is the season of waiting. He is working in
Speaker 4: our lives during this season of waiting. While you're waiting,
Speaker 4: God is working. Don't think that the season of waiting
Speaker 4: means that God has stopped working. He's still working. He's
Speaker 4: just taking us through a season of waiting because of timing,
Speaker 4: because of what he's doing in our lives, because of
Speaker 4: what he's doing in circumstances. So that's why the Bible
Speaker 4: says in Psal I'm thirty one fourteen and fifteen. I
Speaker 4: trust in you, Oh Lord, you are my God. My
Speaker 4: times are in your hands. You're going to spend a
Speaker 4: lot of life waiting, And if you don't figure out
Speaker 4: how to trust God while you're waiting, you're going to
Speaker 4: spend a lot of life not trusting God, because there's
Speaker 4: a lot of life where we are in God's waiting room.
Speaker 4: You ever been in a hurry when God wasn't that
Speaker 4: happened to anybody else, And I'm talking about I mean,
Speaker 4: you want it to go along, but it's just not
Speaker 4: going and alone. God is never in a hurry. God
Speaker 4: is never in a hurry. Because he's eternal, and he
Speaker 4: is watching, he is working, he is seeing how and
Speaker 4: when you will trust him. As you're waiting, we're saying when, Lord,
Speaker 4: when is it going to happen? And God's saying, what
Speaker 4: am I doing in your life? You can trust me
Speaker 4: with this now. The problem with waiting is our human
Speaker 4: nature and the culture around us. Everything about it says,
Speaker 4: don't wait, get things as quickly as you can. And
Speaker 4: when we have fast track and fast passes, and one
Speaker 4: of the best business magazines is Fast Company. Everything is
Speaker 4: fast when I go through the drives through. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you guys are like this forgetting food. I
Speaker 4: like to give my food at the first window, and
Speaker 4: I want to see the bag come out so I
Speaker 4: can just sort of keep driving by and grab it
Speaker 4: as I go by. I don't want to even wait
Speaker 4: twenty seconds. That's the way we tend to be wired
Speaker 4: in our culture, and it goes against it goes against
Speaker 4: God's blessing in our lives, because God's blessing comes through
Speaker 4: these times of waiting. Ecclesiastes three to eleven says God
Speaker 4: has set the right time time for everything. Now I
Speaker 4: know some of you right now, you are in a
Speaker 4: time of waiting. Maybe it's for school to end, Maybe
Speaker 4: it's for man or a woman to come into your life.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's for a marriage to happen, for a baby
Speaker 4: to come. You're in this time of waiting in your life,
Speaker 4: and if you're honest, you would say I'm frustrated right
Speaker 4: now without slow this is working. We've all been there
Speaker 4: at times. There's a promise in the Bible that tells
Speaker 4: you not only that God is working, but also how
Speaker 4: God is working. It's an important promise to understand for
Speaker 4: how God works in our lives during these times of waiting.
Speaker 4: Isaiah sixty, verse twenty two says, I am the Lord,
Speaker 4: and when it is time, I will make these things
Speaker 4: happen quickly. Here's how God's working in how he works
Speaker 4: in our lives, and it will drive you crazy. You
Speaker 4: wait and wait and wait for something, and then all
Speaker 4: of a sudden, God just gives it to you all
Speaker 4: at once, and it's just overwhelming, and you say, I
Speaker 4: was asking for it, but could you slow it down
Speaker 4: a little bit?
Speaker 3: Now?
Speaker 4: This can happen when I know a lot of people
Speaker 4: who've been through adoptions like this, where they've started the
Speaker 4: adoption process, and they thought the adoption was going to
Speaker 4: go through in a few months, and they waited months
Speaker 4: and months and sometimes years and years and thought it
Speaker 4: never was going to happen. And then they get the
Speaker 4: phone call, and the phone call says, Okay, we got
Speaker 4: the baby for you. Are you ready in two days
Speaker 4: and you've got to go pick them up in another country?
Speaker 4: Can you do that? That's how God works many times.
Speaker 4: That's how God works in sending Jesus into this world.
Speaker 4: The Bible tells us that the world waited thousands of
Speaker 4: years for Jesus to come the first time, but at
Speaker 4: the right time, Jesus came into the world. And we've
Speaker 4: been waiting two thousand years now for Jesus to come again.
Speaker 4: When's he going to come again? God's right time, That's
Speaker 4: when he's going to come. You might write this down
Speaker 4: in your outline, just this sentence. A delay is not
Speaker 4: a denial. Just remember that a delay is not a denial.
Speaker 4: We think God is saying no, but really God is
Speaker 4: saying not yet. Will you keep trusting me through This
Speaker 4: just has to do many times with how we talk
Speaker 4: to God about how we pray. Sometimes when we pray
Speaker 4: about something, we say, God, it's like, I want to
Speaker 4: give you first option on this. Can you do this
Speaker 4: really fast? If you don't get it done, then I'm
Speaker 4: gonna go get it done myself. I don't care what
Speaker 4: I have to do. I'm gonna get it done. And
Speaker 4: God said, no, are you trusting me? Micah talked about that.
Speaker 4: Micah seven seven says, I trust the Lord to save
Speaker 4: me and I will wait on him. I'm not gonna
Speaker 4: go out and get it myself. I'm not going to
Speaker 4: accomplish this myself. I'm gonna wait on him to answer
Speaker 4: my prayer. That that is the kind of faith that
Speaker 4: God bless us.
Speaker 3: One of the things that Tom just said, and I
Speaker 3: didn't see you boy writing it down, and it's brilliant.
Speaker 3: So you need to write this down. While I'm waiting,
Speaker 3: God's working. You need to write that down. He said, Wow,
Speaker 3: I'm waiting, God's working. A lot of times we think
Speaker 3: while I'm waiting, nothing's happening, But God is often working
Speaker 3: behind the scenes in ways you can't even see, to
Speaker 3: get you ready for the answer to your prayer. While
Speaker 3: you're waiting. God's working. It's not like God's waiting while
Speaker 3: you're waiting God's working. Good example of that is how
Speaker 3: we got this land for Saddleback Church here at Lake Forest.
Speaker 3: You know, we started over here many many years ago,
Speaker 3: over in Laguna Hills High School, and the church began
Speaker 3: to grow, and the more it began to grow, we
Speaker 3: had to go to other different buildings, and at one
Speaker 3: point we were using four different high schools in the
Speaker 3: same week. We're using Laguna Hills High School on one day,
Speaker 3: mission to Llo High School on another day, Eltorro High
Speaker 3: School on another day, and Tribuca Hills High School on
Speaker 3: another day. In fact, in the first thirteen years of
Speaker 3: this church, because we didn't have any land to build on,
Speaker 3: we used seventy nine different buildings. Can you imagine that.
Speaker 3: We said, we're the church. If you can figure out
Speaker 3: where we are this week, you get to come. And
Speaker 3: we were literally, you know, there's a church up in
Speaker 3: La called the Church on the Way. We were the
Speaker 3: Church on the move because you never knew where we
Speaker 3: were from week to week. And the church kept growing,
Speaker 3: and we went from one service to two services, to
Speaker 3: three services to four services, and I'm getting tired to
Speaker 3: five services the six services and I'm going anytime Lord,
Speaker 3: we'd like to have a building now. And I'd look
Speaker 3: around at friends of mine who were pastors. They they
Speaker 3: got a building, and they got a building, and they
Speaker 3: got a building. And one day God said to me, Rick,
Speaker 3: who you doing this for? He said, well, I'm doing
Speaker 3: it for you.
Speaker 2: Lord.
Speaker 3: He said, well does it matter what other What does
Speaker 3: it matter to you what I do in other people's lives?
Speaker 3: You just follow me? And he said, would you still
Speaker 3: serve me if the church I call you to lead
Speaker 3: and pastor never has a building. I said, of course
Speaker 3: they would, Of course they would. The fact is, while
Speaker 3: we were waiting, God was working, and God was preparing
Speaker 3: this piece of land one hundred and twenty acres that's
Speaker 3: bigger than most college campuses. And but the problem was
Speaker 3: nobody knew where this piece was because while we were
Speaker 3: starting the church, there was no city of Rancho Santa Margharita,
Speaker 3: there was no city, a foothill ranch, there wasn't even
Speaker 3: a lake forest, there was an El Toro. There were
Speaker 3: no roads around here, there was no a freeway. This
Speaker 3: was a cow pasture. Nobody even knew it was here.
Speaker 3: But a thousand years ago, millions years ago, God had
Speaker 3: already planned That's where I'm gonna put part of my church,
Speaker 3: part of my body called saddleback. I'm gonna put them
Speaker 3: right there. And we just had to wait for everything
Speaker 3: to happen, for God to give us this piece of property.
Speaker 3: And I can't tell you how many times we were
Speaker 3: tempted in early years to settle for something small. And
Speaker 3: people say, here's a half acre of land, here's a
Speaker 3: third acre of land. We could have bought that, and
Speaker 3: h time it said no, no, it's too small, it's too small,
Speaker 3: And and I just kept trusting God for this. If
Speaker 3: we had bought it, we would have built a church
Speaker 3: at seated two hundred, and none of you would be here. Now,
Speaker 3: let me just give you a little lesson. God always
Speaker 3: gives his best to those who wait. And if you
Speaker 3: get in a hurry, you're gonna settle for second best
Speaker 3: in your life. And before God brings the best man
Speaker 3: into your life, the best woman into your life, the
Speaker 3: best job into your life, the best opportunity in your life,
Speaker 3: Satan's going to give you all kinds of detours. And
Speaker 3: he say, hey, see me over here, me over here,
Speaker 3: And you go, oh, you know, I'm getting tired. Why
Speaker 3: don't I just pick this one, and you settle for
Speaker 3: less than God's best in your life. Don't do it.
Speaker 3: As your pastor who loves you, I'm telling you, don't
Speaker 3: do it. If you will wait for God's best. God
Speaker 3: always gives his best to those who leave the choice
Speaker 3: to him. But if you get frantic, and you get nervous,
Speaker 3: and you get in a hurry, and you start trying
Speaker 3: to answer your own prayer, you will have of a
Speaker 3: fatal flaw and a terrible mistake in your life when
Speaker 3: you try to answer on That's what Abraham did. God
Speaker 3: promised Abraham, I'm going to give you a son. And
Speaker 3: when it didn't happen, it didn't happen. It didn't happen,
Speaker 3: It didn't happen. It didn't happen because his wife was
Speaker 3: unable to conceive at that point. He took her handmaid,
Speaker 3: got her pregnant and had a little boy named Ishmael
Speaker 3: and said, here, God, I got the miracle son Jesus.
Speaker 3: And God's just that's not the baby I'm gonna give you.
Speaker 3: That's your plan. That's not my plan. That's your plan.
Speaker 3: If you want God's blessing, you got to learn this
Speaker 3: truth very deeply. Spiritual poverty means I don't do it myself.
Speaker 3: I depend on God's wisdom. I depend on God's strength,
Speaker 3: and I depend on God's timing, and he'll answer it
Speaker 3: when he's ready to answer it. And when he knows
Speaker 3: I'm ready for the answer, I'm gonna trust him, all right,
Speaker 3: Number four? Or let me give you another way to
Speaker 3: practice this week to be blessed by God. I depend
Speaker 3: on God's wisdom, God's strength, God time me. And they
Speaker 3: also depend on God's defense, not mine. I'll explain this,
Speaker 3: but I depend on God's defense, not mine. There's always
Speaker 3: going to be people in your life who misunderstand you.
Speaker 2: Do you agree with that?
Speaker 3: There'll always be people around you misunderstand There always people
Speaker 3: people who don't like you.
Speaker 2: There will always be people who.
Speaker 3: Criticize you, judge you, attack you, gossip about you, spread
Speaker 3: rumors about you, and a lot of people. You know,
Speaker 3: if I could just be perfect, then everybody would like me. Wrong.
Speaker 3: Jesus was perfect and a lot of people didn't write
Speaker 3: like him. So even if you were perfect, even if
Speaker 3: you were Jesus, there'd be people who are never just
Speaker 3: not going to like you, and so they're going to
Speaker 3: attack and they're going to criticize, and they're going to
Speaker 3: try to get and even in your closest relationships, those
Speaker 3: who love you most, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your husband,
Speaker 3: your wife, those who love your most, you're still going
Speaker 3: to be misunderstood by them, because we live in a
Speaker 3: broken world. And when you are misunderstood, you're going to
Speaker 3: have a tendency to get in there and defend yourself.
Speaker 2: And when you're.
Speaker 3: Attacked, your tendency is attacked back. When people criticize you,
Speaker 3: you want to criticize back. People slam you. You want
Speaker 3: to slam them back. People insult you, You want to
Speaker 3: insult them back. You're out on the freeway. Somebody expresses
Speaker 3: it to you, the international sign of displeasure. You want
Speaker 3: to express the international sign of displeasure back to them.
Speaker 3: Don't do it. Let God be your defender. Don't defend yourself.
Speaker 3: God says every time you get under tack, get criticized,
Speaker 3: get put down, get misunderstood. Now you got two choices.
Speaker 3: You can defend yourself or you're gonna let me defend you.
Speaker 3: What it'll be? Who do you think can do a
Speaker 3: better job of defending you? God? Kid?
Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for listening to pastor Rick's Daily Hope Right now,
Speaker 1: here's Pastor Rick with a special message. Hi, everybody, this
Speaker 1: is Pastor Rick. I would like to thank you. Thank
Speaker 1: you for being a part of our Daily Hope family.
Speaker 1: I don't get to say that often enough, but your
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Speaker 1: even in places where it's difficult and even dangerous to
Speaker 1: get the good news. You know, I recently heard from
Speaker 1: a woman named Eunice in Cameroon. Cameroon is a country
Speaker 1: in Central Africa, and she wrote to me. She said,
Speaker 1: Pastor Rick, I lost both of my son, both my
Speaker 1: son and my daughter in the war, and now I'm
Speaker 1: raising four grandchildren on my own. I was overwhelmed with grief.
Speaker 1: But then she says, but through the Daily Hope devotionals,
Speaker 1: I have found strength and comfort and peace in God's word.
Speaker 1: So thank you for helping me hold on to hope.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: That's powerful. That's powerful, and that happened because your giving
Speaker 2: is helping Eunus find the strength to carry on, to
Speaker 2: raise her grandchildren and to keep trusting God even through
Speaker 2: the deep loss of her kids. Now, right now, I
Speaker 2: wanted to tell you about this because we have a
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Speaker 2: I want to encourage you and give your best gift
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Speaker 3: Let me just close and saying I love you, I do,
Speaker 3: I love you, I thank God for you, and I
Speaker 3: am so grateful that we are in this mission together.
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