Rick Warren - Why You Don’t Need to Fear the Future—Part Three

Hello, everybody. This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren.

I'm really glad you're here today. We're continuing our series

from Psalm twenty three called Living in the Goodness of God.

It's all about how God's goodness meets you right where

you are and brings hope even in difficult seasons. And

let's join Rick right now in the final part of

a message called why you Don't need to Fear the Future.

You have opposition in your life. There's some people who

don't like you. There's somebody who's gunning for your job.

There's somebody who just doesn't like you because of what

you believe. There's some people just they're mean. They just

their opponents. You have competitors. These people generous people are confident,

fearless in facing their opposition. Because they give generously to

the needy, they will have influence and honor. I want

you to hear a testimony of how instead of choosing

worry and complet you choose generosity and gratitude in your

life and what it does. These are miracle working attitudes.

Give a warm welcome to Phil right now. Well, Hello

is sattle Back Church.

I'd like to share my story about God's goodness and

the power of gratitude. Like many other couples in our

church family, for several years after we were married, my

wife Connie and I tried unsuccessfully to start our family.

We really wanted to have a baby, but it just

didn't happen. We prayed, we waited on the Lord, and

we tried literally everything. With each year passing we became

more frustrated and discouraged.

Well, we knew the.

Promises of God, but our experiences seemed to contradict those promises.

You know, truthfully, there were many days and sleepless nights

where we felt hopeless and really just wanted to give up.

I want to tell you, if you're currently in this

situation wanting to have kids but not seeing any way

that it might happen, Conyie, I understand your pain.

Well. As the childless months.

Turned into years, we could have easily given into Satan's

temptation to become bitter and to just throw in the towel,

to give up believing in God's goodness and mercy and

just walk away from running the race with Jesus. But

we didn't do that.

We did not give up believing in the.

Goodness of God, and we chose to take specific steps

that demonstrated our faith in God and our trust in

his perfect timing. First, we began just to simplify our lives,

both spiritually and financially, to prepare ourselves for the hope

of becoming parents. We wanted to remove just any hindrances

or barriers that could prevent us from keeping our lives

solely focused.

On Jesus regardless of what happened.

One of the things that we decided to do was

to have Connie stop working at her job. This would

lower her stress, but it also was a visible demonstration

of faith. Second, we decided to sell our house. It

was a big decision and move into something smaller so

we could afford to live off one income while paying

for the very expensive infertility treatments. We would do whatever

we could do while trusting God for what only He

could do. You know I stand here today honestly I

wrested with the feeling that we were moving backwards financially

in order to move forward towards our dream of starting

a family. But during this time of trusting and waiting,

God led me to a verse in the Bible as

he often does about praising God and being grateful for

the good things that God had already given to us.

Isaiah twenty five, verse.

One is a bold statement both of gratitude and faith,

and it's where the Lord directed us. It says, Lord,

you are my God. I will exalt you in praise

your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful

and good things, things planned long ago. This verse really

is the exact opposite of complaining and worrying and being

frustrated about the things that you don't have. Instead, it

taps into the power of gratitude. Well, this verse became

our anchor. We would be grateful for all the good

things God had already given to us, and in faith,

we would express our gratitude in advance for the good

things that we believed God would provide for us in

the future. In other words, we would trust the goodness

of God, and we would keep telling God how grateful

and how thankful we were. It was our faith in

the goodness of God that gave us the courage to

put up our house on the market. Well, two months

later our house sold and we moved into a teeny tiny,

one bedroom condo, and it was at that very moment

that my wife surprised me with the best news ever

that we were finally pregnant with our first child. Our

beautiful baby Roz was born this year on January thirteenth

in that little condo, and my hands were the first

hands to hold her. So I want to testify that

God is good and God is faithful. And if you

look up on the screen, this is from last month.

This is Connie and I's first Mother's day. Obviously you

could see that I outpunted my coverage with my wife.

She's beautiful.

God gave her temporary blindness to marry me. She's a

gift from the Lord. But looking back, we can now

see all the lessons we learned through all the days

of waiting and delays.

We often wanted to give up, but.

Our trust in the goodness of God kept us going

and also kept us growing and becoming more like Christ. Faith,

like a muscle, only grows when it is tested and stretched.

But I also want to be clear that even if

we had not received our miracle baby, we would still

believe in God's goodness and we would still be grateful

because everything we have is a gift from God's goodness

you know God has God has not guaranteed that we

will get everything we want in life, but God has

guaranteed that He knows and wants what is best for us,

and everything He does for us is good. In closing,

I want to urge you to practice the power of

daily gratitude in thanking God for his goodness. As Pastor

Rick teaches, gratitude to God has the power to change everything.

It releases miracles, it can break through barriers, it can

make the impossible possible. So I urge you to develop

the daily habit of being grateful for God's goodness to you.

And when you feel like something you really really want

will never happen, I challenge you to decrease your doubting

and increase your thankfulness for all of the good things

that God has already done for you. Then watch what happens.

God bless you Soughtobaur Church family, this is a good place.

Conyie.

Now are grateful for you and we love you dearly.

Thank you. You know. Another study that I read shows

that if the first thing you do in the morning

is you just mentally go through a list of things

you're grateful for, you know, make a list of ten

or twelve things, and you get up, you sit on

the side of your bed, and you thank God for

these things. That actually starting your day with gratitude actually

changes your brain chemistry. It actually transforms your mind for

the better. You'll think clearer during the day if you

will start your day not with complaining, not with bad news,

but with things you could be grateful for. So let's

do a little experiment. Okay, I dare you to do this.

How about for the next thirty days, we make a

commitment together that we're not gonna complain about anything. You

catch yourself complaining, you just cut yourself off. We're not

gonna complain about anything, and we're not gonna worry about anything. Instead,

we're gonna be grateful and we're gonna be generous. You

think you'd be any better in thirty days? Hello? Hello?

Now here's the problem. When I say, you know, get

up in the morning and make a list of things

you're grateful for. Sometimes you're a little blurry eye and

you can't even think about what you're grateful for. You,

I thank God for my doggie that I woke up. Okay,

thank God for sun and moon and breakfast and my

spouse and yeah, yeah, what about all the spiritual blessings

that you forget? God does for all of his goodness

and mercy every day. So I've made a tool for

you to use inside your program. I want you to

pull it out. I made this just for you. It's

called my Daily Gratitude Reminder. And if you're watching online

or you're listening on Daily Hope, you can go to

the Daily Hope website and get this, or you can

email me at the Daily Hope website and we'll send

this to you. My Daily Gratitude Reminder is a list

of God's goodness to me from A to I just

went through the alphabet, and what I want you to do.

I filled in the spiritual side. I want you to

fill in the material and relational. There are spiritual blessings

in your life. There are material blessings and their relational blessings. So,

for instance, you Lord, spiritual blessings. You A. You're always

with me. Thank you for that. You anoint me with

your grace. Thank you for that. You b you bring

out the bad, bring good out of the bad things

that happen to me. You bless me with abilities. See,

you care about my problems. You calm my worries and fears.

You call me your friend. D You designed my life

for your great plan and purpose. Thank you God. E.

You empower me with your spirit. You empathize with what

I feel. F You forgive and forget my sins. You

free me from shame. You fill my life with meaning.

G You give me what I need. You guide me

in the right way. You guarantee my salvation. Thank you God.

H hear my prayers, You heal my hurts. You help

me grow every day. Thank you God. I. You inspire

me with ideas and I need some today. Lord, you

invite me to depend on you. You include me in

your family. Thank you God. Jay. You justify me, justify

means just as if I never sins. So you say

there's no condemnation in my life because of Jesus. Thank

you God. Kay. You know what's best for me. You

keep your promises. You keep me saved and secure. Thank

you Elle. You love me unconditionally. You lift me up

when I'm down. M You made me to be loved

by you, and you meet all my needs. And you

notice what I don't see. You nourish my soul. Thank

you God that Oh you open doors of opportunity for me.

You overflow my life with blessings. Pee, you protect me

when I'm attacked and I'm overwhelmed, and you're patient with

my doubts. Thanks Q, you quiet my mind and my

heart when I trust you. Are you remain faithful to

me even when I'm unfaithful to you? Are you renew

me when I'm tired? S You sacrificed your son for me.

You show me your mercy. You set me free from myself,

not just my habit search and hang ups. But the

biggest enemy of you is you t You teach me

your truth or your word. You transform my life with

loving discipline. You you understand my pain, you use it

to help others. You uphold me when I want to

give up. V you valued me enough to send a

savior for me. Thank you God. W you wait for

the right timing to answer my prayers. Thanks you warn

me of traps. Thank you God. X. You express your

favor over me as your child. Why you yearn for

fellowship with me? You want to spend time with me?

WHOA Thank you and ZE you zoom in on every

detail of my life. You miss nothing. You can use

this You can use this. Now here's what I want

you to. I want you to take this, and then

over here in the material you can just put ABCD

give something you're grateful for, a material, physical thing. A

thank you God for air. Have you ever thanked God

for air? You wouldn't go very far without it? Be

you could put a Bible, Thank you God for the Bible.

Thank you God for all the beauty in the world.

Thank you God for books and all the things I've learned.

Thank You for my eyes and ears. This gave you

some examples. Over under t I have thank you God

for taste buds. What if God hadn't given you taste buds,

everything would taste like oatmeal. Have you ever thanked God

for your taste buds? Say thank you God that you

created taste buds, and then you made cinnabon. Okay, And

so you can where I live, thank you where you

just make a list. And then over under relational, I

give you a couple categories. Thanking God for your church.

Under P I put thank God for pastors because I

want you to thanking God for me. Thank God for

us my small group. But you can just go down

the list, put family members, friends, Hey, thank you God

for Amy, my daughter. Thank you God for be Bobby,

my mother in law. Thank you God for Claire and

Cole and Cassie, three of my grandkids. And you just

you can write them all down. Write that down, put

it by your bedside, and the next thirty days you

before you get out of bed, you develop the attitude

of gratitude. It will blow your mind. It will change

your life, It will reform your brain. It will do

all kinds of health mental, physical, and spiritual benefits. If

you develop the attitude of gratitude because God's goodness and

mercy are following me every day of my life. You

can do that. You can do that. Now, let me

be quick on the other two things you need to

do in light of these three commitments. Because God's I

have to be gracious to God. I'm gracious. I have

to be grateful and generous because God is grateful and generous,

I mean, is good and generous with me. Now here's

the next thing. Second thing. After I stay grateful and generous,

I have to be gracious to everyone. Write that down.

I have to be gracious to everyone because God is

so gracious to me. And the more gracious you are

with other people, the less fearful you're going to be

in life. Grace and fear don't reside in the same brain.

God wants you to pass on the good things. Here's

what the Bible says Ephesians four thirty two. Be gracious

and merciful to everyone. Why because God's gracious and merciful

to you. Be gracious and merciful to everyone, and forgive others,

just just as God has forgiven you because of Christ.

God cuts you a bunch of slack. Who are you

still holding on the hook. Who do you refuse to forgive?

Who do you refuse to let off the hook? Who

do you refuse to let go? Who do use refuse to?

Just wipe the slate clean and say, Okay, you're off

the hook. God was gracious to me. God has forgiven me.

I'm going to be gracious to you, and I'm going

to forgive you. You know what being gracious is. It's

another name for love. The more gracious you are when

you're gracious somebody, you're loving to them, and love, the

Bible tells us, is an anecdote to fear. Next verse

one John four eighteen, there is no fear in love.

Instead of perfect love drives out all fear because fear

has to do with punishment. I don't think God will

be merciful or graceful. He's gonna punish me. Fear has

to do with punishment. The one who fears has not

matured in love. Every time you invite God's love in

the front door of your life, fear goes out the

back door. And every time you invite fear into the

front door of your life, love goes out the back door.

Why Because fear is focused on you and love is

focused on God and others. It's gracious. Now, how do

you know when somebody doesn't understand the grace of God,

they're not gracious to anybody else. Ungracious people are ungrace

to people. They don't realize how much they've been forgiven,

so they want to hold it over everybody else's. If

I don't feel forgiven, if I don't feel if I

feel guilty and I feel ashamed, I certainly want you

feeling it too, because I don't want you feeling better

than me. But if I remember how much God has

forgiven me, and I remember how much God has wiped

out my guilt and wiped out my shame. I can

be pretty gentle with you, I can be pretty gracious.

I can let you off the hook. I can cut

you some slack. Anytime you see somebody who's ungracious, no,

they're walking around with a ton of guilt. You may

have a mother or mother in law, or father or

father in law, or a friend or a neighbor, or

a brother or sister, and they can't let anybody off

the hook. It's because they feel guilty. As long as

they don't feel grace, they're not gonna be gracious. But

the more grace you feel, the more you know you've

been forgiven, the more gracious you're gonna be with other people.

So I gotta stay grateful and generous because God is

so good. And I've got to stay gracious to everyone

because God is gracious to me. Here's the third one. Finally,

to live fearlessly, to live fully and furiously. I need

to live my life for God's glory, because He's gonna

share his glory with me someday. Right now, you live

for the glory of God, and one day you will

receive the glory of God forever and ever andever. He

says he's going to share it with you in heaven.

How do you do that? How do I live for

God's glory at work? How do I live for God's

glory at school? How do I live for God's glory

in the neighborhood? How do I live for God's glory

with my family? Matthew five sixteen. Jesus says, this, let

your light shine before others, so that they may see

your good works. That's the key. The good works, and

give glory to your Father, who is in heaven. You

just try to do your best, live in for God,

and he says that brings glory to God. What happens

when you do that? What happens when you live for

God's glory. It opens up your life to more of

God's goodness, to more of God's mercy. The more of

God's grace, the more of God's glory in your own life.

The Bible says this one Peter one last first on

your outline, Verse three. God, in his divine power, has

given us everything we need for living a godly life.

Because of His goodness and mercy. He gives you everything

you need. You got it all to live a godly life.

Now this power is given to us through knowing Jesus

and the benefit he has called us to share in

his own goodness and glory. One day you will share

in God's goodness and God's glory. Now, let me wrap

this up. When you think about the future, when you

think about the next six months, the next year, the

next ten years, the rest of your life, how do

you see it is your mind filled with doubt, confusion, anxiety, fear, worry.

It means you're not focused on In the last versa

Psalm twenty three, surely goodness and mercy will follow me

all the days of my life, and all dwell in

the house of the Lord forever. It's the antidote to

the three biggest fears about the future. You see, really,

you have a choice. You don't get to choose what's

going to happen to you the rest of your life.

You don't, But you do get to choose how you respond.

You can face the future as a cynic, as a critic,

as a pessimist, as a doubter. You can face the

future experiencing the worst and expecting the worst. You can

face it being ungrateful. You can face it being stingy.

You can face your future being ungracious to other people,

and you can live for the glory of yourself, or

you can face the future with gratitude and generosity and

graciousness and the glory of God. Which one you think

will make you happier? Which one do you think will

make you more successful? Which one do you think will

bring the smile of God and the reward of heaven.

And it's amazingly how different you feel about life when

you begin to live in the goodness of God and

you begin to live for the goodness of God. As

I said, there's gonna be a lot of events that

happened in your life you can't explain, but you can

face them confidently because you know surely goodness and mercy.

You're going to follow me and God will bring good

even out of the bad, no matter what the loss

of a loved one. God will bring good out of

the bad, surely goodness and mercy. And I may screw

up in the future big time, but God is merciful.

And I may be facing all kinds of problems in

my life, but ultimately I win because I will dwell

in the house of the Lord forever, and I'm going

to share in God's glory one day me. Why because

I deserve it? No, because He loves me. Now in

Psalm twenty three, you need to hear all these messages.

If you haven't, twelve expressions of God's goodness for you.

But they're not for everybody. All of these things only happen.

Goodness and mercy don't follow everybody. They only follow the

person who can say, the Lord is my shepherd. So

who's your shepherd? That's the question of the hour. Who's

your shepherd? Are you your own shepherd? Who's running your life,

who's managing your life? Who's the boss of your life?

Who is your shepherd? If you're saying I'm my shepherd,

goodness and mercy aren't following you, and you will not

dwell in the house of the Lord forever. This is

for people who say, I'm in the flock, I'm a

sheep in God's family. The Lord is my shepherd. And

when you can say that, you can say with confidence,

and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.

It's power heads. Some of you have been attending for months, weeks,

or maybe even years you've been listening online that you've

never stepped across the line spiritually you need to do so.

Right now, you need to say I want the Lord

to be my shepherd. I'm going to ask everybody who's

already done that to be praying right now for everybody

else who hasn't done that. And if you've never made

that decision, say right now in your heart thank God

for his goodness and mercy to you. Say, Dear God,

thank you that you give me what I don't deserve.

You give me good things. You are a good God.

And God, thank you that you don't give me what

I do deserve. You give me mercy. And then say,

Jesus Christ, I want you to be my shepherd, and

I want you to be my savior. And I don't

want to follow you the rest of my life with

your sheep dogs goodness and mercy coming up from behind

keeping me on the right path. And say, God, I

humbly ask you to reserve a home for me in

heaven because Jesus died to make that possible. As much

as I know how, I ask you Christ to come

into my life and transform me. And I want to

be a person who's grateful and generous and gracious and

live for your glory because you are so good to me.

You're so generous with me, and you're so gracious to me,

and you're going to share your glory with me one day.

That is amazing. Thank you in your name, I pray Amen.

You know, if you just prayed that prayer for the

very first time, or you just recommitted your life to

Jesus again today, would you let me know about it.

There's something real about sharing your commitment. So write me

Rick at pastor Rick dot com and say, Rick, I

prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ.

And I'll send you some material that will help you

on your journey with Jesus. And I'll also pray for you.

God bless you.

We're so glad you've joined us today on Pastor Rick's

Daily Hope. Would you like to get the A to

Z gratitude list that Rick talked about today.

It's easy. Just go to.

Pastorick dot com and click on the menu icon in

the top right corner and select free resources. And now

here's a closing thought from Pastor Rick.

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