Speaker 1: You know, we really live in a world that's full
Speaker 1: of competing beliefs and values and choices, and what you
Speaker 1: believe shapes how you live and ultimately who you become.
Speaker 1: But the good news is God hasn't left us to
Speaker 1: figure it all out alone.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: In fact, today, on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, we're going
Speaker 1: to continue our series Reframing Your Worldview, where Rick Warren
Speaker 1: unpacks powerful truths from God's Word to help you see
Speaker 1: life clearly and live it with confidence and purpose. Well,
Speaker 1: let's get to it. Here's Rick with part one of
Speaker 1: a message called What's the Solution.
Speaker 2: We've been in this series that I'm calling Framing your Worldview,
Speaker 2: and we're learning to look at life from God's viewpoint
Speaker 2: as it really is, not from our limited human perspective,
Speaker 2: but seeing life from God's point of view, and we're
Speaker 2: looking at the major questions of life. We started the
Speaker 2: first week with why does it matter what I believe?
Speaker 3: Does it really matter what I believe?
Speaker 2: I mean, we dealt with what we call the sincerity
Speaker 2: myth that it doesn't matter what you believe as long
Speaker 2: as you're sincere. The fact is you can be sincerely wrong,
Speaker 2: you can sincerely you.
Speaker 3: Know, make mistakes.
Speaker 2: I've done it many many times and so have you,
Speaker 2: and so it does matter what we believe. If it's
Speaker 2: not the truth, then we have a shaky foundation when
Speaker 2: the earthquakes of life come through. So then the second
Speaker 2: way we looked at, well, how do you know what's true?
Speaker 2: And how do you know what's real, what's real and
Speaker 2: what's unreal. In the world of reality television, a lot
Speaker 2: of things early aren't that real, virtual reality, And we
Speaker 2: talked about the ways that you can test the truth.
Speaker 2: How do you know if somebody's telling you the truth
Speaker 2: or not? And we looked at that in quite detail.
Speaker 2: Then the third week we looked at who am I
Speaker 2: and where did I come from and the implications of
Speaker 2: that in terms of your value, your vision, your direction
Speaker 2: in life. And then last week we dealt with the
Speaker 2: question on how did the world get so messed up?
Speaker 2: And we talked about the fact that we live in
Speaker 2: a broken planet, that when sin and entered and evil
Speaker 2: entered the world, that we live on a fallen planet.
Speaker 2: Today we're looking at what's the solution based on what
Speaker 2: we talked about last week, that the world is full
Speaker 2: of problems, that because we live on a planet that
Speaker 2: has sin and has evil in it. Nothing is perfect.
Speaker 2: There is literally nothing perfect on this planet. You're not perfect.
Speaker 2: I'm not perfect, no relationships perfect. Things don't work right,
Speaker 2: everything's damaged. And so as a result, the world has
Speaker 2: a lot of problems, a lot of problems. And today
Speaker 2: we're going to look at what is the solution to
Speaker 2: the world's problems, particularly the root cause of the world's problems.
Speaker 2: You know, unlimited, their unlimited approaches to solving the symptoms
Speaker 2: in the world. And you can see all of the
Speaker 2: symptoms all around you, the many, many problems and deal
Speaker 2: with the kind of a band aid approach to surface issues.
Speaker 2: But we have to get beneath that if we're going
Speaker 2: to make a real difference in the world. You know,
Speaker 2: when I get weeds in my yard, I don't just
Speaker 2: go out and just you know, cut them off with
Speaker 2: a pair of scissors. I pull them out by the root.
Speaker 2: If I just cut off the symptom, they're going to
Speaker 2: grow right back. And a lot of the problems in
Speaker 2: your life, in your family, in your career, in our
Speaker 2: nation and in the world, we tend to treat them
Speaker 2: as symptoms and we just cut off the problem at
Speaker 2: the top, but the root is still there, and so
Speaker 2: they just keep growing back and back. Now on your handout,
Speaker 2: I've listed seven popular approaches to dealing with problems in
Speaker 2: the world, and as I go through these real quickly,
Speaker 2: you're going to recognize every one of them. The first
Speaker 2: one is the political approach. You're all familiar with that,
Speaker 2: which is basically solved the world's problems by passing laws
Speaker 2: and creating policies. Solve the world's problems through politics. And
Speaker 2: the truth is a lot of people genuinely believe that government,
Speaker 2: not God, is the answer to the human condition. And
Speaker 2: I've been in a number of different meetings. You take
Speaker 2: God out of the picture, basically all you've got left
Speaker 2: is politics, and they think that government, not God, is
Speaker 2: the solution and we just need better laws. I call
Speaker 2: this salvation by legislation. The only problem is you can't
Speaker 2: force anybody to change. A law has never changed anybody anywhere, anytime.
Speaker 2: It may cause you to conform the behavior, but a
Speaker 2: law has never.
Speaker 3: Changed a belief.
Speaker 2: It's never changed an attitude, it's never changed character, it's
Speaker 2: never changed a prejudice.
Speaker 3: You have to deal with something.
Speaker 2: Much deeper inside a human being than simply create a law,
Speaker 2: and so salvation by legislation is not the ultimate answer
Speaker 2: to the problems in the world. Then the second one
Speaker 2: is the educational approach, and that basically, as you know,
Speaker 2: all of the problems in the world the result of ignorance,
Speaker 2: and if we could just get everybody educated, everybody taught,
Speaker 2: everybody learned, then the world would be a better place. Now,
Speaker 2: of course, we believe in education. Part of the Peace
Speaker 2: plan is to help eliminate illiteracy all around the world.
Speaker 2: In fact, I don't know if you know this, but
Speaker 2: ninety percent of all the schools ever created in history
Speaker 2: were started by Christians, including places like Harvard and Yale
Speaker 2: and Princeton. Christianity and Judaism are educational religions and they've
Speaker 2: started more schools than anything in history. In fact, ninety
Speaker 2: percent of all the hospitals in the world were started
Speaker 2: by Christians somewhere around the world, usually the first one
Speaker 2: in every nation. So obviously we believe in education, but
Speaker 2: we don't believe in salvation by education because the reality
Speaker 2: is education is not enough. There are a lot of terrorists,
Speaker 2: and there are a lot of tyrants, and there are
Speaker 2: a lot of criminals and there are a lot of
Speaker 2: dictators who are highly educated, and you can be educated,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't change your character, so it's not getting
Speaker 2: to the root. The third approach is what I call
Speaker 2: the material or the financial approach to the world's problems.
Speaker 2: And these are people who see everything in the world
Speaker 2: in economic terms, as if every problem has an economic solution. Now,
Speaker 2: of course economics matters, but it is a surface issue.
Speaker 2: It doesn't deal with the root of human behavior. And
Speaker 2: in the educational or the excuse me, the material of
Speaker 2: the financial approach, the idea is we just need to
Speaker 2: help people earn more. And I would call this salvation
Speaker 2: by compensation. You know, if we just had everybody wealth,
Speaker 2: you're and of course as Christians, we believe in eliminating poverty.
Speaker 2: It's part of the peace plan, assisting the poor. Now,
Speaker 2: there are two different primary versions of the salvation by
Speaker 2: compensation or the material approach the world problem. There's socialism
Speaker 2: there's capitalism. Socialism basically says we're going to take all
Speaker 2: of the money and put it in a pool, and
Speaker 2: we'll redistribute it equally, and we're going to take a
Speaker 2: little bit of yours and give it to somebody has
Speaker 2: a little bit less. And then capitalism says no, we
Speaker 2: believe in free market enterprise, and we believe in entrepreneurship,
Speaker 2: and that in creating the freedom for people to start businesses,
Speaker 2: they will naturally create use their own God given creativity
Speaker 2: to better their economic income.
Speaker 3: Well, the bottom line is.
Speaker 2: Just helping people get more money does not solve all
Speaker 2: the problems in the world. I know a lot of
Speaker 2: people I told you last week who or I call
Speaker 2: them frms, famous, rich and miserable, and having a lot
Speaker 2: of money does not solve all your problems. If it did,
Speaker 2: the people who are wealthiest would be the happiest in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 3: And that's just not true.
Speaker 2: Then we have another approach of the world's problems, which
Speaker 2: I call the psychological approach, and that is, you know,
Speaker 2: what we need to do is just help people change
Speaker 2: the way they feel about themselves. And we need to
Speaker 2: help them deal with their past, and deal with their
Speaker 2: relationship and deal with their self esteem. And I would
Speaker 2: call this salvation by actualization. As if the whole goal
Speaker 2: of life is just to take all the stress out
Speaker 2: of your life, it's not. You were made for more
Speaker 2: than just to live a stress free life. You were
Speaker 2: made for more than happiness. You were created for a purpose.
Speaker 2: You were made by God and for God. And until
Speaker 2: you understand that life isn't going to make sense. Then
Speaker 2: there's the sociological approach to the world's problems, which says,
Speaker 2: let's change all the social structures of society, and if
Speaker 2: we do that, then everything will be great. And at
Speaker 2: the beginning of the twentieth century, there were a lot
Speaker 2: of social activists who genuinely believed, even Christians, that if
Speaker 2: you just change the social structures of society, then things
Speaker 2: will naturally get better. And after the twentieth century, where
Speaker 2: we had more people died, more people killed, the Holocaust
Speaker 2: of six million Jews, and so many evil things in
Speaker 2: the world, people realize that there's a deeper issue than
Speaker 2: just the social structures salvation by association. And then there's
Speaker 2: the biological approach, which is, well, we're just gonna focus
Speaker 2: on the human body and we're going to create the
Speaker 2: perfect human body. And there are a lot of exciting
Speaker 2: applications today taking place in science and biology, and there's
Speaker 2: you know, the gene mapping and the genome project and DNA,
Speaker 2: and people are learning things about stem cells and they're
Speaker 2: even doing this stuff about cloning, all these people trying
Speaker 2: to create the perfect body or the perfect uh you know,
Speaker 2: human specimen. Biotechnology, and the goal here of biology is
Speaker 2: a pill for every problem. In other words, it's salvation
Speaker 2: by medication. And you know you got a problem with this,
Speaker 2: well got we've got a pill for it. You got
Speaker 2: a problem for that, We've got a pill for it.
Speaker 2: And then every problem can be solved by a pill,
Speaker 2: or by a or a procedure. You know, you could
Speaker 2: actually add a one on there. Salvation by technology, you know,
Speaker 2: salvation by innovation, the technological approach. I've been to a
Speaker 2: lot of conferences just recently, been invited to speak at them,
Speaker 2: hearing about exciting developments and technology. But as much as
Speaker 2: I believe in the Internet, it's not the savior of mankind.
Speaker 2: As much as I believe in technological innovation, innovation is
Speaker 2: not salvation. Now, each of these things that I just
Speaker 2: went through very quickly, they have a role, and they
Speaker 2: have an important role, but they don't get to the
Speaker 2: root cause of all the problems on the planet, and
Speaker 2: they don't deal with human beings directly. The bottom line
Speaker 2: is this, you have to change the hearts of people.
Speaker 2: But if there's going to be any long term change.
Speaker 2: The biblical approach is God's way changing the hearts. That's
Speaker 2: salvation by transformation, and God specializes in that in changing
Speaker 2: prejudiced people into loving people, and hateful people into kind people,
Speaker 2: and self centered people into unselfish people. No law will
Speaker 2: ever teach people how to love. Only God can do that.
Speaker 2: You have to have salvation by transformation, and it starts
Speaker 2: in the hearts. It begins inside you look up here
Speaker 2: on the screen. The Bible says this and proverbs for
Speaker 2: above all else, guard your heart, for it is the what.
Speaker 3: Well spring of life. It means it's the root.
Speaker 2: It's the root, it's you know, each of these other
Speaker 2: things have a role, but they don't attack the root.
Speaker 2: And this is the root of all our problems. The
Speaker 2: well spring of life is your heart. It's your character,
Speaker 2: it's who you are inside. I guess they'd say it
Speaker 2: like this when you look at the world. The heart
Speaker 2: of the problem is a problem of the heart. The
Speaker 2: heart of the problem is a problem of the heart.
Speaker 2: We're not going to see any changes in society until
Speaker 2: there's changes in the self. Changes inside. The heart of
Speaker 2: the problem is a problem with the heart. There's an
Speaker 2: old story about a father who his son was bored
Speaker 2: on a rainy day and they didn't have any games,
Speaker 2: and he didn't know what to do, and so he
Speaker 2: found a picture of a map inside a magazine, a
Speaker 2: map of the world, and he took this map of
Speaker 2: the world, pulled it out, and then he cut up
Speaker 2: the map of the world in little tiny pieces and
Speaker 2: put it on the table and he said, you know, put
Speaker 2: this all together. He thought, that'll keep him busy, you know,
Speaker 2: putting the world all together. And you know, about fifteen
Speaker 2: minutes later, the son came back and he had it
Speaker 2: all taped altogether with a scotch tape, and the map
Speaker 2: of the world was perfect, perfect, and he goes, this
Speaker 2: is a young kid. He goes, how did you do that?
Speaker 2: How did you put it together so fast? And he said, well,
Speaker 2: you know, dad, on the back page, on the back
Speaker 2: of that map was a picture of a man. And
Speaker 2: he said, you know what, and I got the men
Speaker 2: put together the world fit two. It starts in the heart.
Speaker 2: And the fact is only changed. Hearts can change the world.
Speaker 2: Only changed people can change the world. So that's why
Speaker 2: today we're going to look at what changes the heart,
Speaker 2: what makes the changes in me that can make a
Speaker 2: change in the world. Now, Because we live in a
Speaker 2: fallen world, a broken planet, human beings have heart diseases.
Speaker 2: Now I'm not talking about physical heart diseases. I'm not
Speaker 2: talking about having plaque in your arteries. I'm talking about
Speaker 2: spiritual heart diseases.
Speaker 3: And as I've traveled all.
Speaker 2: Around the world, I have found that there are many,
Speaker 2: many universal heart diseases. You can find them in every culture,
Speaker 2: every single culture. I don't have time to go into
Speaker 2: them all to day. Let me just give you five.
Speaker 2: I want you to write these down. Five common universal
Speaker 2: heart does diases, and then the symptoms that we see
Speaker 2: in human beings when they have this disease in the heart.
Speaker 2: The first common human heart disease is guilt.
Speaker 3: It's guilt.
Speaker 2: And the reason it's guilt is because nobody's perfect.
Speaker 3: I blow it, you blow it.
Speaker 2: I don't measure up to my own standards, much less gods,
Speaker 2: and so we walk around with guilt. Now, it is
Speaker 2: impossible to be happy and guilty at the same time.
Speaker 2: It's impossible to feel good about yourself and bad about
Speaker 2: yourself at the same time. So, because many people live
Speaker 2: with guilt, The symptom is many people feel worthless. They
Speaker 2: feel worthless, and it is guilt that causes that feeling
Speaker 2: of worthlessness in their lives. The Bible says this in
Speaker 2: Psalm forty, verse twelve. It's up here on the screen,
Speaker 2: David says, you know, I was so swamped by guilt.
Speaker 2: I couldn't see my way clear. I had more guilt
Speaker 2: in my heart than hair on my head. That's not
Speaker 2: hard for some of us. And it was so heavy,
Speaker 2: the guilt, heavy guilt was so heavy that my heart
Speaker 2: gave out. You can't feel good and guilty at the
Speaker 2: same time, and so a lot of people feel worthless.
Speaker 2: Here's a second problem common heart disease. Compulsion. Compulsion. And
Speaker 2: when I talk about compulsion, it's this there are things
Speaker 2: in your life that you know are not good for you,
Speaker 2: but you do them anyway. And there are things in
Speaker 2: your life that you know would be good for you,
Speaker 2: but you don't do them.
Speaker 3: Now, you may not call.
Speaker 2: These addictions, but they are. And every one of us
Speaker 2: have compulsions in our lives that you habitually act in
Speaker 2: self defeating ways. You do it all the time, and
Speaker 2: you act in ways that defeat relationships and you act
Speaker 2: in ways that defeat your health, and you act in
Speaker 2: ways that defeat your happiness, and they are compulsions. And
Speaker 2: as a result of this, you say, I'd like to change,
Speaker 2: but I can't. Lot of things that I would like
Speaker 2: to do, but I don't. There are things that I
Speaker 2: know would be good for me, like exercise. How many
Speaker 2: you know exercise would be good for you?
Speaker 3: Yeah? And how many of you wish you did it more? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I'm not going to ask how many of you do it.
Speaker 2: The bottom line is that we know the right thing,
Speaker 2: but we don't always do it, and we feel powerless
Speaker 2: to change. That's a symptom. The symptom is many people
Speaker 2: feel powerless. They not only feel worthless because of guilt,
Speaker 2: they feel powerless because of the compulsions, the habitual actions
Speaker 2: in their life.
Speaker 3: That they can't seem to change.
Speaker 2: I want to read a fairly extended passage out of
Speaker 2: Scripture to you. It's in Romans chapter seven. It says
Speaker 2: this up here on the screen. What I don't understand
Speaker 2: about myself is that I side one way, but then
Speaker 2: I act another, doing things I absolutely despise.
Speaker 3: This is Paul talking.
Speaker 2: God's command is necessary, but I need something more. In
Speaker 2: other words, just knowing the right thing to do doesn't
Speaker 2: help me change.
Speaker 3: I need some power.
Speaker 2: I feel powerless to change it, for I know the
Speaker 2: law that's God's law, but I still can't keep it.
Speaker 2: And if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging
Speaker 2: my best intentions, I obviously need help.
Speaker 3: I realize that I don't have what it takes. I
Speaker 3: can will it, but I can't do it.
Speaker 2: This is like I'd like to go on a diet,
Speaker 2: but I can't stay on it. I'd like to stop
Speaker 2: being so angry, but I don't know how to control
Speaker 2: my temper. I decide to do good, but I don't
Speaker 2: really do it. Or I decide not to do bad,
Speaker 2: but then I do it anyway. Are any of you relating.
Speaker 3: To this mildly? Okay?
Speaker 2: My decisions such as they are don't result in actions.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Most New Year's resolutions, our studies have shown are let
Speaker 2: go within seventeen days. Okay, My decisions such as they
Speaker 2: are I don't result in actions. Something has gone wrong
Speaker 2: deep within me. That's a heart problem and gets the
Speaker 2: better of me every time. It happens so regularly that
Speaker 2: it's predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin
Speaker 2: is there to trip me up. I truly delight in
Speaker 2: God's commands, but it's pretty obvious that not all of
Speaker 2: me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel.
Speaker 2: I love this message paraphrase of Roman seven. Parts of
Speaker 2: me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it,
Speaker 2: they take charge. I've tried everything and nothing helps. I'm
Speaker 2: at the end of my rope. Is there no one
Speaker 2: who can do anything for me? In other words, how
Speaker 2: can I change? Isn't that the real question? The answer,
Speaker 2: thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He
Speaker 2: acted to set things right in this life of contradictions
Speaker 2: where I want to serve God with all my heart
Speaker 2: and mind, but I'm pulled by the influence of sin
Speaker 2: to do something totally different.
Speaker 3: That's Romans seven. You might want to go and read
Speaker 3: that again today.
Speaker 2: He's talking about how compulsions help us feel powerless.
Speaker 1: What a great message from Pastor Rick today. There's something
Speaker 1: I always take away from his message. Here's Rick to
Speaker 1: tell you how you can help support this ministry.
Speaker 2: Jesus told his disciples that they should live their lives
Speaker 2: according to five specific purposes. He said, you've got to
Speaker 2: love God with all your heart. That's worship, and love
Speaker 2: your neighbors yourself. That's ministry. That's called the Great Commandment.
Speaker 2: And then Jesus said, go make disciples. That's evangelism. Baptize
Speaker 2: them into the Family of God. That's fellowship, a sign
Speaker 2: of fellowship. And then he said, teach them obey everything
Speaker 2: I've taught you. That's discipleship. And we call that the
Speaker 2: Great Commission. We believe it daily hope that a great
Speaker 2: commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will
Speaker 2: produce a great Christian, a great church, a great company,
Speaker 2: a great community. You know, I started Daily Hope so
Speaker 2: I could spread the good news about Jesus, not just
Speaker 2: across America, but all around the world. And we want
Speaker 2: people to know that God's word is filled with hope
Speaker 2: and truth, and the power that we need to follow
Speaker 2: him every day is available to every single one. You
Speaker 2: know as well as I do, that the Word of
Speaker 2: God changes lives. It's a live it's active, and it
Speaker 2: breathes new life and new love into all of our lives.
Speaker 2: So wherever you listen to this, whether you listen on
Speaker 2: the website. Whether you listen on a radio station or
Speaker 2: whether you listen to a podcast, You're a part of
Speaker 2: the Daily Hope family and I need your help. We
Speaker 2: could not do this without your support. We're one hundred
Speaker 2: percent listener funded. Would you continue to pray for this
Speaker 2: broadcast and would you continue to support us and let
Speaker 2: it write to me, let me hear from you. I
Speaker 2: love reading the stories that are sent to me, So
Speaker 2: write me, pray for me, and support this ministry, and
Speaker 2: God will bless it, and God will bless you, and
Speaker 2: we'll get to heaven. And well, thank God for all
Speaker 2: the people going to be in heaven because you cared.
Speaker 1: Hey, if you'd like to support Pastor ricks Daily Hope,
Speaker 1: just go to Pastorick dot com. That's Pastorick dot com.
Speaker 1: Or you can text the word hope to seven oh
Speaker 1: three oh nine. That's the word hope to seven oh
Speaker 1: three oh nine. And really, from the bottom of our hearts,
Speaker 1: we thank you so much for your support. Your gift
Speaker 1: to Daily Hope helps us share the hope of Christ
Speaker 1: with people everywhere. Hey, be sure to join us next
Speaker 1: time when 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