Rick Warren - The Humble Path to Happiness—Part One

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. Let's get

right to it with part one of a message called

the Humble Path to Happiness.

Today, we're in part three of a series, the Habits

of Happiness, and we're going verse by verse through the

Book of Philippians. If you were to go to out

on the patio, or if you were to go out

to some mall and ask people, what do you think

is the path to happiness? Most people would probably say

something like this, Get an education, get a job, get married,

have a family, make a lot of money, retire. That's

the path of happiness. But I know a lot of

people have done all those things and they're not happy

at all. The Bible says that the path to happiness

is something you're never in your wildest idea, I can imagine.

The path to happiness is through humility. He said, what

how in the world would humility make me happy? There

are many many reasons why humility is the key that

unlocks true happiness and why pride is the thing that

guarantees unhappiness in your life. And I could give you

many different reasons, but let me just give you one,

and we're going to focus on it this weekend. One

of the greatest kill joys in life. One of the

greatest causes of unhappiness is conflict. Everybody agree with that

conflict when I mean, you could have a lot of money,

you could be famous, you could be successful, But if

you have conflict in your relationships, your life is unhappy.

Everything can be going great in your life and you

have an argument with somebody you love, and all of

a sudden, that happiness just flies out the window. If

you're ever going to learn to be happy on a

long term basis, you're going to learn have to how

to reduce, how to eliminate conflict in your life. And

that's where humility comes in. The Bible tells us that

the habit of humility is the key to reducing conflict

in your life, because pride is the thing that causes conflict.

On your outline, the Bible says in Proverbs thirteen ten,

pride always leads to arguments. How many of you agree

with that verse? Yeah? You know this little background in

this verse. This was the first verse K and I

memorized when we got married thirty eight years ago. We

actually memorized it on our honeymoon because we needed it.

On our honeymoon, because my wife and I are so different,

we argued about everything. We just see everything so differently.

And so the first verse we learned was only by

pride comes contention, or in the modern translation, pride always

leads to arguments. Now, in this passage that we're going

to look at this weekend, Philippians two one to eleven,

we have the greatest explanation ever written on planet Earth

about the relationship between humility and harmony and happiness. And

this passage tells us first, it says in the first

couple verses that harmony creates happiness, and that happiness comes

from harmony. And then we learn in the next few

verses that humility creates harmony, and in the last verses

it talks about how Jesus modeled both. I'm going to

read you the passage right now, and why don't you

listen to see if you can pick up these themes,

the four kinds of harmony, the four keys of humility,

and the three examples of Jesus. Listen to this Philippians,

Chapter two. My life in Christ give you strength? Does

His love comfort you? Do we share together in His spirit?

Do you have mercy and kindness? If so, make me

very happy. Remember he's talking about the habits of happiness,

the habits of joy. If so, make me very happy

by having the same thoughts, sharing the same love, having

one mind, and being of one purpose. When you do things,

do not let selfishness or pride be your guide. Instead,

be humble and give more honor to others than to yourselves.

Don't be interested only in your own life, but be

interested in the lives of others. In your lives, you

must think and act like Jesus Christ. Now, Christ himself

was like God and everything, but he did not think

that being equal with God was something to be demanded. Instead,

he gave up his place with God, and he made

himself nothing. And he was born to be a human

being and became a servant. And while he was living

on earth as a man, he humbled himself and became

fully obedient to God the Father, even when it caused

his death, the death on the cross. So then God

raised him up to the highest place. And God made

him his name greater than every other name, so that

every knee will bow to the name of Jesus, everyone

in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Now,

one day everyone will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord

and bring glory to the Father. Now, this is a

very very powerful passage, and it talks about how humility

leads to harmony and harmony leads to happiness. First, Paul

says that God's model for relationships, God's model for your friendships,

for your marriage, and any other relationship is four kinds

of harmony. It's there on your outline. In verse two,

Paul says, you will make my joy complete. In other words,

you will create happiness. You will make me happy. You'll

make yourself happy. You'll make my joy complete by having

the same mind, sharing the same love, being united in spirit,

and intent on one purpose. These are the four kinds

of intimacy God wants you to have in your marriage,

the four kinds of unity, the four kinds of harmony

God wants you to have in every true relationship. He says,

I want you to have the same mind. That's mental harmony.

You know you're united in thinking. He said, I want

you to share the same love. That's emotional harmony. He said,

I want you to be united in spirit. That's spiritual harmony.

And he says, I want you to be intent on

one purpose. That's directional harmony. We're headed in the same

direction together. Can you imagine having a marriage like that?

He said, well, yeah, that'd be great. Why don't we

have it? Because we don't do the things God tells

us to do. And in the next You versus, Paul

explains that humility is the path the harmony, and harmony

is the path the happiness. Now, I don't know if

you're going through conflict right now, but everybody's had conflict

and relationships in their lives. And if you've ever gotten

tired of the conflict, I'm just tired of always been

in conflict. You picked a good weekend to come to

church because we're going to look at how to reduce

conflict with others. This is how to have more harmony

and how to have more happiness in your relationships. And

I want to say this, this is guaranteed to work.

This absolutely will reduce the conflict in your life and

will increase the happiness and harmony in your life if

you'll do it. But I need to give you three warnings.

First place is that what I'm going to teach you

this weekend is one hundred percent radically counterculture. It's the

exact opposite of everything you've been taught in your life.

Our culture teaches the exact opposite of what the Bible

says about relationships. Now, there aren't that many really successful

relationships out in the world, are there. I mean, when

I say give me five really strong marriages, you'd have

a hard time doing that, the kind of marriages that

have mental, emotional, spiritual, and directional harmony. Most people aren't

very good at relationships in the world. Why because we

don't follow what God tells us to do, and what

God tells us to do is the exact opposite of

what our culture tells us to do. Second reason I

need to warn you is because this what I'm going

to teach you to do isn't natural. It doesn't feel

like the right thing to do, but it is the

right thing to do because we naturally want to indulge

ourselves and God says no, that's the wrong way. And

third is if I teach you this, I know for

a fact that this week you will be tested in it.

So I'm just warning you. Get ready. You're going to

have some conflict in relationships this week, okay, because God

is going to give you an opportunity to practice these

four habits of humble happiness. Now. The first of the

four habits for reducing conflict in your life, Paul says,

is this, you right, write it down. Never let my

pride be my guide. And no matter what the relationship is,

I should never let my pride be my guide. Why

because the pride is the root of every other sin.

I don't know if you know that pride is the

root of every other sin. Pride is the sin that

got Satan got kicked out of heaven. Every conflict that

you go through has an element of pride mixed into it.

What is the middle letter of the word pride in English?

I what's the middle letter of the word crime? Yeah? Yeah,

what's the middle letter of the word sin? I you

have an eye problem. I want what I want and

I want it now, and that causes all kinds of problems.

Never let pride be my guide now again, this is

counterculture because today in our society, in modern culture, we

reward narcissism. We do the most arrogant athletes, the most

arrogant celebrities, the most self centered entertainers are the ones

we pay the most money to and pay the most

attention to. It's the way our society works today. So

this is totally counterculture because today the people with the

biggest egos get the biggest money and they get the

most press. Now, the Bible says this in Philippians two three.

Don't do anything from selfish ambition or vain conceit circle

the word anything, don't do anything. Do you realize how

hard it is to keep that verse, don't do anything

from selfish ambition or vain conceite. Paul says that there

are two conflict creating kinds of pride. One of them

is selfish ambition and one is vain conceit. Let me

explain them a different way. Selfish ambition is saying it's

all about me, and vain conceit means I'm always right.

So when you have those two attitudes it's all about

me and I'm always right, you have selfish ambition and

vain conceit. Selfish ambition says, it's all about my needs.

It's all about my wants, it's all about my fears,

it's all about my success, it's all about my career.

We know people who've walked out of marriage just because

the marriage was standing in the way of their career.

We know that sometimes boyfriends choose girlfriends simply because of

the image it gives them. They don't really care about them.

They just they're eye candy. Or girlfriends choose boyfriends because

it it's all about the image. It's not about the relationship.

It's all about me, And they're not really caring about

the relationship. They're caring about themselves. The Bible says that

selfish ambition causes all kinds of problems and James three

point sixteen it says this, wherever there's jealousy or selfish ambition,

you'll find circle, this confusion, and every other kind of evil.

When you find confusion at your worksplace, confusion in the office,

you can know that selfish ambition and jealousy are causing it.

When you find confusion in your home, you can know

that selfishness is causing that. This causes confusion everywhere It

causes it in marriages, It causes it in politics, It

causes it in church, it causes it in homeowners' associations,

it causes us in the shutdown of governments. If you

won't play ball with me the way I want to

play ball, I'll take my ball and go home. It's

all about me selfish ambition. And then vain concede is

that attitude of I'm always right and I'm always right

and you're always wrong. That's being conceited. Now. I love

the Living Bible version of this verse. There on your outline,

it says, don't live to make a good impression on others,

And the today's English version says, don't do anything from

a cheap desire to boast. That would be a good

verse to look at before you post on Instagram again,

or Facebook or any other social media. I saw I

read an article a while back by Seana bill Heibel's daughter,

which she said is a great article called stop tweeting

your perfect life, because it is a great temptation on

internet to make yourself look better than you are, to

appear better than you are. And we don't just do

that on the internet, but we do it in lots

of different areas. Never let my pride be my guide.

Don't give in too vain conceit I'm always right, or

to selfish ambition, it's all it's always about me. It's

about my needs. The husband who says I don't care

about my wife's needs, it's my needs. I don't care

about my kids needs. It's my needs. That's called selfish ambition,

you know. In Galatians, another book that Paul wrote, Paul

lists about seventeen effects of living with pride. He calls

it the works of the flesh. He says, when we

live this self centered, this self concern, the self indulgent life,

he said, it shows up in all kinds of ways,

and he starts off by saying things like self indulgence

shows up in sexual immorality and wild partying and getting

drunk and all. You would expect those things. But most

of the things of the list are actually the sins

that we have to deal with, relational sins. Let me

read them to you. Galatians five, nineteen twenty twenty one

says this our self indulgent nature, in other words, my

my natural desire to think of me and not about you,

to think I'm number one, and not worry about what

you think. Our self indulgent nature shows itself in conflict.

Check that one quarreling, check that one jealousy, outburst of anger,

selfish ambition. It shows up in causing divisions among people

and the feeling that everyone else is wrong except those

in your little own group. You know, anybody like that.

That's because they let their pride be their guide. Paul says,

if you're gonna have happiness, you gotta have harmony, and

if you're gonna have harmony, you gotta have humility. And

so never let pride be your guide. Now, the second

habit is the flip side of it. It's just another

way of saying the same thing. But it's just write

it down. Be humble or our stumble. I must be

humble or our stumble. If I'm not humble, my relationship

will crumble. Humility is the is the basis and foundation

of every great marriage and every great friendship, because in humility,

you don't act like you know it all, and you

treat each other with respect, and you give each other

more honor, and you don't go fifty to fifty marriage

is not a fifty to fifty it's one hundred and ten,

hundred and ten. You give one hundred and ten and

your spouse gives one hundred and ten, and you try

to outdo each other in honor Philippians two, verse three.

The next verse is this. It says, instead of don't

do anything from selfish ambition or vain conceit, it says, instead,

be humble and give more honor to others than to yourself. Now, again,

that's the opposite about our culture teachers. Our culture teaches,

I gotta do what's best for me. I got to

look out for number one. I gotta think about me.

I've got to live for myself. I better do what

makes me happy. If it feels good, do it. And

all these selfish, self centered, narcissistic rules that we've been

taught throughout life. And Paul comes along and says, no,

be humble and give more honor to others than yourself.

A circular word humble, because humility is probably the most

misunderstood quality that we need in life. A lot of

people think humility means going around and saying, Oh, I'm

no good, I'm nothing, I'm a zero, I'm a cipher,

I'm a zip i can't do anything. No, No, that's

not humility. That's false humility. That's just degrading yourself. No.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself. Humility is thinking

of yourself less. You're the difference. Humility is not thinking

less of yourselther I'm no good. That's not humbility, that's

false humility. Humility is you just don't think about yourself.

You think about other people. The more you think about

other people, the more humble you are. If you walk

into this room and you think, what does everybody else

think about me? How do I look? You're being prideful.

If you walk into this room and you think, how

could I help the people in this room, you're being humble.

The focus isn't on you. The focus is on the

other people. Humility has nothing to do with what you

think of yourself. Humility is has what you think about

other people. In other words, humility is not putting myself down.

Humility is building other people up. Humble people build other

people up. Great people make people feel great. Little people

belittle people Now, the Bible says, instead, be humble and

give more honor to others than yourself. In other words,

humility is not devaluing me. It's valuing others more. Let

me say another way of saying it. Humility is not

denying your strengths. It's being honest about your weaknesses. We're

all a bundle of strengths and weaknesses. You have some

great strengths, you do you have some great weaknesses. And

humility is to being honest about both. I'm good at

this and I'm not good at that. I'm strong in this,

I'm really weak in this. I have some really great

strengths and i have some enormous weaknesses. Just ask my staff,

ask my family, ask me. I'll tell you because I'm

not trying to hide him. And humility is simply being

honest about both. The Bible says, be humble and give

more honor to others than yourselves. Now, why should I

be humble? Because God makes more promises in the Bible

about humility than anything else except generosity. Let me give

you a few things God promises to do if you

live a humble life, if you live dependent upon him,

if you think about others intead of think about yourself.

God says, I will give you my presence, I will

give you my power, I will give you my peace.

I will make you prosperous, I will make you successful,

and I will give you great honor. The very thing

everybody once in life. God says, comes not through pride,

not through bragging, not through boasting, not through prop you know,

pretending you're something you're not, not through posing and being

a poser. It comes through humility. And God says, I

bless the humble person. In fact, in James four to six,

they're in your outline. It says this God opposes the proud,

but he gives grace to the humble. Now notice the

good and the bad, the carot and the stick. God

opposes the proud, circle opposes you know what. The Bible says,

God hates pride. Does God hate anything? Oh yeah, there's

some things God hates. And one of the things God

hates is ego, arrogance, pride, conceit self centeredness, self promotion.

God hates pride, and he says God opposes that proud.

That means anytime I am acting, saying something, or thinking

in a prideful way, an arrogant, conceited way, I am

on the opposite side of God. I may even have

the right cause, but if I'm presenting it in a

prideful way. God says you're wrong. Whoa. You may have

all the right politics figured out, but if you're prideful

and arrogant about it, guess what, you're wrong. You're on

the opposite side of God. God doesn't just say, oh,

it's okay, we'll let you get away with a little

bit of pride. God says, I hate it, and I

oppose it. And every time I'm prideful and every time

you're prideful, I'm on the opposite side of God. I'm

in a battle with God, and I'm going to lose

that battle because your arms and my arms are too

short to box with God. That's the negative side. The

positive side is says God opposes the proud, but he

gives grace to the humble. What's grace. Grace is the

ability to forgive when I don't feel like forgiving. Grace

is ability to resolve a conflict with my husband or

my wife when I don't feel like it. Grace is

the ability to compromise. Grace's the ability to get along.

Grace's ability to build a strong relationship when everything wants

to tear your marriage, your friendship, whatever that relationship apart.

You need grace. The only way your relationships will last

is with God's grace. And the only way you get

God's grace is by being humble. So I must never

let my pride be my guide, and I must be humble,

or I will stumble and my relationships will crumble. Man,

I'm a poet. This weekend number three, here's the third

habit for overcoming conflict. This one sounds easy, but we

don't do it. Learn the lost art of paying attention.

If you want to have a happy life, you're going

to have to have happy relationships. In order to have

happy relationships, you got to have humility in the middle

of them, and part of that is learning the lost

art of paying attention. We pay attention to screens more

than we pay attention to people. I mean, you walk

into a meeting and how many people are sitting there

looking at their phone texting. They're not paying attention to

the people, They're paying attention to screen. Or you know,

your head's always down in a video game, you know,

looking into video game. Or you're walking across a campus

or taking a lunch break and you got earbuds and

you're listening to your iPod there's no way you can

pay attention to people around you. Somebody could be dying

and in deep pain, and you're in your own little,

self centered, self centered world. I've closed out everybody else,

and I'm in this. I was in New York City

a few weeks back, and down I swear everybody on

the street was listening to something else, and I'm going

so I could stand here and yell, you know fire,

and nobody even know it because our technology has made

us to no longer pay attention to people. In other words,

you're sitting here with two friends and you're tweeting to

twenty five and then you're really worried about is anybody

retweeting it? Or is anybody liking my post? And what's

that saying? It's all about me? Social media can feed

your narcissism, can feed your pride if you let it,

and you get distracted from seeing the people around you.

Thank you for listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Hey,

did you know that most people look for happiness in

all the wrong places. You won't find it through money, fame,

or power. You'll only find real, lasting happiness by following

God's commands. And that's why Rick created the Habits of

Happiness Bible Study. You'll discover how happiness runs deeper than

any circumstance, feeling, or relationship because of God's unconditional love

for you. This interactive, full color hardcover book is filled

with biblical truths, scripture, practical lessons, application, exercises, and prayers

to guide your journey. It's a comprehensive study tool that

will help you experience the Biblical habits that lead to

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