Rick Warren - How God Lifts Me Up When I’m Worn Down—Part Two

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. So

let's get started. Here's the final part of a message

called how God lifts me up when I'm worn down.

Here's the second thing. The banquet means, write this down.

God wants to bless me to show the world his goodness.

God wants to bless me so he can show the

world his goodness. You are a trophy of God's grace.

I am a trophy of God's grace. I don't deserve

the blessing on my life, but I don't deserve anything.

It's all by God's grace. You don't deserve this banquet,

but God says, I just want to do it because

I love you. You are exhibit a of God's grace.

You are God's goodness on display. Look at this next

verse Psalm thirty one, verse nineteen. Your goodness is so great.

Remember we'd studying the goodness of God. Your goodness is

so great. You have stored up great blessings for those

who honor you. And you have done so much for

those who come to you for protection when you're in

the middle of a battle, blessing them before the watching world,

in the presence of mine enemies. God says, I want

to bless your life so all the people can look

at you go Wow, that girl is blessed, that guy

is blessed. I want that. How do are they blessed

so much? How are they blessed them? Well, they have

a good God. They know God, And he says, those

who honor me, He says, I have stored up great

blessings for those who honor me. Now I want you

to circle those two words. Stored up, It says God

has stored up great blessings for those who honor you.

Stored up indicates advance planning. It means that God plans

what He's going to do for you before it actually

happens in your life. It's stored up. It's planning to dance.

It's not just spur of the moment. You know, I

just thought it up right now. God prepares a banquet,

prepares in advance a banquet for you in the presence

of your enemy when you're in the battle. Okay, let's

apply this right now. You know that battle you're going

through right now, the tough when you're going through right now,

and it's a white knuckle, you know, bare bare hands

thing you're holding on. I'm not going to roller coaster

for dear life. And you don't know if you're going

to win this battle or not. Financial battle, physical battle,

relational battle, dignity battle, moral battle, whatever the conflict's going

on in your life. Those jaws are distress. You know

that battle. God says, I prepare a banquet for you

in the presence of your enemies. He had stored up

the blessing. It means that battle you're fighting right now,

which is very intense, before it even started, before you

even got in that battle, God had already prepared the

victory celebration. God has already prepared the banquet. God has

already prepared the celebration party for the problem you're in

right now. Because he knows everything, he knows how it's

going to come out. You store up in advance great

blessings for those who you Just keep honoring God with

your life. With your body, with your business. You keep

honoring God with the way you think, with the way

you act, with the way you talk, And even though

everybody's coming against you, you just keep honoring God. God

because I already got the banquet planned. It's already stored up,

because you're going to get through this with My help.

God loves to throw victory celebrations for his children Psalm

thirty five. Look here on the screen, verse twenty seven,

How great is the Lord. He is pleased with the

success of his servant. I love that verse. How great

is the Lord? He is pleased with the success of

his servant. God loves to honor you, and he is

pleased with the success when you succeed of your When

you are a servant, God has put all promises in

the Word of God about it. If you're in the

middle of a battle right now of any kind, you

need to realize that God has prepared to bank for

you on the battlefield just a few hundred yards away,

and you've got to walk over there, walk into the tent,

sit down and have some fellowship with God and eat

your favorite foods. That's what God wants to do in

your life. So my last question, then, is what's on

the menu. What's on the menu of God's banquet. I

want you to write this down. Everything God has promised

in his word is on the menu. Everything that God

has promised in his word is on the menu. The

menu are the promises of God in his word. Now

by many counts, one estimate is that they are about

five thousand, five hundred promises in this book from God

to you. Have you eaten any of them? Have you

eaten any of the five thousand plus five hundred promises

of God to you? The banquet is sitting right there.

Your banquet is in your Bible. Everything God has promised

to do your life is in this book. If you're

not reading this book, you don't know squat about what's

on the menu. All of those five thousand, five hundred

promises are there. This book is full of fruit and

bread and all kinds of meat and milk, and drinks

and wine and sweets and lots and lots of desserts.

God calls the Bible the Word of God. It calls

it the bread of life. Man shall not live by

bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of

the mouth of God. The Bible calls itself the meat

of the word, the you've read of the word, the

milk of the word. The Bible says it tastes sweeter

than honey. The Bible says it is fruit. The Bible

says it is fulfilling. The Bible says it is tasty,

and over and over and over all of those terms,

banquet terms describe the Bible itself. And you can have

a feast anywhere. You've got one of these. You me

sitting in a bus stop and pull out a Bible

and start having a feast right there of all the

things God has promised to do in your life. And

your anger goes down, and your fear goes down, and

your anxiety goes down. The reason why your anxiety is

up is because you're not in this book. You don't

know what God's promised to do in this book. Now,

if God has provided a feast, a banquet in this book,

why would you ever go eat internet granola bar when

there's a feast laid out for you And you're reading

a newspaper more than you read this. You're reading magazines

more than this, you're reading social media far more than this,

and that's starving you while this would be feeding you

what God has laid out and promised you. The Bible

says this and Psalm one five excuse me one nineteen

verse one oh three. The promises of your word taste

sweet to me. They taste sweeter than honey in my mouth.

You got a bad taste in your mouth. How much

time are you spending in this book? If you're not

spending any time in his mouth, You've got nothing in

your mouth but gravel. This is the feeding. Are you

fasting or are you feasting on the word of God?

Are you fasting or are you feasting on God's banquet

that He's laid out for you? All the stuff He's

promised to do in your life, You can't do them

if you don't know them. God knows what ever, shuts

his blessings until you shut this book. When you open

this book every day, you need to be feeding and

eating from it from the banquet of God. Now, how

much time are you really spinning in this book? Not

very much? So well, I go to church once a week.

How would you do if you ate one meal a week?

I'm feeding you the word of God right now. But

if you ate one meal a week and it was

a banquet and then you fasted the rest, you'd be erexic,

you wouldn't be very healthy. This is not what I'm

teaching you. Is not enough. You got to feed and

feast on the Word of God every day. This is

where you get your strength for the battle. And if

you're not getting your strength from the battle from this book,

you are failing in your battle because you don't simply

have enough strength on your own to face all the

crisis you're going to hand. I'm telling you, as your

pastor who loves you, You've got to get in this

book every single day of your life. It's the banquet.

And if you don't have it, then you're you're not growing,

you're not being healthy, You're not being strengthened for the battle.

What you need to do is go get a modern translation.

Don't get read one of those books with the Vise

and then Ow's and the Elizabethan English. There are tons

of modern translations. You go, oh, that's what that means.

And then go take Class two oh one again, which

I wrote, which teaches you how to have a daily

feast with God. You've been through that class, you've forgotten

what it's all about go take it again. Take class

two O one again, so you can learn how to

feast on the word of God. Psalm thirty four, verse

eight says this, learn to savor how good the Lord is.

Do you do that when you read the Bible? Do

you savor the word of God? He said, no, no,

I don't. I just kind of do it as I

ought to do it. Okay, listen very closely. Your view

of this book, what you think it is, will determine

how much you enjoy it. Okay, how much you enjoy it.

If you think that this is a textbook, like this

is God's textbook for us, does anybody ever enjoy reading

a textbook? No? I hate reading textbooks. And if you

think that this is a textbook, you're gonna go. I

don't want to read that anymore. I want to do

any other homework. It's not a textbook. If you think

it's a history book, well you know it's got some

great stories in there, history of Israel and history of

Jesus and all that history. Do you enjoy reading a

history book. Not many people do. It's not a history book.

If you think this is an insurance policy, it's your

fire insurance policy. See keep you out of hell. Okay, okay,

either this is my fire insurance policy, I better read

that or or this. If you think the Bible is

a love life insurance policy, how you get eternal life?

How you get to heaven? Have you ever read an

insurance policy? No? You have not? What because they're boring

and dry as all get out. Any yeah, yeah, just

show me where to sign. So, if it's a textbook,

if it's a history book, if it's an insurance policy,

whether it's for hell or heaven or whatever, you're not

gonna read it. You know what this book is. This

book is God's love letter to you. It's a love letter.

His banner over me is love. When Kay and I

got engaged many many years ago, we did something really done.

We got engaged and both moved the opposite sides of

the world. We lived in California. She moved to Birmingham,

Alabama to work in an inner city African American church,

and I moved to Nagasaki, Japan to plant a church.

And we were separated almost our entire engagement. Now, in

those days, we didn't have cell phones, and it cost

fifteen bucks a minute on a regular phone to call Japan.

In those days, it's very expensive. We were dirt poor,

so we only had one alternative, write letters. I wrote

a letter every day. She wrote a letter every day,

and the way would stack up. I'd get her letter

before she got my response to the next letter, and

my letter was talking about something, she didn't get it

until the next one in it. Were always having out

of sync because of the letters. But that was the

highlight of my day when I lived in Japan. When

I got a love letter. You think somebody said, hey, Rick,

you got another letter from k I thought, well, put

it there, I'll read it in a couple of days.

Are you kidding me? The moment that love letter, right,

I would tear it open and i would read it,

and i would reread it, and I'd try to read

between the lines, and i'd underline it, and I'd want

to memorize portions of it, and I'm going, I'm trying

to gather every drop of love from this woman for

me out of this letter. And I'd read it and

reread it and reread it. This is God's love letter

to you. This is not a book. The Bible is

not for everybody. The Bible is written for God's children.

And that's why when somebody who doesn't believe in God

tries to read that and making sense, Well, that's what

you get for reading somebody else's mail. Okay, okay, it

wasn't written for you. This is God's love letter to

his children. If you only do one thing, you start

reading the Bible every single day. I'll tell you what's

Start with the Book of Luke this week. Start with

the Book of Luke. It just tell us about Jesus.

They start reading through that your view. If you're not

in this book every day, you are forgetting how much

God loves you, and you're forgetting what's on the banquet table.

As a result, you're stressed out because you think it

all depends on you. You don't know what's covered in

the policy. You don't know what God's already promised to do.

The banquet is in the Bible. Now, one more thing.

This promise you prepare for me a banquet and the

presence of my enemies is both now and later verse

in the Bible. Because right now, while you're in the battle,

you can have a banquet. Any day. You open this

book and it'll give you strength for the enemies in

your life. But there's one day going to be a

literal banquet for you in heaven. It's called the marriage

Supper of the Lamb. And let me read it to you.

Isaiah chapter twenty five says this, here's how it's going

to happen. One day history is moving toward a climax

in heaven. And one day there's going to be a

party in heaven, a giant banquet for all of God's

people who honored him and trusted him. And it says

this Isaiah twenty five six to nine. The Lord Almighty

will prepare a feast of the finest food for all peoples. Now,

doesn't matter what your background is, doesn't matter what color

your skin is, doesn't matter what race your cultural background,

doesn't matter what religion you are. If you have put

your faith in His son, if you have trusted God,

if God has accepted you in this family. He said,

this is for everybody, no matter what your background is.

The Lord will prepare a feast the finest food for

all people, a banquet of the best of meats and

finest wines. And on this mountain God will destroy the

shroud that enfolds all peoples, and the sheet that covers

all nations. What's a shroud and what's a sheet? A shroud?

A shroud literally is what they put over dead people.

It's a covering. You would they would like a mummy,

they would wrap a dead body in a shroud. It's

a covering of death. And the shroud that this stigma

is the gloom that's spread all over the earth because

we all know we're all going to die. We're all

going to die, and that is that that brings our

attitude and we're not gonna live forever on earth. And

that's the gloom that hangs over everybody. Everybody knows they're

going to die. One day, God says he's going to

destroy that shroud of death and that enfolds people. And

the sheets that cover all nations. What's the sheets? That's

the crowd of grief that we're all under because things

don't work right, everything's broken on this planet. God says,

one day at this banquet, I'm going to destroy that

last enemy. I told you had the enemy of the world,

the flashing devil, But you have a fourth enemy. The

Bible calls the fourth enemy death, and the Bible says

in scripture death is the last enemy. To be defeated,

and it would be defeated on this day, and there

will be no more death. The Bible says this, he

will swallow up death forever, no more death. Nobody dies

after this. The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears

from all faces, and he will remove the disgrace of

his people from all the earth. What's that talking about

the disgrace of his people? Is all the putdowns you've

had for being a believer, When people have put you

down for standing for truth, when people have put you

down for doing the right thing, when people have put

you down for claiming to be a follower of Jesus Christ.

That's the disgrace. He said, He's going to remove all

the disgrace of his people. Why by having a banquet

in front of all the enemies. He said, I love

these people. They put up with all kinds of stuff

at the office and work and a home, but they

loved me more than they loved you. And he says

he will wipe away their tears. He'll remove the disgrace

of people from all the earth. And in that day

they that's us. We'll say, surely this is our God.

We trusted him and he saved us. Yes, this is

the Lord we trusted in him. So let us rejoice

and be glad in his salvation, and the eternal party

will begin. That's power. Heads. Have you met Jesus? Have

you accepted his salvation? Or are you still trying to

fight all your battles on your own power? How's that

going for you? How's that working out? A little frustrating?

God has planned a party for you, if you'll just

trust him. He's planned a banquet in the middle of

your battle. No matter what it is. I'm going to

pray as very simple pri and I invite you to

pray it again with me, maybe for the five thousandth time.

Some of you it'll be for the very first time.

Just say this, Thank you God, Thank you for your

goodness to me, even the stuff I don't recognize and

don't even notice. Thank you that, even in the middle

of all my battles, you want to give me a banquet.

You want to make me the guest of honor. It's

not in secret, it's public. It's on the battlefield, and

even my enemies have to watch you honor me, and

they can't do anything about it. Lord, I'm not doing

too good in my battles. Right now, the world's around

me with all of the pressure and stress expectations, and

Satan's against me, and he's always suggesting me to do

the wrong things, trying to trip me up. And then

my old nature inside of me is at war with myself.

And you know, Lord, alf and do stuff that I

don't really want to do, and I don't do the

things that I know are good and help thee and right,

and I'm tired in the battle. Thank you that you

want me, and thank you that you welcome me into fellowship. Lord.

It's hard to believe that you God would want to

hang out with me, that you would love me that much,

that you'd go to all expensive preparing a banquet for

me when I run for cover to you. Lord. I

read that verse today that said, you're gently calling me

from the jaws of distress. I'm coming. I'm coming right now.

I'm running straight to you, Lord, to that open place

of freedom where you've set a table full of the

very best food. Thank you for loving me, and Lord,

thank you for wanting to bless me, to show the

world your goodness. You've already done so much for me.

The air I breathe is a gift that you want

to bless me before the watching world, and I want

to be blessable. I want to put my trust in you,

Jesus Christ. I don't understand it all. Forgive me for

going days without looking at your word the Bible. Everything

you promised is there. The banquet is in the Bible.

And I want to commit to not going to bed

at night without feasting a little bit on the banquet,

all those five thousand, five hundred promises that you've made.

And so I'm stepping out of the battle right now.

I'm walking into your tent and in the one on

one fellowship. I want to receive your love and I

want to learn to love you back. I humbly ask

you to accept me into your family. 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.

I don't know about you, but I am encouraged after

that message. And let's keep the encouragement going with a

letter from one of our listeners.

Here's Rick. You know I love hearing from Daily Hope

listeners like you. And here's one note that I got

from Raymond in New York. Your pastor, Rick, I'd like

you to know how much I appreciate the Daily Hope broadcast.

The nuggets that I get I share with my lunch

group at work, and my family benefits as well because

at dinner time, my wife and my son hear the

nugget that I learned during the day and we discuss it.

It's awesome. Well, let me just say this, Raymond, thanks

for writing me, and thanks for sharing your story. You

encouraged me just now. I'm happy to hear that you're

sharing Daily Hope with your co workers and with your family.

If God has used this broadcast in your life, would

you let me know about it and tell your story.

It'll be good for you, it'll be good for me,

and it'll be good for all the others who hear it.

I love you and I thank God for you, and

join me next time as we continue to look into

God's word for our daily hope.

Now, if you'd like to let Rick know how much

this broadcast has blessed you, please feel free to send

him an email. He loves it. Send it to Rick

at pastorrick dot com. That's Rick at pastorick dot com.

Be sure to join us next time as we look

into God's.

Word for our daily hope.

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