Rick Warren - When Life Shakes You, Only This Will Hold You (Part 2)

Sometimes in your life, you're gonna be so weak, you

can't even pray. Sometimes in your life, you're gonna be

so weak, you can't read the Bible. You can't go

to a Bible study.

You can't work.

You can't do anything. What do you do in those moments?

You're just laying there in bed so weak. I rest

in the strength of the Lord, in his arms like

a little child, and I trust. You see, weakness can

actually be a good thing in your life. if it

causes you to depend on God. Look at this verse

up here on the screen.

This is from St. Paul.

Paul says this, 2 Corinthians 12. Three times I begged

God to take away my weakness. Now you got some

weaknesses you'd like God to take away. You've probably asked

him to. And each time God said, my grace is

all you need. My power works best in your weakness.

So you don't need anything else.

You just need me.

My power works best in your weakness. So, Paul says,

I now gladly boast. I boast about how weak I am.

I used to hide my weaknesses. I used to be

ashamed of my weaknesses. Paul says, not anymore. I'm proud

of my weaknesses. Why? Because when I'm weakness, when I'm weakest,

the power of Christ works in me and shows up

through me. And when I'm weak, then I am strong. See,

that's the paradox. of depending on God. The more you're weak,

the more you depend on God. The more you depend

on God, the stronger you get. To be blessed by God,

I depend on God's wisdom and I depend on God's strength.

But the third thing is I depend on God's timing,

not mine. I depend on God's timing, not mine.

The older I get, the more I understand how timing

is so important in every area of life. Look at

it in sports. You can see it easily. The difference

between a professional pitcher and an amateur is timing. The

difference between a professional golf player and an amateur is timing.

You can see it in things like cooking. A professional

cook knows that it takes 37 seconds in the toaster

for the perfect Pop-Tart. They know that if they're a

real professional. You just see it in all kinds of

areas of life. You see it in your life. God's timing,

the right timing, is God working in the right way

in your life. The Bible's really clear about the fact

that there are seasons to our life. And the fact,

I don't like this, but the fact is one of

those seasons that God talks about again and again is

the season of waiting. He is working in our lives

during this season of waiting. While you're waiting, God is working.

Don't think that the season of waiting means that God

has stopped working. He's still working. He's just taking us

through a season of waiting because of timing, because of

what he's doing in our lives, because of what he's

doing in circumstances. So that's why the Bible says in

Psalm 31, 14, and 15, I trust in you, O Lord.

You are my God. My times are in your hands.

You're going to spend a lot of life waiting. And

if you don't figure out how to trust God while

you're waiting, you're going to spend a lot of life

not trusting God. Because there's a lot of life where

we are in God's waiting room. You ever been in

a hurry when God wasn't? That happen to anybody else

I'm talking about? I mean, you want it to go along,

but it's just not going along. God is never in

a hurry. God is never in a hurry. Because he's eternal.

And he is watching, he is working, he is seeing

how and when you will trust him as you're waiting.

We're saying, when, Lord, when is it gonna happen? And

God's saying, what am I doing in your life? You

can trust me with this. Now, the problem with waiting

is our human nature and the culture around us, everything

about it says don't wait. Get things as quickly as

you can. And when we have fast track and fast

passes and one of the best business magazines is Fast Company,

everything is fast. When I go through the drive-through, I

don't know if you guys are like this for getting food,

I like to give my food at the first window

and I want to see the bag come out so

I can just sort of keep driving by and grab

it as I go by. I don't want to even

wait 20 seconds. That's the way we tend to be

wired in our culture and it goes against it goes

against God's blessing in our lives. Because God's blessing comes

through these times of waiting. Ecclesiastes 3.11 says, God has

set the right time for everything. Now I know some

of you right now, you are in a time of waiting.

Maybe it's for school to end. Maybe it's for a

man or a woman to come into your life. Maybe

it's for a marriage to happen or for a baby

to come. You're in this time of waiting in your life.

And If you were honest, you would say, I'm frustrated

right now with how slow this is working. We've all

been there at times. There's a promise in the Bible

that tells you not only that God is working, but

also how God is working. It's an important promise to

understand for how God works in our lives during these

times of waiting. Isaiah 60 verse 22 says, I am

Isaiah 60:22

the Lord, and when it is time, I will make

these things happen quickly. Here's how God's worked. working in

how he works in our lives, and it will drive

you crazy. You wait and wait and wait for something,

and then all of a sudden, God just gives it

to you all at once, and it's just overwhelming, and

you say, I was asking for it, but could you

slow it down a little bit now? This can happen with,

I know a lot of people who've been through adoptions

like this, where they've started the adoption process, and they

thought the adoption was going to go through in a

few months, and they waited months and months, and sometimes

years and years, and thought it never was going to happen.

And then they get the phone call. And the phone

call says, okay, we got the baby for you. Are

you ready in two days? And you got to go

pick him up in another country. Can you do that?

That's how God works many times. That's how God works

in sending Jesus into this world. The Bible tells us

that the world waited thousands of years for Jesus to

come the first time. But at the right time, Jesus

came into the world. And we've been waiting 2,000 years

now for Jesus to come again. When's he gonna come again?

God's right time. That's when he's gonna come. You might

write this down in your outline, just this sentence. A

delay is not a denial. Just remember that a delay

is not a denial. We think God is saying no,

but really God is saying not yet. Will you keep

trusting me through this? And this has to do many

times with how we talk to God about it, how

we pray. Sometimes when we pray about something, we say, God,

it's like, I wanna give you first option on this.

Can you do this really fast? If you don't get

it done, then I'm gonna go get it done myself.

I don't care what I have to do, I'm gonna

get it done. And God's saying, no, are you trusting me?

Micah talked about that. Micah 7 says, I trust the

Lord to save me, and I will wait on him.

I'm not gonna go out and get it myself. I'm

not gonna accomplish this myself. I'm gonna wait on him

to answer my prayer. That is the kind of faith

that God blesses.

You know, one of the things that Tom just said,

and I didn't see anybody writing it down, and it's brilliant,

so you need to write this down.

While I'm waiting, God's working. You need to write that down.

He said, while I'm waiting, God's working. A lot of

times we think, while I'm waiting, nothing's happening. But God

is often working behind the scenes in ways you can't

even see to get you ready for the answer to

your prayer. While you're waiting, God's working. It's not like

God's waiting. While you're waiting, God's working. Now let me

just give you a little lesson. God always gives his

best to those who wait. And if you get in

a hurry, you're gonna settle for second best in your

life And before God brings the best man into your life,

the best woman into your life, the best job into

your life, the best opportunity into your life, Satan's gonna

give you all kinds of detours. And he's like, hey,

see me over here, me over here. And you go, oh,

you know, I'm getting tired. Why don't we just pick

this one? And you settle for less than God's best

in your life. Don't do it. As your pastor who

loves you, I'm telling you, don't do it. If you

will wait for God's best, God always gives his best

to those who leave the choice to him. But if

you get frantic and you get nervous and you get

in a hurry and you start trying to answer your

own prayer, you will have a fatal flaw and a

terrible mistake in your life. If you want God's blessing,

you gotta learn this truth very deeply. Spiritual poverty means

I don't do it myself. I depend on God's wisdom.

I depend on God's strength. And I depend on God's timing.

And he'll answer it when he's ready to answer it

and when he knows I'm ready for the answer. I'm

gonna trust him.

All right?

Number four, let me give you another way to practice

this week. To be blessed by God, I depend on

God's wisdom, God's strength, God's timing, and I also depend

on God's defense, not mine. I'll explain this. But I

depend on God's defense, not mine. There's always gonna be

people in your life who misunderstand you.

Do you agree with that?

There'll always be people around you who misunderstand. There'll always

be people who don't like you. There'll always be people

who criticize you, judge you, attack you, gossip about you,

spread rumors about you. And a lot of people are like,

you know, if I could just be perfect, then everybody

would like me. Jesus was perfect and a lot of

people didn't like him. So even if you were perfect,

even if you were Jesus, there would be people who

are just not gonna like you. And so they're going

to attack and they're gonna criticize and they're going to

try to get, and even in your closest relationships, those

who love you most, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your husband,

your wife, those who love you most, you're still gonna

be misunderstood by them because we live in a broken world.

And when you are misunderstood, you're gonna have a tendency

to get in there and defend yourself. And when you're attacked,

your tendency is to attack back. When people criticize you,

you wanna criticize back. People slam you, you wanna slam

them back. People insult you, you wanna insult them back.

You're out on the freeway, somebody expresses to you the

international sign of displeasure. You wanna express the international sign

of displeasure back to them. Don't do it. Let God

be your defender. Don't defend yourself. God says every time

you get under attack, get criticized, get put down, get misunderstood,

now you got two choices. You can defend yourself or

you can let me defend you. What it'll be. Who

do you think can do a better job of defending you? Yeah,

God can. Now, you are, listen to me very closely.

You're most like Christ. You're most like Jesus. When you

say nothing, in the face of attack, in the face

of unjust, unfair criticism, in the face.

Of lies about you.

You're most like Jesus when you say nothing and you

remain silent and you just say, I'm gonna put this

in the hands of God and let him be my

defender and I'm not gonna try on myself and defend

myself back.

Do you know someone who's graduating this year? Maybe it's

your son or daughter, a grandchild, or perhaps a neighbor

or family friend. As you celebrate this important milestone and

they begin the next phase of their journey, they need

to know that God created them, loves them, and has

a plan for their life. That's why Pastor Rick created

a special resource just for graduates called The Purpose Driven

Life Selected Thoughts and Scriptures for the Graduates. filled with

inspirational scripture, biblical wisdom from Pastor Rick, and beautiful imagery.

This unique hardcover gift book provides a priceless reminder of

the bountiful life God has planned for your graduate, and

it will inspire them to seek his unique plan and

purpose for their life. Don't miss this opportunity to minister

to the graduate in your life today. We'll send you

a copy to say thanks when you give a gift

to Daily Hope to help share the hope of Jesus

Christ with people around the world.

In 1 Peter 2.23, we talked about last week Jesus'

crucifixion and his resurrection. It says, when they hurled insults

at him, Jesus, he did not retaliate. When he suffered,

he made no threats back. Instead, he entrusted himself to

God to set things right. That means I depend on

God to be my defender. You know, I told you

last week that they did six trials for Jesus, three Roman,

three Jewish trials. All of them were sham trials. They

were all fake, phony trials. And one time, the religious

leaders take Jesus to Pilate, who was the Roman governor

of Israel at that time, Palestine, and they bring him in,

and they make a false charge of Jesus, and they said,

this guy's trying to overthrow you. He wants to be king.

He wants your job, Pilate. He wants to overthrow you.

He thinks he's the king. Pilate looks at him and goes,

is that true? He's asking Jesus, you want my job?

You trying to overthrow me? I'm the Roman appointed governor.

You claim to be the king of Israel? Not when

they don't have a king. You on my job? Is

that what you're saying? And the Bible says Jesus would

not even dignify that false accusation with an answer. It

said he remained totally silent. He spake not unto them.

He said not a word unto them.

You are most like Jesus when you face flack and

don't defend it and don't attack back.

Now here's an interesting thing.

When people don't like you, They get what's called motivated reasoning.

And so often, if people don't wanna like you, they'll

believe anything negative.

Isn't that true?

If people don't want to like you, they are quick

to believe the negative and they do not believe anything positive.

They only wanna believe the negative. Now here's the problem.

Today on the internet, anybody can say anything about you

and it's global, it's searchable, and it's permanent. And it's

never going off. So somebody can say something bad about

you and it's there and nobody's ever taken it down.

And 10 years from today, somebody can Google your name

and find that. And it wasn't true today. It won't

be true 10 years from today, but they'll believe it.

That's the kind of world you're gonna live in. So

you gotta learn how to depend on God's defense, not

your own. Why? Because to be a leader is to

be misunderstood. If you're gonna be a leader in your home,

if you're gonna be a leader at your school, in

your community, in your church, or anywhere else, to be

a leader means somebody's gonna misunderstand you. You can spend

all your time trying to correct those misunderstandings, but here's

what happens. If they don't like you, and they have

motivated reason, a lot of people are like, well, if

I teach them the truth, then they'll like me. But

if actually you teach them the truth, it just makes

them more mad. it makes them more mad because you

disproven they were wrong and now they really.

Don't like you. And so they go out and they

find out something else.

The more effective you are in life, the more you're

going to be attacked. I decided a long time ago

that I'm not gonna spend any of my time trying

to answer every lie, every criticism, every rumor, every gossip,

every false misrepresentation, You know, I'm just gonna leave it

to God. Why? Because if I did spend my time

trying to correct all those things, I wouldn't have.

Any time for anything else.

The more influence you have, the more you're gonna be

criticized in life.

Just count on it.

And pioneers get the arrows in the back. If you're

gonna call the shots, you're gonna take the shots. So

to be a leader in a business means you're gonna

be criticized. To be a leader in a church means

you're gonna be criticized. Community, anywhere else. I want you

to be fearless. What God wants is a generation of

fearless men and fearless women who say, I'm gonna do

the right thing. Doesn't really matter what anything else, because

I'm living for an audience of one. Well done, now

good and faithful servant. That's what I'm living for. Now,

you just leave it to God, because you can't correct

it all. And even if you did, they're not gonna

change their attitude. Now let me show you a couple verses.

Psalm chapter two, verse 12.

God blesses and God protects everyone who runs to him.

Not everybody who defends himself, not everybody who fights back,

not everybody who goes tit for tat and you hit me,

I hit you back. No, God blesses those who run

to him. So you let God be your defender against

accusations and against critics. The next verse, Psalm 62, on

your outline, gives us five metaphors for God's protection. I

want you to underline them. David says this, I depend

on God alone. I put my hope in him. He

alone protects, underlines. He alone protects. He alone saves, underline saves.

He alone protects and saves me. He is my defender,

underline that, my defender. I shall not be defeated, underline

not be defeated. My salvation and honor depend on God.

What's your honor? It's your reputation. It's your reputation.

My salvation and my reputation depend on God. He is

my strong protector and he is my shield, underline shield.

underline my shield. Now notice the five metaphors. God says,

he's my protector, he's my savior, he's my defender, he's

my victor, and he's my shelter. He's saying, let me

handle it. When you do that, you are being poor

in spirit. You're saying, God, I'm not depending on myself,

I'm depending on you. I depend on your wisdom, I

depend on your strength, I depend on your timing and

your plan, And I depend on your defense, not mine.

And when God sees a person like that, he goes,

that's my boy, that's my girl, that's who I want

to bless. You're most like Jesus when you don't defend yourself. Now,

one of the greatest sources of stress you're going to

have in your life is anxiety about money. In fact,

studies show it's the number one cause of divorce, financial pressure.

It's the number one anxious, anxiety-producing issue. Money, am I

gonna have enough to survive? Am I gonna have enough

to make it? Financial worries. It keeps people awake at night,

and it causes people to do all kinds of stupid

things because they start worrying about money. So let me

just give you one more way to depend on God,

and that is this. Number five, I depend on God's wealth,

not money. Mine, for my own safety, for my own security.

I depend on God's wealth, not my wealth, for my security.

If you put your security in your bank account, you

are an insecure person, because you can lose everything you

got in the bank. If you put your security in

your job, you are a very insecure person, because you

can lose your job. If you put your security in

your investments, you're a very insecure person, because you can

lose your investments. You have to put your security in

something that cannot be taken from you, and that is God.

Here's what the Bible says about God's wealth, not yours.

Philippians 4.19, and my God will supply all my needs.

My God will supply all my needs, From his abundant wealth.

Circle that. It's God's wealth, not your wealth, that makes

you secure. From his abundant wealth. Because of what Christ

Jesus has done for me. So I depend on God's wealth,

not my wealth. I depend on how much God's got,

not how much I've got, to be secure and to

not be anxious. I want you to write this down.

Write it down on your outline. My job is a channel,

but God is my source. Let me explain, it's very important.

If you understand this, you'll have so much less stress

in your life. My job is a channel, but God

is the source of my supply. Let me give you

an example. If I were to go home from this service,

and I were to turn on the faucet in our kitchen,

and no water came out, What would I do?

Would I say, oh my, the world has run out

of water.

There's no more water left in the whole wide world.

I turned on the faucet, there is no more water left.

Of course not.

I know the problem is not with the source. The

problem is with the distribution point. The problem is not

the source. There's plenty of water in the world. The

problem is the channel. The channel has gotten blocked one

way or another.

And you know what?

If one channel gets blocked in your life and this

faucet stops working, God can turn on another faucet just

as easy. And if God closes a door in your life,

he can open another door. And if another door closes,

he can open a window and you can crawl through it.

God is not limited to your ability and capacity.

Your job is a channel.

If you think that your job is what keeps you

financially secure, you're gonna be insecure your entire life. Living

poor in spirit means I realize that God is the

source of my supply And I depend on God's wealth.

My God shall supply all your needs according to his

riches and glory in Christ Jesus. And I'm gonna trust

in him. That is gonna handle me. Jobs may come

and go. Bank accounts may come and go. Economies can

go up and down. Stock markets can go bull or bear.

Doesn't matter.

My source of supply is in God. I'm gonna pray

a prayer and you can follow me in it. Dear God,

thank you for sending Jesus to teach us how to live.

Just say that.

Dear God, thank you for sending Jesus to teach us

how to live and to die for my sins. I

want your blessing on my life. So today, I wanna

take this first step.

Of learning to depend on you more. Just pray this.

I wanna depend on your wisdom this week your wisdom,

not mine, so you can replace my confusion with your confidence.

I wanna depend on your strength, not mine, so your

power can show up in my weakness. I wanna depend

on your timing. Help me to be patient, quietly trust.

I know that at the right time, you can change

things instantly. And Lord, When people misunderstand me or criticize me,

I wanna quietly trust you for my defense. I don't

wanna retaliate, I wanna be like Jesus. Finally, Lord, I

wanna look to you as a source to meet all

my needs. Help me this week to walk in the

strength of the Lord. Help me to walk in the

strength of the Lord. And I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Do you know someone who's graduating this year? Maybe it's

your son or daughter, a grandchild, or perhaps a neighbor

or family friend. As you celebrate this important milestone and

they begin the next phase of their journey, they need

to know that God created them, loves them, and has

a plan for their life. That's why Pastor Rick created

a special resource just for graduates called The Purpose Driven

Life Selected Thoughts and Scriptures for the Graduate. Filled with

inspirational scripture, biblical wisdom from Pastor Rick, and beautiful imagery.

This unique hardcover gift book provides a priceless reminder of

the bountiful life God has planned for your graduate, and

it will inspire them to seek his unique plan and

purpose for their life. Don't miss this opportunity to minister

to the graduate in your life today. We'll send you

a copy to say thanks when you give a gift

to Daily Hope to help share the hope of Jesus

Christ with people around the world.