Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope,
Speaker 1: the Bible Teaching Ministry of Rick Warren. And today we're
Speaker 1: continuing our series called the Habits of Happiness. In this series,
Speaker 1: Rick dives into the Book of Philippians and helps you
Speaker 1: discover God's path to true and lasting happiness. All right,
Speaker 1: let's get to it. Here's part one of a message
Speaker 1: called five daily Habits for Happiness.
Speaker 2: If you pull out your message notes and if you'll
Speaker 2: open your Bible to Philippians chapter three, and we are
Speaker 2: continuing in the series that I started a few weeks
Speaker 2: ago on the Habits of Happiness. As we go through
Speaker 2: the Book of Philippians and chapter three, Paul gives us
Speaker 2: another five habits of happiness. Now, all five of these
Speaker 2: you can do on a daily basis. All five of
Speaker 2: these habits you can do during a oh say, a
Speaker 2: fifteen minute quiet time you spend alone with God. And
Speaker 2: if you will build these five habits into your life,
Speaker 2: the happiness in your life will exponentially grow and the
Speaker 2: unhappiness in your life will decline. Philippians Chapter three. Let's
Speaker 2: get right into it. The first habit that Paul models
Speaker 2: here in the first few verses is this every day
Speaker 2: relax in God's grace. That's the first thing you need
Speaker 2: to do if you want to be a happy person.
Speaker 2: Every day relax in God's grace. Don't try to earn
Speaker 2: God's approval, don't try to earn his love. Don't try
Speaker 2: to earn his recognition.
Speaker 3: You don't earn it.
Speaker 2: God is love and God loves you unconditionally. Now let
Speaker 2: me explain the diff between religion and a relationship. Religion
Speaker 2: is what you do for God. Relationship is what God
Speaker 2: has done for you. Jesus did not come to give
Speaker 2: you religion. God is un interested in religion. God is
Speaker 2: interested in you having a relationship. And the Bible is
Speaker 2: all about what God has done for you and what
Speaker 2: Jesus did for you on the cross, not about what
Speaker 2: you do for God. And so Jesus says, I don't
Speaker 2: want your religion.
Speaker 3: I want a relationship.
Speaker 2: You will lose your happiness every time you forget this,
Speaker 2: every time you think I've got to earn God's smile,
Speaker 2: I've got to earn God's love. I've got to do
Speaker 2: something really cool to make God love me.
Speaker 3: No, you don't.
Speaker 2: Philippians, Chapter three, verse three. We Christians glory and what
Speaker 2: Jesus has done circle that has done past tense on
Speaker 2: the cross, Jesus that it is finished. I've done it all,
Speaker 2: what Jesus Christ has done for us, and we realize
Speaker 2: that we are helpless to save ourselves. We're not trying
Speaker 2: to earn our way to heaven. We're not trying to
Speaker 2: work our way to heaven. We're not trying to prove
Speaker 2: we're good enough to get to heaven, because none of
Speaker 2: us are good enough to get to heaven. It's only
Speaker 2: God's grace. You need to relax in God's grace. I
Speaker 2: love the message. Paraphrase of this verse says, we couldn't
Speaker 2: care carry this off by your own effort, and we
Speaker 2: know it.
Speaker 3: I like that now.
Speaker 2: One of the things that will rob you of your
Speaker 2: happiness is what I call the first trap. And I'm
Speaker 2: going to give you five traps out of this passage today.
Speaker 2: And the first trap that'll take away your happiness write
Speaker 2: this down is legalism. Legalism is the attitude that I
Speaker 2: have to prove my love to God. Legalism is trusting
Speaker 2: in what I do for God instead of what Jesus
Speaker 2: did for me, trusting that I have to do rules
Speaker 2: and regulations and rituals and restrictions and all these things
Speaker 2: in order to prove myself worthy. That's called legalism. In
Speaker 2: other words, if I just keep the ten commandments, then
Speaker 2: God will let me into heaven. Well number one, you
Speaker 2: can't even name them, much less keep them. Okay, So
Speaker 2: you're not keeping the ten Commandments. I'm telling you right now.
Speaker 3: You're not. You're not. You've broken them. He said, what
Speaker 3: about the adult you?
Speaker 2: The Bible says, if you've ever lost it in your heart,
Speaker 2: then that's why adultry. So guess what. You're guilty of
Speaker 2: all of them. All The Bible says that if you
Speaker 2: if you hate somebody in your heart, it's like murders.
Speaker 2: So you're guilty of all of them. And that's why
Speaker 2: you need grace. So relax, relax in God's grace now.
Speaker 2: Paul says in this passage and verses three to six,
Speaker 2: he says, before I became a Christian, he says, I
Speaker 2: was a legalist. In fact, he says, I was a
Speaker 2: professional legalist. I was trying to earn heaven through rituals,
Speaker 2: through my race, through religion, through rules, and through reputation.
Speaker 2: And he goes it wasn't working. He said, if anybody
Speaker 2: was a legalist, I was.
Speaker 3: In fact.
Speaker 2: In verse six, he says this in legalistic righteousness, I
Speaker 2: was faultless. In other words, for a guy who was
Speaker 2: a rule keeper, he said, I did it. I kept
Speaker 2: all the rules. I was a good man. By the way,
Speaker 2: How do you know when you are a legalist? Here's
Speaker 2: how the telltale sign of this. You are judgmental other people.
Speaker 2: You are harsh on other people. Anytime you see somebody
Speaker 2: who's judgmental of others, critical of others. The reason why
Speaker 2: is I don't feel good about me because I know
Speaker 2: I'm not measuring up, so I certainly don't want you
Speaker 2: feeling good about you. So subconsciously I'm critical of everybody
Speaker 2: else because I don't think I am accepted and loved.
Speaker 2: How do you know when you're living by grace? You're
Speaker 2: gracious to others. When somebody is living by grace, they go, Hey,
Speaker 2: God's forgiven me, I'm gonna forgive you. God's cut me
Speaker 2: some slack. I'm gonna cut you some slack. I'm getting
Speaker 2: by simply on the grace of God. So I'm gonna
Speaker 2: give you grace. The more legalistic you are, the more
Speaker 2: critical and the more judgmental you are, and the more
Speaker 2: you live by God's grace, the more gracious you are
Speaker 2: to other people. Legalism is a it'll suck your life
Speaker 2: dry of happiness. It sucks churches dry of happiness. You
Speaker 2: ever go to lead regalistic church, that church is not happy.
Speaker 2: There's no joy in at legalistic church. Everybody's just. They're
Speaker 2: out of duty, out of guilt, out of shame, and
Speaker 2: things like that. Verse nine, Paul says this, I no
Speaker 2: longer count on my own goodness, and I no longer
Speaker 2: count on my own ability to obey God's laws. Instead,
Speaker 2: I trust Christ to save me. I relax in God's grace,
Speaker 2: for God's way of making us right with himself is
Speaker 2: through faith. In other words, the way you earn the
Speaker 2: smile of God is you don't earn it. It's not
Speaker 2: your performance, it's his pardon. It's what He's already done.
Speaker 2: So you get up in the morning and say, Lord,
Speaker 2: I just want to remind myself I'm completely forgiven. Who
Speaker 2: is that a way to start the day. You think
Speaker 2: you'll be happier if you start the day gone. Everything
Speaker 2: I've ever done wrong is completely forgiven.
Speaker 3: Is that a good thing? To start the day with.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's a habit of happiness. I relax in God's grace.
Speaker 2: You know, one of my other mentors was the founder
Speaker 2: of modern management, Peter Drucker. And I asked Peter, and
Speaker 2: I said, Peter, what was it that caused you to
Speaker 2: finally step across the line and invite Jesus Christ into
Speaker 2: your heart?
Speaker 3: And he told me this. He was in his nineties
Speaker 3: by this time. He said, Rick.
Speaker 2: The day that I finally understood the true meaning of grace,
Speaker 2: I realized.
Speaker 3: I'm never getting a better deal.
Speaker 2: And that's true, And why would anybody reject the grace
Speaker 2: of God. In the Bible, the word joy is the
Speaker 2: Greek word kara, and in the Bible the word grace
Speaker 2: is the word chorus. They come from the same word
Speaker 2: kara and chorus. We get the word charisma from that
Speaker 2: word or charismatic. Joy and grace go together. The more
Speaker 2: grace you live by, the more joy.
Speaker 3: You're going to have in your life.
Speaker 2: That's the first habit, relax in God's grace. Now, in
Speaker 2: the next verse, verse seven, we get the second daily
Speaker 2: habit of happiness, and it's this, Remember what matters most
Speaker 2: every day? I need to remember what matters most. When
Speaker 2: I get up in the morning, I need to remind
Speaker 2: myself what counts and what doesn't count. I should not
Speaker 2: be distracted by what's inconsequential in life, what's petty, what's trivial,
Speaker 2: what really doesn't matter, what's unimportant? Now, why is this
Speaker 2: an important habit? Have you realized? Have you noticed how
Speaker 2: easy it is to lose your joy over some small thing.
Speaker 2: It's usually the small irritations that cause you to lose
Speaker 2: your happiness. Somebody cuts you off in the middle of
Speaker 2: the road, you're trying to make a turn and they
Speaker 2: won't let you do it.
Speaker 3: You lose your happiness.
Speaker 2: Or you know you're having a bad hair day, or
Speaker 2: the clothes you put on don't fit anymore. That'll cause
Speaker 2: you to lose your happiness real quick.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 2: And it's the little things. And yet do those things
Speaker 2: really matter in life? No, they do not. And so
Speaker 2: if you want to be a happy person, Paul says
Speaker 2: in Philippians three, you need to remember what matters most,
Speaker 2: not worry about all the stuff you used to think
Speaker 2: was so important before you knew Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: Verse seven.
Speaker 2: He says, this, all those things that I once thought
Speaker 2: were so important to me, I now consider worth nothing
Speaker 2: because of Christ. All those things that I thought were
Speaker 2: so important to me, I now consider worth nothing now
Speaker 2: that I know Christ. Okay, what was the most important
Speaker 2: thing to you before you met Jesus? Christ so always said,
Speaker 2: could work? Yeah, some would say career, some would say
Speaker 2: making money.
Speaker 3: Maybe it was getting a date.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was being popular, Maybe it was having security.
Speaker 3: It could be.
Speaker 2: Being famous, or you know whatever, making a lot, a
Speaker 2: whole lot of money. Paul says, you know what, all
Speaker 2: those things, They're just not that important to me anymore.
Speaker 2: I'm not running the rat race because even if you
Speaker 2: win the rat race, you're still a rat And I
Speaker 2: don't need to worry about keeping up with the Joneses
Speaker 2: because they just refinanced for bankruptcy. So, you know, he says,
Speaker 2: all those things I used to think were so important,
Speaker 2: being cool, looking cool, you know, having the goods, looking good,
Speaker 2: feeling good. He goes, that's just not that important anymore,
Speaker 2: because it's not going to matter in the long scheme
Speaker 2: of thing. He says, the stuff doesn't matter anymore. How
Speaker 2: do you know if you've really been saved? How do
Speaker 2: you know if you've been saved by Jesus Christ. I'll
Speaker 2: tell you how you know your values change. If your
Speaker 2: values haven't changed, you haven't been saved. Because you can't
Speaker 2: have somebody as big as God come into your life
Speaker 2: and it not changed you.
Speaker 3: It changes your values. All those things I used.
Speaker 2: To think were cool, I don't care about them anymore.
Speaker 2: I gave my life to Christ as a young man.
Speaker 2: And I actually remember one time, I'm a young guy
Speaker 2: coming up to me and he was a friend of mine,
Speaker 2: and he was he was really into the drug scene.
Speaker 2: Every weekend he'd go party hardy, He'd he'd get drunk,
Speaker 2: he'd take a lot of drugs. He'd sleep with a
Speaker 2: different girl every weekend. He was living a pretty pretty
Speaker 2: wild life. And he came to me and he said,
Speaker 2: you know, Rick, the problem with you is as a Christian,
Speaker 2: you're restricted.
Speaker 3: He said, you don't get to have any fun.
Speaker 2: You got all these these don'ts in your life. He said,
Speaker 2: you're you're restricted. And I looked at him and I said,
Speaker 2: to this friend of mine, I said, you know what.
Speaker 2: I take all the drugs I want to take, I
Speaker 2: get drunk. All I want to get drunk. I party
Speaker 2: wild as much as I want to party well, and
Speaker 2: I sleep with as many women as I want to
Speaker 2: sleep with. Here's the difference. Jesus Christ changed my want
Speaker 2: to I don't want to do those things. I don't
Speaker 2: want to do those things. They are cheap thrills. Are
Speaker 2: you kidding me? I'm on a permanent high, and I
Speaker 2: don't have a hangover from it. Because all those things
Speaker 2: that used to seem so cool, so important, so valuable,
Speaker 2: really they're worthless.
Speaker 3: They don't matter. Now here's the problem.
Speaker 2: When you first become a Christian, you realize that, but
Speaker 2: as time goes on, the world around you tries to
Speaker 2: brainwash you back into thinking the stuff that's not important
Speaker 2: is important, like having the newest pair of shoes and
Speaker 2: having the newest clothes and things like that. And because
Speaker 2: here's the trap, you might write this down. The trap
Speaker 2: that's going to keep you from this this habit is
Speaker 2: pop culture, the culture around us. Because every day there
Speaker 2: are thousands of advertising messages that says you aren't worth
Speaker 2: anything until you've got our product, and this should matter
Speaker 2: to you. And even television news makes every item sound
Speaker 2: like it's the most important thing of the day.
Speaker 3: It's not.
Speaker 2: Nothing is as worthless as yesterday's newspaper.
Speaker 3: That's why you line the kitty thing.
Speaker 2: With it, okay, because you don't because the news is over.
Speaker 2: It's not worth anything today, And the world tells you
Speaker 2: because it's immediate and it's current, it's important, noh to
Speaker 2: urge it. And the immediate and the relevant are not
Speaker 2: necessarily important. So what you have to ask yourself is
Speaker 2: this question on everything, how much will this matter in
Speaker 2: one hundred years? How much will this matter in five years?
Speaker 2: How much of what I'm worrying about right now is
Speaker 2: going to matter tomorrow? You see, it's not going to
Speaker 2: matter tomorrow much less for eternity. You need to live
Speaker 2: in light of eternity. Everybody and everything around you is
Speaker 2: constantly telling you that the petty and the trivial is important,
Speaker 2: and America and around the world we're on trivial pursuit,
Speaker 2: you know, we're living for things that aren't gonna matter,
Speaker 2: and so to be counter culture, which means you're going
Speaker 2: to be a whole lot happier than everybody else is.
Speaker 2: You've got to focus not on what's current, but what's eternal,
Speaker 2: and live in light of eternity and realize that if
Speaker 2: this isn't going to matter and eternity. What'sn't gonna matter?
Speaker 2: Why am I worried about it? Why am I stressed out?
Speaker 2: Why am I Why am I anxious? Why am I fearful?
Speaker 3: Why am I so uptight over this?
Speaker 2: It's not even gonna matter next week, much less for eternity.
Speaker 2: So the second habit is every day, remember what matters most?
Speaker 2: All the things I used to think were important, says
Speaker 2: they're worth nothing because of Christ.
Speaker 3: Look at verse eight. He says it again.
Speaker 2: Paul says, yes, everything else is worthless when compared to
Speaker 2: the priceless gain of knowing Christ. Jesus my Lord. He says,
Speaker 2: that's the most important thing. Tom, I'm going to talk
Speaker 2: about that in a minute.
Speaker 3: He says.
Speaker 2: I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage,
Speaker 2: so that I may have Christ and become one with
Speaker 2: him circle the world.
Speaker 3: Garbage.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting word, because the Greek word the translators
Speaker 2: were kind of scared of, afraid of telling.
Speaker 3: You what the word really means.
Speaker 2: That's the politically correct word, that's the polite word, the
Speaker 2: proper word for that Greek word there where it's translated garbage.
Speaker 2: How shall I say it? Manure what Paul is saying here.
Speaker 2: He said, after I became a Christian, after I began
Speaker 2: a relationship with Jesus, I stopped the religion thing. I
Speaker 2: started the relationship thing.
Speaker 3: He says.
Speaker 2: All that other stuff I used to worry about get up,
Speaker 2: tight out, and get stressed. He said, it isn't worth poop.
Speaker 2: Jim Elliett, the famous missionary, said, he is no fool
Speaker 2: who gives up what he cannot keep for that which
Speaker 2: he cannot lose. Yeah, I'm giving up a lot of
Speaker 2: things here that other people think are really important right
Speaker 2: now that don't mean thing to me because I'm gainey
Speaker 2: eternal life and rewards in heaven that I cannot lose.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Pastor Rick's davy hope. Hey,
Speaker 1: did you know that most people look for happiness in
Speaker 1: all the wrong places. You won't find it through money, fame,
Speaker 1: or power. You'll only find real, lasting happiness by following
Speaker 1: God's commands. And that's why Rick created the Habits of
Speaker 1: Happiness Bible study. Here's Rick to tell you more.
Speaker 2: If you'd like to learn more about the Habits of Happiness,
Speaker 2: I've got a new resource to help you. It's called
Speaker 2: the Habits of Happiness Guided Experience Book. In this resource,
Speaker 2: you're going to learn how seeing things from God's perspective
Speaker 2: will help you develop the Biblical habits of happiness. And
Speaker 2: you're going to discover how happiness runs deeper than any
Speaker 2: circumstance or any feeling or any relationship. Now, I'm excited
Speaker 2: because this book is filled with Biblical truth, practical life
Speaker 2: application exercises, and a lot of space for you to
Speaker 2: write down your responses to what God is teaching you.
Speaker 2: It's a really powerful workbook and it's a comprehensive study
Speaker 2: tool I believe is going to help you grow to
Speaker 2: your next level of spiritual maturity.
Speaker 1: This Bible study is only available on Daily Hope and
Speaker 1: quantities are limited, so be sure to request the Habits
Speaker 1: of Happiness Bible Study today. When you give a gift
Speaker 1: to help Daily Hope take the Hope of Jesus to
Speaker 1: a hurting world. It's our way of saying thanks. Just
Speaker 1: go to Pastorrick dot com to get your copy of
Speaker 1: this great resource. That's Pastorick dot com. Or you can
Speaker 1: just text the word hope to seven oh three oh nine. Again,
Speaker 1: that's the word hope to seven oh three oh nine
Speaker 1: and 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. Be sure to join us next time
Speaker 1: as 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.