Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the
Speaker 1: Bible teaching ministry that's here to encourage and inspire you
Speaker 1: every day. And today we're continuing our series called Awesome Relationships.
Speaker 1: In it, Rick Warren shares practical ways to help you
Speaker 1: take your relationships with family, friends, co workers, and even
Speaker 1: God from ordinary to extraordinary. And this is a series
Speaker 1: you don't want to miss. Now, let's hear what Rick
Speaker 1: has to say in part two of a message called
Speaker 1: What Destroys Relationships and What builds Them?
Speaker 2: God has wired the universe that the more unselfish you are,
Speaker 2: the more He blesses you. Why because He wants you
Speaker 2: to become like him. God wants you to become like Him,
Speaker 2: which is unselfish. Everything you have in life is a
Speaker 2: gift from God because God was unselfish with you.
Speaker 3: And so God says, in.
Speaker 2: Order to help you become like me, I'm gonna give
Speaker 2: a little reward to this. First, you get real life
Speaker 2: on earth, and you get eternal life in heaven.
Speaker 3: He says.
Speaker 2: You know what you get a meeting and the way
Speaker 2: God has wired it. As we give ourselves away, we
Speaker 2: are most fulfilled. Jesus said only those who learn to
Speaker 2: give their lives away, we'll ever know what it means.
Speaker 3: To really live.
Speaker 2: You see, if you don't get anything else I say,
Speaker 2: or Tom says, today, get this. The greatest lesson in
Speaker 2: life is learning to be unselfish.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: That's the number one lesson in life, learning to be unselfish.
Speaker 2: It's also called love. Love your neighbor as yourself. Once
Speaker 2: you know and love God. God says, now, I want
Speaker 2: you to learn to love other people, and that means
Speaker 2: being unselfish.
Speaker 3: And unfortunately, a lot of people.
Speaker 2: Go through life and never learn the greatest lesson, and
Speaker 2: they waste their life. They waste the whole reason their
Speaker 2: hair on earth to learn how to be unselfish. Now,
Speaker 2: notice God also says in this verse its growth process.
Speaker 3: He says, letting God's.
Speaker 2: Spirit do the growth work in him, you'll harvest the
Speaker 2: crop of real life and eternal life. You see, it's
Speaker 2: not overnight. You don't learn to be unselfish by being zapped.
Speaker 2: In fact, you're not gonna learn it in forty days.
Speaker 2: It's going to take the rest of your life. But
Speaker 2: it is a growth process, and there's only one way
Speaker 2: you can do it, and that is with God's spirit
Speaker 2: in you. God's spiritings you look at the next verse,
Speaker 2: live freely, animated and motivated by God's spirit. Then you
Speaker 2: won't feed the compulsions of selfishness.
Speaker 3: Did you know that all of us are compulsive? Every
Speaker 3: one of us.
Speaker 2: We are compulsively selfish. We think about ourselves first. And
Speaker 2: if you don't think that, you're really not in touch
Speaker 2: with the reality. Because you do. You think about you
Speaker 2: more than anybody else. And he says the only way
Speaker 2: you can break that cycle is God's spirit inside you. Now,
Speaker 2: anybody can be unselfish every once in a while. Anybody
Speaker 2: can do that, okay, just by sheer willpower. Man, Look
Speaker 2: what I did, And how do you know when it's
Speaker 2: motivated by you.
Speaker 3: Rather than God's spirit. Pride creeps in. It's that I felt.
Speaker 2: Noble, It's that look at me, what a great person
Speaker 2: I I did something good for somebody. See, when God's
Speaker 2: Spirit's in you, then you don't do that. Anybody can
Speaker 2: be unselfish every once in a while. But God says,
Speaker 2: I want it to be a lifestyle. I want it
Speaker 2: to be a lifestyle. And there's only one way, God's
Speaker 2: spirit in your life. Doing the growth work inside of
Speaker 2: you motivated. Now here's the second thing that destroys relationships, pride.
Speaker 2: This is the second big thing that kills relationships. Pride
Speaker 2: destroys relationships. In Proverbs thirteen ten, it says this pride
Speaker 2: leads to arguments. Little history here. That was the first
Speaker 2: verse that Kay and I memorized on our honeymoon, and
Speaker 2: we needed it on the honeymoon. Pride leads to arguments. Now,
Speaker 2: pride shows up in a lot of different ways. It
Speaker 2: shows up first in criticism. If you are critical of
Speaker 2: other people, If you tend to be judgmental of other people,
Speaker 2: you tend to look down at other people, you tend
Speaker 2: to be a picky, picky perfectionist.
Speaker 3: You have a pride problem.
Speaker 2: That's the reason you are critical is you have a
Speaker 2: pride problem. If you tend to be competitive and you're
Speaker 2: always comparing, Oh, look at her dress compared to my dress,
Speaker 2: or look at his car compared to my car. Or
Speaker 2: you're always comparing salaries, or you're comparing husbands, or you're
Speaker 2: comparing children, or you're comparing titles or jobs or anything.
Speaker 2: You know what, you have a pride problem. That comparing
Speaker 2: spirit of always looking at everybody else and.
Speaker 3: Comparing and judging. That is a pride problem.
Speaker 2: If you have a stubbornness, if you haven't find it
Speaker 2: difficult to say i'm sorry. If you find it difficult,
Speaker 2: you choke on apologies. You cannot ever admit it when
Speaker 2: you're wrong. You have a pride problem. Now you don't say, well, now,
Speaker 2: if I may have offended you, that's not an apology.
Speaker 2: That's what politicians say. If I may have offended you,
Speaker 2: puts it back on you.
Speaker 3: Said, well, really, it's your fault for being offended. That's
Speaker 3: not an apology.
Speaker 2: An apology is I was wrong, I'm sorry, Please forgive me.
Speaker 2: That's an apology, Not if I may have offended you.
Speaker 2: It is I was wrong, I'm sorry, Please forgive me.
Speaker 2: If you can't do that, you have a pride problem.
Speaker 2: You have a pride problem. If you have shallow relationships
Speaker 2: and you keep everything superficial in your life, and you
Speaker 2: never let anybody get close to you, and you keep
Speaker 2: them at an arms distance, and you may use humor
Speaker 2: to keep it all shallow and not let it get
Speaker 2: too deep, and you keep faking it a lot, and
Speaker 2: you wear a mask, ask you have a pride problem.
Speaker 2: You see when you're too shallow to care about others.
Speaker 2: That is pride. Now, what does pride look like in
Speaker 2: a small group, since we're all in small groups. Well,
Speaker 2: one of the ways it looks is when you always
Speaker 2: have to tell a story that tops the last story.
Speaker 3: Well you did that, yeah, but listen to this one, okay.
Speaker 2: When you are always offering advice and you never ask
Speaker 2: for it in your group, when you never admit when
Speaker 2: you've had.
Speaker 3: A tough week. Everybody else's saying, yeah, I've had a
Speaker 3: tough week.
Speaker 2: And you never admit any problem in your life. The
Speaker 2: problem with pride is it's self deceiving. Everybody else can
Speaker 2: see it, but we can't. When I'm full of pride,
Speaker 2: I can't see it. I can't see them out. Everybody
Speaker 2: else can see it, but I can't. When you have
Speaker 2: a problem with pride, you don't see it in your
Speaker 2: own life.
Speaker 3: It's self deceiving.
Speaker 2: Everybody else can see your being prideful, but you can't
Speaker 2: see it yourself. And so the Bible says this in
Speaker 2: Proverbs sixteen eighteen, pride will destroy person. A proud attitude
Speaker 2: leads to ruin. And I love this verse in the
Speaker 2: message paraphrase first pride. Then the crash. The bigger the ego,
Speaker 2: the harder the fall. You had a hard fall, Well,
Speaker 2: that just shows how big your ego was. Now, pride
Speaker 2: keeps us from apologizing, and that destroys relationships.
Speaker 3: Tom's going to talk about the next thing.
Speaker 4: Pride destroys relationships. Humility. That's the antecdote to pride. Humility.
Speaker 4: Humility builds relationships. Listen to these five things that build relationships.
Speaker 4: Over in First Peter, chapter three, verse eight, the Bible
Speaker 4: says there, live in harmony, be sympathetic, love each other,
Speaker 4: have compassion, and be humble. Those five really are built
Speaker 4: on the fifth one, the ability to be humble. This
Speaker 4: is really a pretty good model for small groups. If
Speaker 4: you take a look at these five things, it's what
Speaker 4: we all want to be doing in our families and
Speaker 4: our groups and our relationships. We want to live in
Speaker 4: harmony and pathetic love each other. We want to have
Speaker 4: compassion and be humble. I want you to notice that
Speaker 4: first one, particularly, live in harmony. That's what God wants
Speaker 4: in relationships. He doesn't want this unison where we're all
Speaker 4: the same. He wants the harmony of us all being different.
Speaker 4: Why be in a relationship, if you weren't different from
Speaker 4: the other people. That's what we draw from. But this
Speaker 4: is important. Harmony and humility go together. You have to
Speaker 4: have them together in a symphony. The beauty is in
Speaker 4: all the different instruments. But if you have one flute
Speaker 4: player who wants to stand on their chair play louder
Speaker 4: than everybody else, it ruins the whole thing. If you
Speaker 4: have one person who's saying notice me, and I can't
Speaker 4: let other people be noticed, it ruins all the joy
Speaker 4: of the harmony of life, the deepness, the richness that
Speaker 4: God wants to give into our lives because of that. Now,
Speaker 4: let me encourage you to do something in your group
Speaker 4: this week. You to do something that will promote humility
Speaker 4: and harmony in your group this week. Pair up with
Speaker 4: a spiritual partner, someone that you can learn from. They
Speaker 4: can learn from you. You can be encouraged by they
Speaker 4: can be encouraged by you. You can be friend, they
Speaker 4: can be friends with you. You can support vice versa as
Speaker 4: it works together. Guys, pair up with another guy. Women
Speaker 4: with another women. If you're just starting to learn the
Speaker 4: Bible or you don't know much about Jesus, pair up
Speaker 4: with somebody who doesn't. Who knows more about the Bible,
Speaker 4: knows more about Jesus. That can encourage you. Now, the
Speaker 4: point about a spiritual partner is this, everybody needs a
Speaker 4: spiritual partner except me. That's how we tend to think, Oh,
Speaker 4: this is a good idea, this is a great idea.
Speaker 4: But about a month ago, one of the guys in
Speaker 4: my small group called me up and said, hey, can
Speaker 4: we get together regularly and maybe read threw a book together,
Speaker 4: talk about the impact that it's making on our lives.
Speaker 4: It took me a month to get back to him.
Speaker 4: And you know why I didn't really want to meet
Speaker 4: because I feel like I'm too busy. Can you relate
Speaker 4: to that this week? Don't be too busy to connect
Speaker 4: with somebody else and say can we be a spiritual partner?
Speaker 4: Your life will be the richer for it. And do
Speaker 4: not be too busy. If somebody connects with you and says, hey,
Speaker 4: could we pair up, don't be too busy to say, well,
Speaker 4: I'll get back to you on that, and then never
Speaker 4: get back to them on that. If you and I
Speaker 4: will make this toy, it can change our lives. How
Speaker 4: are you and I going to grow in humility, because
Speaker 4: that's the tall order. How does that happen in our lives?
Speaker 4: It happens by letting Jesus Christ begin to control our
Speaker 4: thoughts and hearts and attitudes and reactions. He's got to
Speaker 4: be a part of this. The Bible says over in
Speaker 4: Ephesians four twenty three and twenty four. This verse on
Speaker 4: your screen. Let the spirit change your way of thinking
Speaker 4: and make you into a new person. How do I
Speaker 4: become a new person? How do I start to think
Speaker 4: in a different way? Basic law of relationships is this,
Speaker 4: I tend to become like the people I spend time with.
Speaker 4: Spend time with grumpy people, you get more grumpy. Spend
Speaker 4: time with happy people, you get more happy. You want
Speaker 4: to have more humility. Spend time with Jesus Christ because
Speaker 4: he is humble. He wants a relationship with you. He
Speaker 4: wants you and I to spend time with him in
Speaker 4: prayer and reading his word and talking to him. He
Speaker 4: is humble. Look at this next verse in the outline
Speaker 4: Philippians two three and then five and six. Be humble
Speaker 4: and give more honor to others than to yourselves. Your
Speaker 4: attitude should be the same as that that Christ Jesus had.
Speaker 4: Though he was God, he did not demand and cling
Speaker 4: to his rights as God. No one's ever done anything
Speaker 4: more humble than Jesus coming from heaven to earth to
Speaker 4: become a man to live for us, Give his life
Speaker 4: for us, be a resurrected for us, and I spend
Speaker 4: time around him. That enables me to begin to become
Speaker 4: more humble, and that builds relationships. Now on the back
Speaker 4: of your outline, there's a third struggle we all face,
Speaker 4: and that is the struggle of insecurity. Insecurity destroys relationships.
Speaker 4: The Bible talks about this over in Proverbs twenty nine
Speaker 4: twenty five when it says, the fear of human opinion
Speaker 4: disables when I'm so insecure that all I have got
Speaker 4: to think about is your opinion, what you think of me?
Speaker 4: That disables my life. What's the problem with that fear?
Speaker 4: What does that problem cause us to disable in relationships? Well,
Speaker 4: when I'm afraid, it tends to cause us to try
Speaker 4: to control each other, and that destroys relationships.
Speaker 2: I hate you when people say that in a relationship,
Speaker 2: it is often a sign that somebody's trying to control
Speaker 2: somebody else. And what's beneath that control. What Tom talked about,
Speaker 2: fear insecurity causes us to try to control others, and
Speaker 2: insecurity causes us to resist the control of others, and
Speaker 2: that destroys relationships. You know, it's amazing dilemma as human
Speaker 2: beings we have. We long to be close, but we
Speaker 2: also fear being close. We want it, but we don't
Speaker 2: want it. We long to have intimacy with others, but
Speaker 2: we are also scared to death of having intimacy with others.
Speaker 2: Would you write this down? Insecurity prevents intimacy. Insecurity prevents intimacy.
Speaker 2: You can't get close to somebody if there's fear in
Speaker 2: the relationship, which is why living together it doesn't work
Speaker 2: in the long run, because you never know when somebody's
Speaker 2: gonna walk out. There's no lifetime commitment. So I'm gonna
Speaker 2: hold back because what if it doesn't work. It's only
Speaker 2: a situation where I say I'm committed regardless of weather
Speaker 2: we get along or not, We're gonna make this thing work.
Speaker 2: Then the fear vanishes, and then the intimacy, real intimacy rises.
Speaker 2: Now what do we fear in relationships? Well, we fear
Speaker 2: a couple things. First, we fear exposure, We fear that
Speaker 2: somebody is gonna find out what we're really like. And
Speaker 2: we fear that, so we hide ourselves, and we don't
Speaker 2: want people to know what we're really like. And this
Speaker 2: is man's oldest fear, all the way back with Adam
Speaker 2: the first Man in Genesis three, verse ten, he says,
Speaker 2: I was afraid because I was naked, and so I hid.
Speaker 2: I was afraid because I was naked.
Speaker 3: So I hit.
Speaker 2: When we're afraid, we hide ourselves, we cover up, we
Speaker 2: wear masks, we pretend to be people that were not.
Speaker 2: Now it's interesting today we don't have this problem anymore
Speaker 2: with a lot of people. Many people are not afraid
Speaker 2: at all of their physical nakedness. They walk around half naked, Okay,
Speaker 2: they walk around showing off barty parts I don't want
Speaker 2: to see, and so they're not ashamed of their physical nakedness,
Speaker 2: but they're scared the death of their emotional nakedness. That's
Speaker 2: what really scared them. I know a lot of people
Speaker 2: who flomp their bodies, who are extremely insecure, extremely insecure,
Speaker 2: and they're afraid of emotional nakedness. What if somebody understands
Speaker 2: finds out my fears, finds out my faults, finds out
Speaker 2: my dark side, find out the parts that I don't
Speaker 2: want anybody to know. And you see, fear makes us dishonest,
Speaker 2: and it causes us to build up walls, and the
Speaker 2: result nobody ever gets to know you, and you don't
Speaker 2: understand one of the things that God puts you on
Speaker 2: earth to.
Speaker 3: Do, and that is to be fully known.
Speaker 2: Everybody deserves to be fully known and to fully know
Speaker 2: somebody else, whether you ever get married or not. This
Speaker 2: is haws to do with soul to soul intimacy, and
Speaker 2: God designed the family, the church to do this, where
Speaker 2: we get to know each other on a gut level basis.
Speaker 3: And we fear exposure.
Speaker 2: But there's a fear even deeper than that, and it
Speaker 2: is the fear of rejection. And this may be the
Speaker 2: greatest fear in human beings, the fear of being rejected.
Speaker 3: We've all been rejected.
Speaker 2: At some point and we know how much that hurts,
Speaker 2: and so we feared and we close ourselves off as
Speaker 2: I'll never let anybody hurt me.
Speaker 3: Again, and we build up walls.
Speaker 2: Now, maybe you have been hurt by rejection by somebody,
Speaker 2: a boyfriend, an ex, or somebody a parent who said
Speaker 2: you're never gonna mount anything, or you're not good enough.
Speaker 2: And you felt the sting of rejection by a teacher
Speaker 2: or a coach or somebody.
Speaker 3: Maybe you even.
Speaker 2: Felt it by a so called quote Christian, somebody who
Speaker 2: claimed to be a believer, or maybe you felt it
Speaker 2: in a church, or maybe you felt then in a
Speaker 2: small group. And if so, I would say to you,
Speaker 2: I am sorry. I mean I am really sorry, and.
Speaker 3: God grieved at your rejection.
Speaker 2: In fact, if anybody understands rejection, it's Jesus Christ. Remember
Speaker 2: they nailed him to a cross. That is the ultimate rejection,
Speaker 2: so he understands how you felt. But as your pastor,
Speaker 2: I would beg you, please, please.
Speaker 3: Don't let that pardon your heart.
Speaker 2: Don't build up a wall, a crust, put yourself in
Speaker 2: an eggshell. That's a self imposed prison you don't want
Speaker 2: to be in. And when you won't let anybody get
Speaker 2: close to you, because I'll never let anybody hurt me again.
Speaker 2: You're making a terrible mistake. You're not living, You're just existing.
Speaker 2: And it is my job as your pastor, to help
Speaker 2: you and to encourage you and to say take the risk,
Speaker 2: have the courage to risk love again, Have the courage
Speaker 2: because if you will do and you will open up
Speaker 2: your life, and you will lower the berries, and you
Speaker 2: will let somebody have the potential to hurt you, you.
Speaker 3: Will come alive again in a way you have never
Speaker 3: ever experienced.
Speaker 2: Ask God for the courage to take that risk again,
Speaker 2: to be open, to be vulnerable. Now, let me talk
Speaker 2: to the guys for a minute, because men, we're the
Speaker 2: worst about this.
Speaker 3: As guys.
Speaker 2: We wear are We hold our cards close to us
Speaker 2: and we don't let our feelings be known. We don't
Speaker 2: let people know what we're really thinking or feeling. And
Speaker 2: I want to dare you to do a very courageous
Speaker 2: thing to be openly honest about what you're feeling. Now,
Speaker 2: you don't have to do it with everybody, but you
Speaker 2: need to do it with one person. You get in
Speaker 2: a group and share it with a group, or if
Speaker 2: that's too hard, get one Person's Tom talked about. I
Speaker 2: firmly believe in having a spiritual partner in life, one
Speaker 2: person that you can level with, you can encourage, you
Speaker 2: can grow, you can support, you can share, and somebody
Speaker 2: that you tell what you're really like to and they
Speaker 2: tell back.
Speaker 3: And that's a spiritual partner.
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 know,
Speaker 2: as well as I do that the Word of God
Speaker 2: changes lives. It's a live it's active, and it breathes
Speaker 2: new life and new love into all of our lives.
Speaker 2: So wherever you listen to this, whether you listen on
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Speaker 2: whether you listen to a podcast, you're a part of
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Speaker 2: going to be in heaven because you cared.
Speaker 1: Hey, if you'd like to support Pastor Rick's Daily Hope,
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