Speaker 1: Hello, everybody, This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you're here today. We're continuing our series
Speaker 1: from Psalm twenty three called living in the Goodness of God.
Speaker 1: It's all about how God's goodness meets you right where
Speaker 1: you are and brings hope even in difficult seasons. Right now,
Speaker 1: let's take a look at part two of a message
Speaker 1: called how God's Goodness can Restore You.
Speaker 2: Now, the third way we try to deal with guilt
Speaker 2: that doesn't work is we rationalize it. I've said before,
Speaker 2: to rationalize means to tell yourself rational lies that you know.
Speaker 2: You tell you're trying to convince yourself in your head
Speaker 2: what you heart, your heart knows is wrong. That's to rationalize.
Speaker 2: We live in a society where everybody rationalizes everything, and
Speaker 2: that if I shout enough, are I affirm in enough,
Speaker 2: or a marsh for it enough, then I'll think it's okay.
Speaker 2: But inside your heart's going it's not okay. Rationalizing doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Trying to convince your heart with your mind doesn't work.
Speaker 2: Your heart's gonna win out every time because there's an
Speaker 2: dbuilt in conscience in our lives that God put there,
Speaker 2: and so we say, you know, I'm gonna rationalize it away,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't make it right, and your heart still knows,
Speaker 2: and you're going around and saying, why didn't everybody accept me?
Speaker 2: Why didn't everybody believe in me? Why don't that's a rationalization.
Speaker 2: You need to listen to your conscience. Another way we
Speaker 2: try to deal with guilt is compromise. And that's the
Speaker 2: whole idea of well, I'm feeling guilty and here's the standard.
Speaker 2: So what I think I'll do is I'll just lower
Speaker 2: my standard and then I won't feel guilty anymore, and
Speaker 2: I'll say, I don't believe that's a sin anymore. How's
Speaker 2: that working for you? Again, it's trying to convince your
Speaker 2: heart what your conscience knows is wrong. Compromising. You know,
Speaker 2: maybe if I just do it enough, then it won't
Speaker 2: be a sin anymore. Right, Get back to me on
Speaker 2: that one. Here's another one that we try to do
Speaker 2: when we feel guilty. We blame other people because if
Speaker 2: we can put the blame on them, it gets the
Speaker 2: focus off us. Now, couples do this all the time. Boyfriend, girlfriend,
Speaker 2: husband's wife, parents' kids, And it goes like this, there's
Speaker 2: a scale in your mind and on one side is
Speaker 2: blame and on the other side is guilt. And in
Speaker 2: this the only way you can feel good about yourself
Speaker 2: is if it's kind of balanced. So when you do
Speaker 2: something wrong like this, you have to have somebody else
Speaker 2: to blame because you did that. Yeah but you did that,
Speaker 2: you did that. Yeah but you did that. But you
Speaker 2: did that. Yeah but you remember that really big thing
Speaker 2: you did. There are people who one of a spouse
Speaker 2: had really gone over the edge in the wrong way,
Speaker 2: but they've come back and they said, I'm sorry, I apologize,
Speaker 2: I want to rebuild trust, I want to make this
Speaker 2: marriage work, but this person won't let them off the
Speaker 2: hook the other one. And no matter how many good
Speaker 2: things this person does, yeah but you did that. And
Speaker 2: if you're doing that with a spouse, you're killing your
Speaker 2: marriage because you become unpleasable. You're acting like your God,
Speaker 2: You're not anybody could hold you accountable for stuff you've
Speaker 2: done too. And so blaming doesn't work. We say blame
Speaker 2: is spelled be lame, and it just makes you lame
Speaker 2: when you do that. Every time you blame, you are
Speaker 2: being lame. See you blame others, and you got to
Speaker 2: scale in your mind, and which is, by the way,
Speaker 2: why people don't want to forgive, because if I can,
Speaker 2: if I don't forgive you, then I can keep blaming
Speaker 2: you for that. You see, if I'm trying to balance
Speaker 2: between guilt and blame in my life and all of
Speaker 2: this sudden you ask for forgiveness, and that sets me
Speaker 2: off balance, and I say, sure, I forgive you. Now
Speaker 2: not have anything to blame anymore on this side. So
Speaker 2: what happens The scale tilts stored me and I feel bad.
Speaker 2: So I don't want to forgive you, because then it's
Speaker 2: all on me. There's nothing to even the scales. And
Speaker 2: you keep yourself in tension all the time. Your soul
Speaker 2: needs to be restored. It's being chipped away at, it's
Speaker 2: being eaten at. It's being like a little bacteria, like
Speaker 2: a virus, is just working on your heart, making it
Speaker 2: smaller and smaller and smaller. One other way that doesn't work.
Speaker 2: We've talked about rationalizing you, compromising, minimizing blaming. One is well,
Speaker 2: I'll just beat myself up and for the rest of
Speaker 2: your life, you're trying to atone for your own sins.
Speaker 2: You're trying to make up for it. And a lot
Speaker 2: of people actually sabotage their own success and don't realize
Speaker 2: they're doing it because they feel about guilty about something
Speaker 2: in the past and they feel unworthy. And because they
Speaker 2: feel unworthy, go, well, you know this is too good.
Speaker 2: I shouldn't be getting this much blessing. I know what
Speaker 2: I've done, I know all the things I'm not worthy
Speaker 2: of this. And as a result, you start setting yourself
Speaker 2: up for failure. You beat yourself up because internally you go, well,
Speaker 2: I've done something wrong. Somebody's got to pay for it.
Speaker 2: And subconsciously we try to pay for our mistakes and
Speaker 2: our sins by getting sick or failing, and it can
Speaker 2: cause all kinds of stuff. Guilt can make you depressed,
Speaker 2: it can make you despair it, it can set you
Speaker 2: up for failure. I don't deserve to succeed. None of
Speaker 2: those things work. There's only one thing that works to
Speaker 2: get rid of unconfessed guilt. Confess it, Just admit it.
Speaker 2: The word confession in the Bible in Greek is the
Speaker 2: word homo. Look GeOH, homo. We know what that means.
Speaker 2: It means Legeo is the word to speak confession, simply
Speaker 2: means to agree with God. You're right, God, that was wrong.
Speaker 2: I don't deny it. I don't minimize it. I don't
Speaker 2: rationalize it. I don't compromise it. I don't blame other people.
Speaker 2: I don't belittle myself. I don't beat myself up. I
Speaker 2: just admit it. We'll come back to that number three.
Speaker 2: The third thing that destroys your soul is not unaddressed
Speaker 2: grudges or unconfessed guilt. It's unprocessed grief. Unprocessed grief. Now,
Speaker 2: you're gonna have grief in life because you're gonna have losses.
Speaker 2: There is no growth in life without change. There is
Speaker 2: no change in life without loss, because you give up
Speaker 2: some old to get some new. There's no loss without pain,
Speaker 2: and there's no pain without grief. So you got to
Speaker 2: learn how to grieve good. Now, grief is not a
Speaker 2: bad thing. Guilt's a bad thing, grudges are a bad thing.
Speaker 2: Grief is actually a good thing. It's the way we
Speaker 2: get through the transitions of life. What is a bad
Speaker 2: thing is unprocessed grief. You haven't learned how to deal
Speaker 2: with it, how to go through the stages of grief
Speaker 2: and psal. I'm thirty one, Verse nine, David says, Lord,
Speaker 2: have mercy because I'm in misery. He's grieving, he's grieving.
Speaker 2: I'm in misery. My eyes are weak from so much crying,
Speaker 2: and my whole body, whole being is tired from grief. Now,
Speaker 2: if grudges don't get your guilt will, and if guilt
Speaker 2: doesn't get your grief will, and all of us can
Speaker 2: have these things that kind of eat away at our soul,
Speaker 2: the way we think, the way we feel, and the
Speaker 2: decisions we make. Now, the question is, how does Jesus
Speaker 2: our good shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. I have
Speaker 2: everything I need. How in the world does he help
Speaker 2: me with my grudges and my guilt and my grief.
Speaker 2: Three ways he does it. Here's how he does it. First,
Speaker 2: when we are hurt by others, Jesus turns my hurts
Speaker 2: into holiness. I need to explain this. Jesus turns my
Speaker 2: hurts into holiness. What I'm saying is that God brings
Speaker 2: good out of bad, He brings good out of evil.
Speaker 2: He has a way of turning things around. The stuff
Speaker 2: that happens to you, it's not all good. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of bad stuff that happens to you, But God says,
Speaker 2: I can turn it around, I can transform it. I
Speaker 2: can bring good out of evil. Let's look at some verses.
Speaker 2: It is the goodness of God that allows us now.
Speaker 2: One of the most famous verses in the Bible is
Speaker 2: Romans eight, verse twenty eight. We keep coming back to
Speaker 2: this verse. Why because you keep getting hurt. You have guilt,
Speaker 2: you have grief, and you have grudges, and so you
Speaker 2: need to understand that. God says, yes, I know that happened,
Speaker 2: but I can bring good even out of that. Roman's
Speaker 2: eight twenty eight one of the greatest promises in the Bible.
Speaker 2: We know that in all things circle the word in
Speaker 2: that in all things. It doesn't say all things, it
Speaker 2: says in all things, God works for the good of
Speaker 2: those who love him. Let me stop right there. This
Speaker 2: is not a promise for everybody. It's a promise for
Speaker 2: those who love Him and have been called according to
Speaker 2: His purpose. We know that not everything that happens to
Speaker 2: you is good. There's a lot of bad things that
Speaker 2: are happening to you. Decisions that you make that are bad,
Speaker 2: and decisions that other people make that are bad for you.
Speaker 2: There's diseases, there's all kinds of accidents and things like that.
Speaker 2: Nobody's saying God is a Pollyanna optimist. You say, you know,
Speaker 2: the sun will come out tomorrow. It doesn't always come
Speaker 2: out tomorrow. Reality is a son does not always come
Speaker 2: out tomorrow. And that's the difference between optimism and hope.
Speaker 2: Hope is based on a certainty, but optimism is based on,
Speaker 2: you know, just wishful thinking, Pollyanna, it'll come out all right.
Speaker 2: We know that in all things God works for the good.
Speaker 2: It's not all good, but God says, you know what,
Speaker 2: I can take even that? Can God take the bad
Speaker 2: things people do to do me, to do against me
Speaker 2: and use it for good? Yes? Can God even take
Speaker 2: my own sins and bring good out of them, my
Speaker 2: own mistakes and bring good out of them? Yes? Can
Speaker 2: God take my own weaknesses and my damaged will, and
Speaker 2: my damaged mind, and my damaged heart, my emotions and
Speaker 2: my way? I think? Can God work even in that
Speaker 2: for good? Yes? No, not everybody else could do that.
Speaker 2: Anybody can bring good out of good. But God specializes
Speaker 2: in bringing good out of the bad in your life,
Speaker 2: and he turns my hurts into ho you know, sitting
Speaker 2: down this morning, and I just start thinking of all
Speaker 2: the different ways God uses bad things in your life
Speaker 2: for good in your life, and I actually made a list.
Speaker 2: He turns my hurts into holiness. He turns my wounds,
Speaker 2: the things that hurt me into wisdom. You're a lot
Speaker 2: smarter after you've gone through that. He turns my pain
Speaker 2: into gain. He uses correction to bring me to perfection.
Speaker 2: He uses offenses to remove my pretenses. You're a lot
Speaker 2: more humble if you get criticized. He uses my bruises
Speaker 2: for good. They're not good, those bruises aren't good. But
Speaker 2: he can use my bruise. He uses my bruises for good.
Speaker 2: And when others want to bash me, God uses it
Speaker 2: to bless me. That's the kind of God God is.
Speaker 2: He's a good God. The Lord is my shepherd. He
Speaker 2: knows how to bring good even out of bad. Now
Speaker 2: Romans eight twenty eight, all things work together for good
Speaker 2: is a wonderful promise, but it makes no sense at
Speaker 2: all unless you read Romans eight twenty nine, the verse
Speaker 2: right underneath it, which explains why God uses everything for
Speaker 2: his purpose and what is his purpose. His purpose is
Speaker 2: to build your character. He uses the conflicts and the
Speaker 2: crises to turn you in your character, and he wants
Speaker 2: to make you like Jesus. Look at verse twenty nine.
Speaker 2: It's up here on the screen. Romans eight twenty nine
Speaker 2: says this God knew his purpose from the very beginning,
Speaker 2: so it's not a big surprise to God. Before you
Speaker 2: even created, he knew what he wanted to do with
Speaker 2: your life. He planned in advance that all of us
Speaker 2: in God's family here's the key, would become like Jesus,
Speaker 2: his own son. God wants a family for eternity and God,
Speaker 2: God wants you to be his child, and he sent
Speaker 2: Jesus to show what a child of God is like.
Speaker 2: You want to know what God wants you to become like,
Speaker 2: look at the character of Christ. Now listen, God is
Speaker 2: far more interested in your character than he is in
Speaker 2: your comfort. You know, people act like, well, I don't
Speaker 2: understand it. Things aren't going good for me, and I'm
Speaker 2: trusting God. Did God ever promise that everything will go
Speaker 2: the way you wanted to go? No, because if it did,
Speaker 2: you'd be the selfish little snot if you got everything
Speaker 2: you wanted in life. This life is preparation for the
Speaker 2: next In heaven. There's no sorrow, there's no suffering, there's
Speaker 2: no sickness, there's no sadness. You know, there are no
Speaker 2: people throwing, you know, arrows and barbs at you. This
Speaker 2: is the preschool, This is the character development stage. God
Speaker 2: wants you to grow up before you go to heaven,
Speaker 2: and so when you go through tough times, you should
Speaker 2: never ask why is this happening? I'll tell you why
Speaker 2: Romans eight twenty nine. To make you like Jesus. And
Speaker 2: the question you should ask anytime you go through any
Speaker 2: difficult time is not why is this happening? Or why
Speaker 2: is this happening to me? Or why is this happening? Now?
Speaker 2: The question you should be asking is what what do
Speaker 2: you want to teach me? God? What character development do
Speaker 2: you want me to grow like? God is far more
Speaker 2: interested in your character, what you're becoming than he is
Speaker 2: in your comfort. Yes, God wants you to be comfortable,
Speaker 2: but he's not going to give you comfort at the
Speaker 2: expense of character. You're going to be comfortable for trillions
Speaker 2: of years in heaven. Right now. He wants you to
Speaker 2: become like Christ. So what is Jesus like? Romans twenty
Speaker 2: eight says he wants to make me like Christ using
Speaker 2: all things Verses twenty nine. Well, the perfect picture of
Speaker 2: Jesus is called the fruit of the Spirit. It's Galatians five,
Speaker 2: twenty three and twenty four. In Galatians it says nine qualities.
Speaker 2: The fruit of the Spirit is love. God wants you
Speaker 2: to be loving joy. God wants you to learn real joy. Peace.
Speaker 2: God wants you to learn real peace, patience. God wants
Speaker 2: you to learn patience, goodness and gentleness, and faithfulness and
Speaker 2: self control. There are nine qualities there, and when you
Speaker 2: look at those nine qualities, you know what they are.
Speaker 2: Perfect picture of Jesus. Jesus is total love, total joy,
Speaker 2: total peace, total patience. She can wake up every morning
Speaker 2: and say, well, Lord, I don't know which one of
Speaker 2: these are going to teach me today. Patience? How does
Speaker 2: God teach you patience? Waiting? When you have you ever
Speaker 2: had to sit in God's waiting room? Have you ever
Speaker 2: been in a hurry and God wasn't the number one
Speaker 2: way God teaches you patience department of motor vehicles. So
Speaker 2: God often teaches you those qualities in the exact opposite situation.
Speaker 2: You learn love being around unlovely people. You learn joy
Speaker 2: in the middle of grief. You learn peace in the
Speaker 2: middle of chaos. But if God's going to teach you
Speaker 2: real peace, He'll put you in the middle chaos. Some
Speaker 2: of you are in it right now. Patience, gentleness, How
Speaker 2: does God teach you Generals with people who annoy you
Speaker 2: to death. Don't look at them, but you know who
Speaker 2: they are teaching you how to be gentle? Self control.
Speaker 2: There are lots of ways he teaches you self control.
Speaker 2: And so God says, I want to turn your hurts
Speaker 2: into holiness. And what's the purpose? Put Romans eight twenty
Speaker 2: nine back on the screen. God knew his purpose from
Speaker 2: the very beginning, and he planned in advance that all
Speaker 2: of God's family would become like Jesus. That's the number
Speaker 2: one goal. God asked for your life, not comfort, but character.
Speaker 2: Be like Jesus's son. Now, God's son is the firstborn
Speaker 2: of restored humanity. There's that word, restoration, restored. He restores
Speaker 2: my soul. We're all broken. We all have broken relationships,
Speaker 2: broken minds, broken emotions, broken wills. We are all broken.
Speaker 2: And God says, I want to restore humanity to the
Speaker 2: original position I created it to be in the garden
Speaker 2: of Eden. So I'm sending Jesus to come and die
Speaker 2: for your sins, and it says then on the screen,
Speaker 2: so we see the intended shape of our lives in him.
Speaker 2: Look at Jesus and you'll know what God wants to
Speaker 2: do in your life. We see the intended shape of
Speaker 2: our lives in him, and he will have many brothers
Speaker 2: and sisters in God's eternal family, like father, like son,
Speaker 2: like father like daughter. He wants you to become not
Speaker 2: a God but godly. Now Genesis fifty verse twenty explains
Speaker 2: then why God allows people to hurt you, knowing that
Speaker 2: what God's going on, And for fifty verse twenty, he says,
Speaker 2: you intended it to harm me, but God intended it
Speaker 2: for good, to accomplish what is now being done, the
Speaker 2: saving of many lives. This is a quote from a
Speaker 2: guy named Joseph. Joseph had every reason to have unaddressed
Speaker 2: grudges because his own family sold him into slavery. He
Speaker 2: was one of the youngest kids in the family, and
Speaker 2: his older brothers didn't like him. They thought he was pompous.
Speaker 2: They didn't like him at all, so they took him
Speaker 2: and threw him in a pit and told the father
Speaker 2: that a bear had eaten him, and then he's living
Speaker 2: in this pit by himself, and some slave traders come
Speaker 2: by on their way to Egypt, and the brothers pull
Speaker 2: them out, sell them into slavery. He's taken down to
Speaker 2: Egypt and he's hired out as a slave to a
Speaker 2: guy named Potiphar. And Potiphar's wife is a seductive woman,
Speaker 2: and she gets the hots for Joseph, and she tried
Speaker 2: to seduce him, and he says, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: do that. I have integrity. I serve the God of
Speaker 2: you know of the ages. I serve the Almighty God.
Speaker 2: And so she's spurned. She's scorned. What does she do?
Speaker 2: She screams and claims that he's taken advantage of her
Speaker 2: and false accused. He's thrown into prison. The first forty
Speaker 2: years of his entire life, nothing goes right. Some of
Speaker 2: you might identify with that. He's thrown into a pit,
Speaker 2: he's rejected by his family, he's sold into slavery, he's
Speaker 2: taken to a foreign country. He's falsely accused, he's put
Speaker 2: in prison. God had him exactly where he wanted him
Speaker 2: to be, and the second half of his life looked
Speaker 2: a whole lot brighter because out of that, through a
Speaker 2: series of circumstances, he's raised up to be the second
Speaker 2: most powerful man under Pharaoh in Egypt, which was the
Speaker 2: most powerful empire in the world at that time. And
Speaker 2: he not only saves Egypt from a famine, but he
Speaker 2: saves all of the Middle East from a famine. And
Speaker 2: when he finally comes face to face with his brothers
Speaker 2: many years later and they come to buy grain from
Speaker 2: Europe from Egypt, he looks at him and says, you
Speaker 2: meant it for bad. Let's don't beat around the bush.
Speaker 2: You didn't like me. You meant it for bad. But
Speaker 2: God meant it for good. And God's bigger than you,
Speaker 2: and God can bring good things out of even bad things.
Speaker 2: When you learn that, you will begin to rebuild your soul,
Speaker 2: the broken thoughts, the broken emotions, and the broken choosing
Speaker 2: of decision making in your will. So God says, I
Speaker 2: will turn your hurts into holiness if you will trust me.
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