Rick Warren - Grow Healthy Relationships—Part Two

Hey, thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope,

the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. And today we're

continuing our series called the Habits of Happiness. In this series,

Rick dives into the Book of Philippians and helps you

discover God's path to true and lasting happiness. And now

let's jump right in for the final part of a

message called grow Healthy Relationships.

You might write this down.

Positive praying is more effective than positive thinking. You know,

people read all these books about positive thinking. Well, okay,

there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I'm sure I'd

rather have you thinking positively than negatively.

But all the.

Positive thinking in the world isn't going to change your

husband or your wife, or your child, or your friend.

Or your situation. Positive thinking is not enough.

Positive thinking can change you, but it can't change somebody else.

But positive prayer can. So positive prayer is more powerful

than positive thinking. So I want you to write this down.

Here's my little happiness hint. The quickest way to change

a bad relationship to a good one. The quickest way

start praying for them. Start praying for It'll change you

and it can change them. Start praying for them. You say, well,

what do I pray? Well, I would encourage you to

pray what Paul prayed, and in verses nine to eleven,

we have what Paul prayed. Here's what he says, and

this is my prayer. That your love may abound more

and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that

you may be able to discern what is best. That

you may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ,

and that you may be filled with the fruit of

righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ to the glory and

praise of God.

What does he say?

Four things you can pray? Write these down four things pray,

and I would say, pray these for your kids. Pray

these for your friends, Pray these for your boyfriend, your girlfriend,

Pray these for your boss, Pray these for me, anybody.

You care about. Pray with joy for the people.

In your life. And you pray these four things. First,

pray they will grow in love. Pray that they will

grow in love. Paul says that your love will grow

more and more. Number two, he says, pray that they

will make wise choices. Pray that the people in your

life and your family and your friends and your pray

that they will make wise choices. Verse nine and ten

says that you will know and fully know and understand.

How to make the right choices.

Third thing to pray for the people in your life,

pray they will live with integrity. Pray that they will

live with integra. Paul says, I pray that you may

live pure and blameless lives until Christ returns. And the

fourth thing to pray is pray that they will become

like Jesus. Parents, there's your prayer agenda right there. Husbands, wives, friends,

there's your prayer agenda right there. Pray that they will

become like Christ. Verse eleven, that you will be filled

with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ

to the glory and praise of God.

Circle.

The word Fruit's what the fruits he talk about there, Well,

we call it the fruit of the spirit. The fruit

of the spirit is the character of Jesus. In Glatians

five twenty two and twenty three says this, The fruit

of the spirit is love and joy and peace and

patience and kindness. The fruit of the spirit is goodness

and faithfulness. Fruit of the spirit is gentleness and self control.

What is that?

It's a perfect picture of Jesus. Now, these four things

you can pray for me any day of the week.

Pray that I will grow in love. Pray that I

will make wise choices. Pray that I will live with integrity.

Pray that I will become more and more like Jesus.

You can pray these for yourself. You can pray these

for your spouse. And you know what, you can know

they will be answered. Why, because they're in the Bible.

This is not a prayer if it's your will, God,

this is God's will. It's in the Bible, so you

know God wants to answer that prayer. So the first

thing I do have to be grateful for the people

in my life. And second, I have to pray and

actually pray joyfully, not with complaining, not with criticism like,

oh God, why can't you get this man in mind

in shape. That's not praying joyfully, that's praying whinily, crankily. No,

pray joyfully, and here's what you pray. Number three, here's

the third habit, Paul says, and it's in the next verse.

I must expect the best from people in my life.

I must expect the best. Now, these things are so

simple for me. To teach you, but they are so

hard to turn into habits. We don't normally expect the

best from the people around us. We expect the worst.

We expect them to let us down because we have

a track record. Now he's saying, you want to make

a habit of believing in people rather than criticizing them.

Expect the best Philippians want and in the verse six

is the next verse, he says this, I am confident

of this, that God, who began a good work in you,

will carry it to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Now circle the word confident. I am confident of this,

that God, who began the good work in you, will carry.

It on to completion until the day.

I'm expecting the best from the people in my life.

Now, Paul is a pro at bringing.

Out the best in people, and I want to teach

you how to do it.

Right now.

There are three things that you do to bring out

the best in people, and Paul does all three of them.

In this verse he says, here's how I bring out

the best people. Number one, he just write this down.

He believed in people. He believed in people. He says,

I am confident and he gave them confidence. Do you

give the people in your life confidence or do you

tear them down? Do you build them up or do

you tear them down? Do you give the people in

your life confidence? In the last series, I gave you

an illustration about what a good parent does when a

child stumbles. Do you remember I said, if a child

is running a race and you're at the track watching

him run a race at school, and all of a

sudden they really mess up and they stumble, and they

fall flat on their face and they embarrass themselves, and

you're in the stand as a parent, what do you do.

You don't get up and say, oh, I'm so embarrassed,

I'm leaving. You know how pathetic you are. A bad

parent would do that. But what does a good parent do.

A good parent stands up and yells even more.

You can do this. Get up. I believe in you.

I know you can do it. Come on, come on,

get up.

I know this is just a minor thing. No, don't

worry about it, don't worry about anybody else.

Just keep on running.

That's what God does with you when you stumble. That's

what God wants you to do with people in your

life when they stumble. That's what it means to be

like Jesus. Paul says, I believe in people. I give

them confidence, I help them grow. I am confident that

what God has started in your life, he's going to

continue to do. You see, we all need people to

believe in us because it's how we change. You can't

change unless somebody believes in you and you believe in yourself.

Acceptance always precedes transformation. That's why I always say, you know,

don't tell it like it is, Tell it like it

could be.

Sometimes.

You know, I trained pastors in preaching, and sometimes pastors say,

well I.

Just tell it like it is.

I said, well, okay, but that doesn't change anybody. Tell

it like it could be is preaching for faith. I

could get up here and say, you know, you're all

not doing a good job, and I could tell you

all the errors you're not doing a good job in.

What would it do?

Just make you defensive? It wouldn't change you one bit,

and next week you go, oh, let's go back and

have requipus some more. Some some people acts as spiritual massacres.

O pastor, that's such a great sermon. It made me

feel so bad. I don't going what no, No, that's

not it. Nobody changes by nagging. Doesn't happen in the

pulpit or anywhere else. So don't tell it like it is.

Tell it like it could be. If I helped draw

a picture, say this is what you could become, this

is what you could be with God's power in your life,

then you get excited. Paul says, I'm confident I believe

in you. The second thing he did is he gave

people vision, and the vision was you're gonna keep growing.

God's not gonna what God starts, he finishes. He's not

gonna leave you halfway out there. He gave people vision.

He painted a picture of the future. Now why is

that important? Because study after study after study shows that

we tend to live up to the expectations of other people.

When people expect the best of you, you tend to

do better. When teachers expect to be the best of

their students, they always perform better than teachers who don't

expect the best from their students. That has been proven

over and over again in studies that we tend to

become what we believe the most important people in our

lives think about us. So Paul says, I expect the

best from people. I believe in people. I give people vision.

And the third thing, this is really important. You write

this down from this verse. He was patient with people's progress.

I am confident to what God's begun in you. He's

going to keep on and he's going to carry it

to completion until the Jesus Day of Jesus Christ. He

was patient with people's progress. Now, why is that I

am so important to your happiness?

I'll tell you why.

If you insist on perfection in people, you're going to

be miserable the rest of your life because there's nobody perfect,

especially you. And if you're always expecting perfection in people

before you can enjoy them, then you're never going to

be happy because nobody's perfect.

Paul says, I am patient with people's progress. Now, let

me give you a little happiness hit on this one.

You write this one down if you want to really

be happy in your relationships, if you want to have

happier relationships, helpier relationships, Celebrate how far people have come

rather than judging them for how much they still have

to go. Celebrate people for how far they've come, rather

than judging how far they still have to go. You

got to be patient with people's progress. When my kids

were little, they would draw me pictures and they would

bring it to me and they'd say, what do you

think of this, Daddy? And I would say, that's perfect, Amy,

that's perfect, Josh, that's perfect, Matthew.

It looks great. And when I said that perfect, but

I mean its a Picasso.

No, it was perfect for that stage in their life.

God doesn't wait until you're mature for him to start

loving you, So you shouldn't do that with others either.

You got to love them worts and all. You got

to be patient with their progress. Now, what is the

key to patience? How do I celebrate how far people

have come rather than judging how far they still let go?

The key to patience is love, and Paul says in

the next verse, verse seven, it is right for me

to feel this way. In other words, I expect the

best from you. It's right for me to feel this

way about you since I have you in my heart.

Circle that phrase in my heart. This is a real

key to happiness and it's real key to healthy relationships.

You got to have people in your heart. You know

what I've discovered if people aren't on my heart, they're

on my nerves. And if I want to get them

off my nerves, I gotta get them on my heart.

If I'm praying for somebody, they just don't bug me

as much. They just don't bother me as much. If

they're on my heart, they're not on my nerves. But

if I'm not praying for them, I get perturbed by

them pretty easily. He says, I have you in my heart.

You see, so many of the relationship problems that you have,

that you have over and over and over, is because

we all tend to react with our head, not with

our heart, and that's the wrong place to go in relationships.

That's you know, somebody comes you, let's say men, let

me talk to them in for a minute. Your wife

comes to you and says, honey, this really frightens me,

This really worries me. This thing really concerns me. And

you react not with your heart. You react with your

head and go, well, that's illogical, that's dumb. You shouldn't

feel that way. Well that was helpful. No, No, did

that really build a bridge? No, no, it did at all,

because you're reacting with your head rather than with your heart.

When people say, and you've had people say this to

you before, I just don't understand. You just don't understand.

You just don't understand. They're not really talking about understanding.

What they're really saying is you don't feel my pain.

You don't feel what I'm feeling. Has nothing to do

with understanding. It has everything to do with empathy. You're

not sympathetic. You're not empathetic, you don't care, you're not

feeling my feelings. And I say, you don't understand. We

try to logic, get out and say, well, let me understand. No,

it's not logic, it's it's feelings. Feelings are just feelings.

They're not right or wrong, they're just they're just feelings.

And so when Paul says, I have you on my heart,

loving from the heart begins with understanding, and it means

you know why they tick, you know how they tick,

and you don't judge them for.

Ticking that way.

You just listen and you accept, and you listen and

you understand moods and you respond accordingly. And that leads

us to the fourth big habit. And this one is

the granddaddy of them all. And Paul says, this is

the fourth secret. I must love people in my life

like Jesus does. I must love people in my life

like Jesus does. I must be grateful for the people

in life. I must pray for the people in my

life with joy. I must expect the best from the

people of my life. And I must love people in

my life like Jesus does. Now again, I told you

it's easy for me to teach it. It's incredibly hard

for you to do this because you're not Jesus, and

we tend to be self centered. We tend to look

at our own needs and all of the things that

have happened in their life. But I've got to love

people like Jesus does.

Verse eight.

Here's the fourth thing Paul says about relational habits.

God is my witness.

That I tell the truth when I say that my

deep love for you, my deep love for you, all

comes from the heart of Christ, Jesus himself. I love

this verse so much because I identify with it. See,

Paul started the Philippian Church. He was the first member,

he was the first pastor, and so I identify with

how he felt about this church as I do about you.

I want you to know that I am grateful for you,

just like Paul was. I want you to know that

I pray for you with joy. I want you to

know that I believe in you, I have confidence in you,

and I want you to know that it is an

honor to serve you. First, John three point sixteen says this.

This is how we know what real love is. Christ

gave his life for us, so then we ought to

give our lives for who for others?

Now? What is that reference? Again? Look at it?

What is it? It's first John three sixteen. Does that

remind you of any other verse? John three sixteen? Same

guy wrote, both, you know what the problem with relationships

is today? People who know John three point sixteen ignore

first John three sixteen.

We all know John three sixteen. Most of you could

quote it.

God so loved the world that he gave his only

son that whoever believes in him should not perish but

have everlasting life. That's the way to salvation. It's a

way to have past forgiven purpose for living home in heaven.

God says, I sent my son. That's how much I

love you. And we're all grateful for God's love for

us John three sixteen. But we want to ignore one

John three point sixteen. It says, and this is real love.

God gave his life for us. He gave his son

for us, and we must do the same thing. If

we would do that, we would not have any relational

problems because we wouldn't be thinking about ourselves, we'd be

thinking about other people.

That's bower Heads. Which of these four habits.

Do you need to work on? Who do you need

to be more grateful for? Who in your life have

you taken for granted? Who have you failed to appreciate?

Who have you because of their faults or flaws you

have not been grateful for them? That's the first habit

of happiness. Be grateful for the people in my life.

Number two, are you praying for the people in your life?

And are you praying with joy? Are you praying with complaining?

God fix that person? Are you praying with joy? I'm

going to encourage you to make a prayer list and

write down some names and pray the four things that

Paul prayed. That people will grow in love, that they

will make wise choices, that they'll live with integrity, that

will become like Jesus. Let me ask you this, are

you patient with the progress of the people in your life,

or do you demand perfection? It's never good enough. So

I said, if people have to be perfect for you

to enjoy them, you're never going to enjoy them. And

number four, who do you need to start loving from

the heart rather than from the head? Now, in this series,

we're going to talk about the habits of happiness. Desire

will get you started, but the habits will keep you going.

So I want you to first make a commitment to

be a part of this series. And why don't you,

in your heart right now say God, I really do

want to be happy and I want to learn the

habits of happiness.

And I commit to.

Being a part and not missing any of this series

that I may learn the habits of happiness. If you've

never invited Christ in your life, say Jesus Christ, thank

you for loving me, Thank you for dying for me.

I don't understand it all, but I want to get

to know you and I want to learn to love

you back. And then, Dear God, I ask you to

give me the power to be grateful for the people

in my life. Help me to remember the best and

forget the rest, and on those bad relationships, help me

to start praying for them and pray with joy. Pray

that they grow in love and that they live with

integrity to become like Jesus. Dear God, I want you

to help me develop the habit of expecting the best

from the people in my life rather than criticizing the worst.

Help me to believe in people. Help me to be

confident and build confidence. Help me to be patient with

people's progress. Help me to recognize how far people have come,

not how far they still have to go. Dear God,

help me to have love in my heart and to

love people not from the head. Men. You guys who

are married, say God, help me to love my wife

from my heart, not from my head. And help me

to love people in my life like Jesus does. That

I would be willing to lay down my life in

sacrifice or in service. I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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Jesus told his disciples that they should live their lives

according to five specific purposes. He said, you've got to

love God with all your heart. That's worship. And love

your neighbors yourself. That's ministry. That's called the Great Commandment.

And then Jesus said, go make disciples. That's evangelism. Baptize

them into the Family of God. That's fellowship, a sign

of fellowship. And then he said, teach them obey everything

I've taught you. That's discipleship, and that the Great Commission.

We believe it daily hope that a great commitment to

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