Rick Warren - How to Beat Anxiety According to God's Plan for Your Life

Many people think that happiness is simply a matter of luck.

And they think if you're happy, you're just lucky. You

got lucky, you had happy circumstances, and so congratulations for you.

But actually, happiness can be learned. It is a quality

that you can learn. There are certain qualities that if

you learn them, your happiness in life is going to

go up exponentially. If you don't have these qualities in

your life, your unhappiness will go up exponentially. Now, you

probably never thought about this, but if I mention it

to you, you automatically know what I'm talking about because

you could instinctively pick out qualities that cause you to

be happy and qualities that cause you to be unhappy.

For instance, if we made two columns, the.

Happiness column and the unhappiness column, and I said, now,

which column would impatience go in? Unhappiness, yeah. Impatient people

tend to be unhappy people.

Would you agree with that?

And the more patient you are, if you learn patience,

you're gonna be happier in life. That obviously makes sense.

If I said, for instance, cruelty, that would go in

the unhappiness column. Kindness would go in the happiness column.

This is kind of obvious and we could make an

entire list. If I said, if I'm arrogant, I'm going

to tend to be unhappy. And if I am humble,

I'm going to tend to be more happy. So what

we're going to do this weekend as we go through

the book of Philippians is look at four very important

qualities you need to build within your life. Now, happiness

is a serious business. And if you really want to

be happy, then you need to build these qualities in

your life. We're starting in chapter two of Philippians, verses

19 down to verse 30. Let me read it to

you and then we'll look at it. Paul says this,

I hope in the Lord Jesus to send Timothy to

you soon. Now, let me stop here and remind you

the background. Paul is in prison in Rome. He's writing

a letter to a church in Greece in a city

called Philippi. So we call it the Philippian letter. Paul

is writing to these church members of a church he

started in Greece and they have been sending him care packages.

They've been, they actually send him an offering while he

was in prison, waiting to appeal his execution before Caesar,

who was Nero in Rome at the time. And, uh,

Paul is writing back to the Philippians and this book

is actually a thank you letter. It is a thank

you letter for a financial gift. And in the middle

of this letter, he gives some personal information. So let

me read it again. I hope in the Lord Jesus

to send Timothy to you soon so that I may

be cheered when I receive news about you. I have

no one else like him, this is Timothy, who takes

a genuine interest in your welfare. For everybody else looks

after his own interest, not those of Jesus Christ. But

you know that Timothy has proved himself because as a

son with his father, he has served with me in

the work of the gospel, the good news. I hope

therefore to send him, Timothy, as soon as I can

see how things go with me. And I'm confident that

I myself will come soon. In other words, I hope

I'm gonna get out of jail and come back to

see you in Philippi. But he says, I think it

is necessary to also send back to you Epaphroditus. That's

a long Greek name for a man, but that's another

guy like Timothy. Epaphroditus, my brother, my fellow worker, and

my fellow soldier, who is also your messenger, whom you

sent to me to take care of my needs. When

the Philippians sent a financial gift to help Paul while

he was in prison in Rome, they sent it to

a guy named Epaphroditus. And he says, I'm gonna send

this guy back to you. for he longs for all

of you. Because this was his home church. And he's

distressed because you heard he was ill. Indeed, he was

ill and he almost died in trying to get to

Paul on that trip to Rome. But God had mercy

on him and not only on him, but also on

me to spare me sorrow upon sorrow. Therefore, I am

all the more eager to send him back to you

so that when you see him again, you may be

glad and I may have less anxiety. So, welcome him

in the Lord with great joy, and honor men like him,

because he almost died for the work of Christ, risking

his life to make up for the help you could

not give me. Now, when I read that passage at

a first glance, that doesn't seem to be a very

deep passage. You're going, it sounds like Paul's talking about

two guys who are with him.

In Rome that he's going to send back to Greece.

And when you read this letter, you might ask, why

in the world did God include that in the Bible?

I mean, why is that even there?

It's just a personal note about two guys, the church

that the Philippi knows and that Paul knows, and they've

helped each other. And you might think, you know, this

is one of those passages in the Bible, just kind

of read over real quick.

And just get to the good parts. And you would

be wrong.

You would be wrong. Because the Bible says everything in

the Bible is there to teach us by example. And

in this passage that I just read you are the

examples of the four things you must build into your

life if you want to really be happy, if you

want to live consistently happy. Now, he has an example

of these four choices that leads to happiness in these

two guys named Timothy and Epaphroditus.

Now, here's the background.

Paul intends to send two guys who were with him

in Rome while he's there in prison back to the

Philippian church. And he says in verse 19, I'm gonna

send you Timothy. And in verse 25, he says, I'm

gonna send back to you Epaphroditus, who's a.

Member of your church.

And then Paul endorses these two guys as role models.

He says in verse 20, of Timothy, I got nobody

else like him.

Now let me just stop right there for a minute.

If Paul, the apostle who wrote most of the New

Testament says, I don't know anybody like him in the

whole world, you better.

Pay attention to this guy.

When Paul says, I don't have anybody in my life

like Timothy, then you better pay attention to him. In fact,

two of the books of the Bible are called 1

and 2 Timothy written to this guy. So he's a

very important character. He says, I don't know anybody like him.

And then he says about the other guy, Epaphroditus, he says,

I want you to welcome him when I send him

and honor him because he nearly died.

He nearly died for my sake.

Now, Paul says, and here's the reason why we're looking

at it in this series on the habits of happiness.

Paul says, I'm gonna send these guys to you for

three reasons. And he says this. He said in verse 19,

so that I may be cheered, so that I can

be happy. And then in verse 28 he says, so

that you may be happy, so you may be glad,

you may be happy. And then he says in verse 28,

so that I may have less anxiety. So whatever these

guys are doing, however they are living, it's a way

that's gonna make you glad, it's gonna make me glad,

and it's gonna make us all.

Have less anxiety.

Now as your pastor, I want you to be happy,

I want me to be happy, and I want us

all to have less anxiety.

So we're gonna look at this passage. Does that make sense?

And we're gonna say, what is it about these two

guys that are so worthy? They're in the Bible in

a little footnote that looks like kind of like just

a personal, hey, I'm sending these guys. He says in

the Living Bible, these guys will make me happy and

lighten my cares. Now what this passage teaches us is

that there are four qualities you need to have in

your life in order for your happiness to go up

and for the happiness of people around you to go

up to. And the first thing that you have to

learn is this. You're gonna have to learn, write this down,

to shift the focus away from myself. That is the

starting point for all happiness. I must shift the focus

away from myself. I have to care about more than

just me. I've gotta care about the needs of those

around me.

If I truly want

to be happy in life, I've got to move the

focus off myself. Now, Paul gives Timothy as an example

of this. In verse 20 and 21, he says this.

I have nobody else like him who takes a genuine

interest in your welfare for everybody else looks out for.

His own interest. Would you say that's true today of

most people?

Everybody looks out for their own interest? Not that many

people are looking after your interest. Could you name the

people who are looking after your interest? Not many. Most

people are looking after their own interest, not yours. And

as naturally, I tend to look at my own interest.

I don't tend to look at your interest. I don't

get up in the morning and think, hmm, I wonder

if you're having a hard time today. No, I'm always

thinking about me. You tend to think about you. Paul says,

I've got nobody like this guy because he actually takes

a genuine interest in you, not simply in himself. Everybody

else looks out for his own interest. And notice in

that phrase, there, he says, no one else, no one

else is like, in other words, unselfish people are very,

very rare. Nobody else is like him. He says, who

takes a genuine interest. There are many people who fake

interest in you, It's so funny, sometimes I go to

these parties or these important diplomatic events and people are

standing there talking to you and they've got one of

these little, you know, toaster things and a drink in

their hand. And they're talking to you, but the whole

time they're looking over your shoulder like, is there anybody

else more important I should be talking to? They're pretending

to take an interest in me, but they're not really

interested in me. They're looking over, who else could I

talk to instead of this guy? because they're pretending that.

He says, he takes a genuine interest. Good News translation says,

he genuinely cares about you. Others care only about themselves.

And then I want you to circle the phrase, it says,

looks out. Everyone else looks out for his own interest.

Circle that phrase, looks out. What we're talking about here

is a matter of focus. The first key to happiness

is you gotta change your focus. You have to shift

your focus away from yourself onto other people.

You gotta look out for others. Now, do you normally

do that?

Not normally. That's something you have to learn to do.

When you walk into a room, you're not normally thinking,

who in this room needs my help? You walk into

the room, look in and think, how do I look?

That's what you do. You walk in the room and go,

how do I look? Am I put together just right?

And you have to intentionally train yourself to do the opposite,

to shift the focus away from myself. The Phillips translation

of this verse says, people aren't interested in you. They're

all wrapped up in their own affairs. Circle that phrase,

wrapped up. For those of you who are single adults,

let me just give you a little fatherly advice. It's

better to sit at home without a date, then go

date somebody who's all wrapped up in themselves. Single women,

a man wrapped up in himself is no gift. Guys,

a woman wrapped up in herself is no gift. He says,

they're wrapped up in their own affairs, so they're not caring.

They're not looking out for the needs of others. Now,

I think confession's good for the soul. I have to

admit to you that it saddens me how many times

I have missed the needs around me of people that

I love. I just totally missed them because I wasn't

paying attention. I just wasn't paying attention. I wasn't looking out.

I hadn't shifted the focus from me to the others

in the room. And when I wasn't looking out for

their needs, I missed their needs. And that grieves me

a lot Philippians 2, 4, we looked at this verse

last week, but I love it in the message paraphrase.

It says here, don't be so obsessed with getting your

own advantage. Forget yourself long enough to lend a helping hand.

If you did that, you think you'd be happier? Yes,

you would. Yes, you would. You see, this isn't easy

to do because everything in our culture and everything in

our nature teaches us to be self-centered. And America is

becoming more and more self-centered. I read a report this

week in a psychology, a scientific journal that said they

studied 1 million books in print over the last 200

years in American history. And they compared the words that

were used then and the words that are used now.

And the words that have increased in number today are I, me, my, choice, unique,

These words are being overused today. Words you don't hear

much today are responsibility and prayer. Okay, those are words

that were used a lot in the past. We're increasingly

becoming more self-centered. Number two, the second thing you're gonna

need to learn to be happy is this. If you

wanna be happy, you're gonna have to become someone that

people trust. You're going to have to become someone that

people trust. Proverbs 13, 15 says, those who can't be

trusted are on the road to ruin. Now, it's really

obvious that the more people trust you, the happier you're

gonna be. And if people don't trust you, you're not

gonna be happy. If nobody trusts you, you're living a

pretty miserable life. So, Here's another quality you can learn.

If you learn to be trustworthy, you learn to be reliable,

you learn to be consistent, you learn to be dependable,

and you develop that quality in your life, you're gonna

be a whole lot happier than people who aren't worthy

of trust. If you want to be happy, you've got

to become somebody that people trust. Now again, Paul uses

Timothy as an example of this. Verse 22. He says,

Timothy has proven himself because as a son with his father,

he served with me in the work of the gospel. Now, again,

he's giving this guy as an example. He says, I've

watched this guy in action. I've seen this Timothy. I've

seen him in all kinds of circumstances. And he says,

this guy, Timothy, he's the real deal. He's the real McCoy.

He's authentic. He's genuine. He's reliable. You can count on

this guy. God's word translation says, you know what kind

of person Timothy proved to be. Do people know what

kind of person you really are? And are you trustworthy?

If you're not, then you're not very happy because the

more people trust you, the more your happiness goes up.

Now he says about this guy, Timothy, he's proven trustworthy.

He has been proven. He has been proved over time, tested, verified,

checked out.

He is credible. He is creditable.

You know, anytime you go to a bank for a loan,

before they loan you any money, they're going to do

a thing on you called a credit check, a credit check.

And they're gonna say, are you worthy of being trusted

with credit? Are you creditable? Do you pay your bills back?

Are you paying them back on time? Do you have

a track record of keeping your word? Do you have

a track record of doing what you say? Can you

be dependent on that if we loan you this money,

you're not gonna flake out on us and we're gonna

lose it. They do a credit check on you to

see if you are credible or credit worthy. Now I

want to tell you a little secret. Everybody around you

is doing a credit check on your life every moment

of your life. Not just the banks, but everybody around

you is constantly doing a credit check on you. Are

you what you say you are? Are you the real deal?

Or are you just some phony baloney, you wear a

mask here and wear a mask over here? You know,

that's what they used to do in the Greek theater.

One actor would play many parts and he'd come out

and he'd wear a mask and he'd play a part,

and then he'd go back behind the stage.

This is in the days of Plato.

He'd get another mask, he'd come out, and he'd wear

that mask, and he'd play a part, and he'd go back.

And so he's wearing, he's being different roles to different

groups of people, playing different parts. Same guy, but wearing

different masks. And the word for that guy in Greek

is called a hypocritos. That's where we get the word hypocrite.

Hypocrite means somebody who he acts this way on the

golf course and this way with his kids and this

way at church and that way with his wife. And

you don't really know. It's what you see, what you get.

He's saying, you know the kind of person Timothy was.

He proved, he was checked out. He got a credit

reference done. Now, if you're gonna be happy, you gotta

learn to be consistent. You gotta learn to be dependable, trustworthy, reliable.

How do you develop a reputation for reliability. Two things,

write them down. The Bible tells us. Number one, live

with integrity. Live with integrity. And what I mean by

that is make sure that my actions match my words.

I don't talk a good game and then live another

different way. No, he says, what you see is what

you get. Integrity doesn't mean you're perfect. If perfection was

required for integrity, none of us have integrity because nobody's perfect.

We're all flawed. But integrity means what you see is

what you get. It's the real deal. Make sure my

actions match my words. Proverbs 25, 13 says this, reliable

friends who do what they say are like cool drinks

in sweltering heat, refreshing.

Isn't that a great verse?

Can people count on you? Do you flip-flop? Are you two-faced?

You're wishy-washy. Look at the opposite. Proverbs 25, 19 says this.

Putting confidence in an unreliable person is like chewing with

a toothache or walking on a broken foot.

I like that. What is he saying?

The greatest ability is dependability. It's more important than any

other ability in life. The greatest ability is dependability. Are

you dependable? Are you credit worthy? Are you worthy of trust?

If you are, then you're going to be a happy

person because the more people who trust in you, the

more happy you're going to be. The greatest ability is dependability.

Proverbs 28, 20 says, honest people will lead a full,

happy life. You wanna be happy? Honest people will lead

a full, happy life. Number two, not only do I

live with integrity, I keep my promises. This is the

other way you learn this second quality, keep my promises.

Psalm 15, four talks about, these people always do what

they promise, no matter how much it may cost them.

I actually like this verse better in the King James

English where it says, God blesses the person who sweareth

to his own hurt. Sweareth to his own, what does

that mean? He means you keep a promise and then

you find out it's gonna cost me more than I

thought it was gonna cost me, but I still keep

my promise. I said I'd do it for that price

and I'm gonna take a bath on it, but I'm

gonna do it because I keep my word. and I'm

gonna keep my promise no matter how much it costs. So,

if I want to be happy, then I've gotta first

shift the focus away from myself, it's not about me,

and second, I've got to become somebody that people trust,

and we see those from Timothy. Now, Paul is a superstar.

I mean, this is the guy who wrote most of

the New Testament part of the Bible. Paul is a superstar,

yet Paul knows that we get more done by working together.

So here's the third skill that you gotta learn in

order to be happy in life, and that is this.

Number three, learn how to work well with others. And

you know what? They don't teach you that anymore. And

if parents don't teach their kids this, they may not

learn it in school, You must learn how to work well.

By the way, parents, these are four things you need

to teach your kids. If you want your kids to

be happy, they've got to learn to switch the focus

away from themselves. They've got to learn to become someone

that is trustworthy, and they've got to learn how to

work well with others. What am I talking about here?

I'm talking about the skill of being a team member,

the skill of collaboration, the skill of working together. If

you don't know how to work with other people, you're

gonna be unhappy much in your life. Well, what do

I need to learn in order to work with other people?

You need to learn two things, the Bible says. Write

these down. First, learn to cooperate. I need to learn

how to cooperate. And that's not something you automatically do.

That's one of the goals of parenting, is teaching your

children how to share their toys. teaching your children how

to put away the toys together, teaching your children how

to cooperate often with people who are very different in personality.

Learn to cooperate.

And Paul gives the second guy, Epaphroditus, as an example

of this quality.

In verse 25, he.

Says this, I send back to you, Epaphroditus, my brother,

my fellow worker and my fellow soldier. Circle those three terms,

we're gonna come back to it. Brother, fellow worker, and

fellow soldier. Who is also your messenger, whom you sent

to take care of my needs. Remember, this is the

guy that the church in Philippi sent with an offering,

a gift of money, financial support, to help Paul while

he was in prison in Rome. Paul says, he's my brother,

my fellow worker, my fellow soldier, he's worked and fought

by my side. What is Paul Singer? This guy knows

how to be a team member. This guy knows how

to work in a group. He's not a lone ranger.

He's not a prima donna. He's not a maverick. This

is a guy who knows how to work with other people. Now,

I just want to tell you real seriously, the better

you learn this skill, the happier you're going to be

in life. If you don't know how to work with

people different from you, you're in deep, deep guacamole. Because

let me tell you something, most of the world is

different from you. And if you don't know how to

work with people who are different from you, then you

just shut yourself off.

To most of the world.

Now Paul uses here in this passage three relational metaphors.

They're teamwork terms. And he says, my brother, my fellow worker,

and my fellow soldier.

What is he saying? He's saying that life.

and ministry. Life is a family, it's a fellowship, and

it's a fight. It's a family, it's a fellowship, and

it's a fight. It's family, he says, he calls him

my brother. The church is the family of God. That

means every one of you are related to each other.

If you know the Lord, the people you're sitting next

to are your brothers and sisters. In fact, for thousands

of years, when people went to church, they used to

call each other brother and sister. Brother so-and-so, brother Bob,

sister Sue, brother Tom, sister Janice. Maybe we ought to

bring that back because we've kind of lost the attitude

of we are family. 133 times in the Bible, God

uses family terms to refer to the church. So we're

a family, he says, my brother. Then he says, we're

a fellowship, a fellow worker. We're to work together, we're

to serve together. We've been given the same tasks. We

have the same great commission. We have the same common goal.

We're a family, we're a fellowship, and we're a fight.

He says, my fellow soldier. Would you agree that life's

a battle? Would you agree that sometimes you feel like

you're at war? Yeah.

And that forces are against you?

Yeah.

Well, he says, you know what? It's a battle.

We all have the same enemy, Satan, and we need

to support each other. We need to defend each other.

We need to encourage each other. And there's a word

for that. It's called small groups. Where do I learn

to be a family, a fellowship, and to fight for

each other? In a small group. You don't learn it

in a big meeting like this. You learn it in

a small group. We support and we defend and we

encourage each other. I love what Jesus said. I love

this message paraphrase of one of the Beatitudes. Jesus said,

you're blessed when you can show people how to cooperate

instead of compete or fight.

Why?

If you learn to cooperate with others, your happiness is

gonna go up exponentially. Now, not only do I need

to learn to cooperate, here's a second one. I need

to learn to be considerate. The more considerate you are

of other people in life, the happier you're going to be.

The more inconsiderate you are of people in your life,

including clerks and people who serve you at fast food places,

the more inconsiderate you are of waiters and waitresses and

people who serve you, the more unhappy you're going to be.

When you see somebody in a restaurant being inconsiderate to

a waiter or waitress, at that point, are they being happy? No,

they are not. They are unhappy. Because those two things

don't go together. And he's saying, Paul's saying, you gotta

learn to be thoughtful. You gotta learn to be kind, sympathetic,

and understanding of others. And again, he gives Epaphroditus as

an example. Verse 26 there in your outline. He says,

now I must send him, that's Epaphroditus, I must send

him back to you because he longs to see all

of you.

And he's been worried about your distress. That's called consideration.

He's worried about, not his distress, worried about your distress

since you heard that he was sick. Now notice in

this verse, we see two examples of consideration. Paul is

considerate of his coworker's concern. And he said, Epaphroditus really,

he's homesick. He wants to come back home. He longs

to see you. Paul is considerate of his coworkers' concern,

and Epaphroditus is considerate of the Philippians' concern. They had

heard that Epaphroditus on the way to Rome had gotten sick.

And nearly died, and they were afraid their friend had died.

And the Bible says in the message, he wants to

get back and reassure you that he's fine. This is

a key to happiness. The more considerate you learn to

be of other people's needs, other people's doubts, their fears,

the more considerate you learn to be as a husband,

as a wife, the happier your marriage is gonna be.

If you are inconsiderate, you're gonna have an unhappy marriage. Now,

1 Corinthians 1.10 says this. You must, this is not

an option, you must get along with each other You

must learn to be considerate.

Circle the word learn.

You must learn to be considerate of one another, cultivating

a life in common. I think every marriage ought to

learn that. learn that verse. We all ought to memorize

that one. You must learn to be considerate, because you

are by nature not naturally considerate.

And you have to cultivate, circle that word, cultivate a.

Life in common. He's saying it takes work. You know

I grow a garden of vegetables every year, and it

takes cultivation. They don't just grow on their own. I

have to go out and prepare the soil, break up

the dirt clods, I have to add in the nutrients,

I have to water, I have to weed, feed, I cultivate.

And he's saying it takes work to cultivate a life

in common. You know what the problem with most marriages today?

They've stopped working. They've stopped working on the marriage so

the marriage stops working. When you don't work on the marriage,

then the marriage doesn't work.

That's obvious.

And a lot of people would rather give up on

a marriage than work on a marriage. He says you

gotta cultivate a common life together. And what is it?

He says it's through consideration. We have to be thoughtful

of the effect of our words and the effect of

our actions. That does not come natural to me. Maybe

it comes natural to you. It doesn't come natural to me.

I don't naturally think about how my words are gonna

affect you or how my actions are gonna affect you.

Paul is an example, 1 Corinthians 10, 33. He says,

I don't just do what I like. I don't just

do what I like or what's best for me, but

I do what's best for everyone so that they may

be saved. Paul says, I put the conversion of others

before my comfort. I put the conversion, their conversion before

my comfort. Now there's a fourth quality. If I wanna

be happy, I've gotta learn these things. I've gotta learn

how to shift the focus away from me to others.

I've gotta learn to become the person, a person that

people trust by doing what I say I do, keeping

my promises. Then I gotta learn how to work well

with others, learning to cooperate, learning to be considerate at work,

at home, in the neighborhood, whatever. And that'll increase my happiness.

There's one other one, and this is a really big one.

If I genuinely want to be happy in life, the

fourth choice you need to make to be happy in

life is to live for something worth dying for. Until

you have that, you will not have ultimate happiness in

your life. I must learn to live for something worth

dying for. Most people are giving first class allegiance to

second class causes and those causes are betraying them. I

talked to one time to a guy, he said, I

climbed the ladder of success when I got to the top,

I found it was leaning against the wrong wall. And

a lot of times we give big time commitment to

small time causes that aren't gonna last. The question you

need to ask yourself, that you're given all your time,

all your energy, all.

Your thoughts, whatever you think about.

Most, and you're giving all your time and energy and

money to these things, ask, how much is this gonna

matter five years from today? How much is it gonna

matter 10 years? How much is it gonna matter in 1,000 years?

The best use of your life is to invest it

in that which outlasts it. You need to live for

something worth dying for, and you are not ready to

live You're not ready to live, to really live, until

you know what's worth dying for. If you've never figured

that out, you're coasting. You're not really living, you're existing.

You're not ready to live till you know what's worth

dying for. Now Paul ends with these words about Epaphroditus.

Verse 27 and verse 30. He says, indeed, talking about Epaphroditus,

he was very ill and he almost died. He risked

his life that's live for something worth dying for, risked

his life for the work of Christ, and he was

at the point of death while trying to do for

me the things you, you my friends back in Philippi,

couldn't do because you were far away. Now let me

give you the background again on this. Paul is in

prison in Rome. The Philippian church is in Greece. It's

800 miles away, okay? The Philippian church decides to send

a care package to Paul in prison. There are no planes,

there are no trains, there are no automobiles, and it's

800 miles. And there's only one way you can get

to Rome, walk. It's gonna be an 800 mile walk

to deliver this offering that the Philippians have decided to take. Paphroditus,

a member of that church, raises his head, I'll do it.

I'll do it. I'll walk 800 miles through thick and thin,

through robbers, thieves, battling armies.

And all kinds of things like that.

I'll walk 800 miles just to take a gift from

our church to a guy who's in prison 800 miles away.

It says he risked his life. The Greek there literally

says he hazarded his life. It's a gambling term. Epaphroditus

is God's godly gambler. He gambled his life for Jesus Christ. Now,

on this 800-mile walk to take this offering to Rome,

it doesn't tell us what he got or what kind

of disease or what happened, but he got so sick,

he nearly died.

And that's what everybody was worried about. He nearly died.

But in spite of persistent pain, he completes his mission

and he finishes what he starts. Now let me ask

you two very personal questions for you this year, 2,000

years later. Here are my two questions for you. What

commitment have you started that you haven't yet finished? What

if Epaphroditus in the middle got sick and just said,

I give up, I'm going back to Philippi?

He wouldn't have completed his mission.

What commitment have you made that you need to keep?

Maybe it's a commitment that to your spouse, a commitment

you made to your husband, a commitment you made to

your wife that I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna work

on this, but you haven't. Maybe a commitment you made

to one of your children or to a friend. Maybe it's,

I don't know, a commitment you made to God What

have you started that you need to complete? What have

you begun? You made a commitment to God and you

need to keep that commitment. You need to finish it.

You need to be consistent and you need to be reliable.

Let me ask you a second question. Is your commitment

to Christ deep enough to cause you to risk your life?

This is why these people Timothy and Epaphroditus is so rare.

There aren't many people like this. I mean, if your church,

if Saddleback Church asked you to walk 800 miles to

deliver a gift, would you do it? Would you do it?

There aren't many people like this guy. Sure, I'll do it.

I'll go walk 800 miles to take a gift to

a guy in need. Would you do that?

Would you do that?

There aren't many people like this, it's rare. That's why

the Bible says, honor them. He says, you're to honor, Timothy,

you're to honor men like this. See, most people say, well,

I'll live for Christ as long as it's convenient. But

right now, there's a good game on, excuse me. Most

people will be happy to live for Christ as long

as it's convenient and it's comfortable. Are you willing to

live for Christ at work when it's inconvenient and it's uncomfortable? Well, no,

then you're not much of a Christian. This is why

God says honor people like this. God says honor those

who take risks sharing the gospel. God is not finished

testing your faith.

So get ready.

You think God's gonna let you just coast the rest

of your life, really? You think God's gonna say, oh,

all of the big risks in your life are behind

you now.

Are you kidding me?

As long as you're alive, God's gonna keep testing you

with risky decisions for his sake to test your faith.

God is gonna call you to be a part in

some way to play some role of what he wants

to do through this church. I'm absolutely certain of it

or he wouldn't have called you here. And all I'm

asking you to do is to pray this week. Say, God,

the most dangerous prayer in the world.

Remember, it's two words. Use me. I dare you to

pray the most dangerous prayer in the world.

Use me. I'm afraid to pray that prayer. Pray it.

Use me because it is the secret of happiness. You

don't know really how to live until you know what's

worth dying for.

I want you to write this down. The last thing

you write down.

Happiness comes from putting service before security. Happiness comes from

putting service before security. God blesses those who serve him

even when it's inconvenient and uncomfortable. Happiness comes from putting

service before security. Not doing the safe thing, but doing

the thing that stretches your faith. And if you say, God,

use me, he'll figure out what that is for you,

and he'll let you know. And we'll end with Jesus'

secret of happiness, which sums up what we've looked at

this weekend. Mark 8, 35, Jesus said this. Only those

who give away their lives for my sake and for

the sake of the good news will ever know what

it means to really live. Only those who give away

their lives live for something worth dying for. For my

sake and for the sake of the good news will

ever know what it means to really live. You're just

existing until you have a purpose greater than yourself to

get out of bed for in the morning.

Now let me summarize.

The happiest people on earth are caring, consistent, cooperative, considerate,

and courageous.

That's what we just looked at. They're caring.

They get the focus off themselves. They're consistent. They learn

to be trustworthy. They're cooperative and considerate. They know how

to work with other people on a team. And they're courageous.

They're willing to take risks in faith. Let's bow our heads.

If you wanna be happy, I invite you to pray

this prayer with me. Dear God, I wanna be like

these guys. I want to learn to be happy. I

realize that happiness isn't a matter of luck, it's a

matter of learning. That I can choose to be happy.

I can make decisions to be happy. I can develop

character that will make me happy. So help me to

get the focus off myself, Lord. I'm really sick and

tired of looking at me. Help me to become somebody

that people can trust. Reliable, dependable, trustworthy. Help me to

do what I say I do. Help me to keep

my promises. And Lord, I need to learn how to

get along better with others. I need to learn how

to cooperate and I need to learn how to be considerate.

I need to learn how to be a team member.

how to work with people who are different from me.

I wanna be like Paul who said, I don't just

do what's best for me, what's best for everybody.

If you're married, say, Lord, help me.

To cultivate a life in common with my spouse. Say, Lord,

help me to learn to be considerate of my spouse

and my kids. And Lord, help me to live for

something worth dying for. I'm going to pray the most

dangerous prayer right now, Lord. Use me. I don't know

what that means, but I'm open. And I trust that

you'll show me what you want to do in my

life that will stretch my faith. Use me the way

you plan. Not the way somebody else planned, but your plan.

If you've never invited Jesus Christ in your life, say,

Jesus Christ, come into my life and save me. Forgive

my sins. Change me. Make me the person you want

me to be. Father, I thank you for these who've

prayed this prayer today. We know that holiness leads to happiness.

That happiness actually comes from holiness. And as we become

more like you, we become more happy. I pray a

blessing on every person here that whatever you've called us

to do, we will do. Whatever commitments we've made, we

will keep. And I pray this blessing in the name

of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.