Rick Warren - Five Daily Habits for 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. All right,

let's get to it. Here's part one of a message

called five daily Habits for Happiness.

If you pull out your message notes and if you'll

open your Bible to Philippians chapter three, and we are

continuing in the series that I started a few weeks

ago on the Habits of Happiness. As we go through

the Book of Philippians and chapter three, Paul gives us

another five habits of happiness. Now, all five of these

you can do on a daily basis. All five of

these habits you can do during a oh say, a

fifteen minute quiet time you spend alone with God. And

if you will build these five habits into your life,

the happiness in your life will exponentially grow and the

unhappiness in your life will decline. Philippians Chapter three. Let's

get right into it. The first habit that Paul models

here in the first few verses is this every day

relax in God's grace. That's the first thing you need

to do if you want to be a happy person.

Every day relax in God's grace. Don't try to earn

God's approval, don't try to earn his love. Don't try

to earn his recognition.

You don't earn it.

God is love and God loves you unconditionally. Now let

me explain the diff between religion and a relationship. Religion

is what you do for God. Relationship is what God

has done for you. Jesus did not come to give

you religion. God is un interested in religion. God is

interested in you having a relationship. And the Bible is

all about what God has done for you and what

Jesus did for you on the cross, not about what

you do for God. And so Jesus says, I don't

want your religion.

I want a relationship.

You will lose your happiness every time you forget this,

every time you think I've got to earn God's smile,

I've got to earn God's love. I've got to do

something really cool to make God love me.

No, you don't.

Philippians, Chapter three, verse three. We Christians glory and what

Jesus has done circle that has done past tense on

the cross, Jesus that it is finished. I've done it all,

what Jesus Christ has done for us, and we realize

that we are helpless to save ourselves. We're not trying

to earn our way to heaven. We're not trying to

work our way to heaven. We're not trying to prove

we're good enough to get to heaven, because none of

us are good enough to get to heaven. It's only

God's grace. You need to relax in God's grace. I

love the message. Paraphrase of this verse says, we couldn't

care carry this off by your own effort, and we

know it.

I like that now.

One of the things that will rob you of your

happiness is what I call the first trap. And I'm

going to give you five traps out of this passage today.

And the first trap that'll take away your happiness write

this down is legalism. Legalism is the attitude that I

have to prove my love to God. Legalism is trusting

in what I do for God instead of what Jesus

did for me, trusting that I have to do rules

and regulations and rituals and restrictions and all these things

in order to prove myself worthy. That's called legalism. In

other words, if I just keep the ten commandments, then

God will let me into heaven. Well number one, you

can't even name them, much less keep them. Okay, So

you're not keeping the ten Commandments. I'm telling you right now.

You're not. You're not. You've broken them. He said, what

about the adult you?

The Bible says, if you've ever lost it in your heart,

then that's why adultry. So guess what. You're guilty of

all of them. All The Bible says that if you

if you hate somebody in your heart, it's like murders.

So you're guilty of all of them. And that's why

you need grace. So relax, relax in God's grace now.

Paul says in this passage and verses three to six,

he says, before I became a Christian, he says, I

was a legalist. In fact, he says, I was a

professional legalist. I was trying to earn heaven through rituals,

through my race, through religion, through rules, and through reputation.

And he goes it wasn't working. He said, if anybody

was a legalist, I was.

In fact.

In verse six, he says this in legalistic righteousness, I

was faultless. In other words, for a guy who was

a rule keeper, he said, I did it. I kept

all the rules. I was a good man. By the way,

How do you know when you are a legalist? Here's

how the telltale sign of this. You are judgmental other people.

You are harsh on other people. Anytime you see somebody

who's judgmental of others, critical of others. The reason why

is I don't feel good about me because I know

I'm not measuring up, so I certainly don't want you

feeling good about you. So subconsciously I'm critical of everybody

else because I don't think I am accepted and loved.

How do you know when you're living by grace? You're

gracious to others. When somebody is living by grace, they go, Hey,

God's forgiven me, I'm gonna forgive you. God's cut me

some slack. I'm gonna cut you some slack. I'm getting

by simply on the grace of God. So I'm gonna

give you grace. The more legalistic you are, the more

critical and the more judgmental you are, and the more

you live by God's grace, the more gracious you are

to other people. Legalism is a it'll suck your life

dry of happiness. It sucks churches dry of happiness. You

ever go to lead regalistic church, that church is not happy.

There's no joy in at legalistic church. Everybody's just. They're

out of duty, out of guilt, out of shame, and

things like that. Verse nine, Paul says this, I no

longer count on my own goodness, and I no longer

count on my own ability to obey God's laws. Instead,

I trust Christ to save me. I relax in God's grace,

for God's way of making us right with himself is

through faith. In other words, the way you earn the

smile of God is you don't earn it. It's not

your performance, it's his pardon. It's what He's already done.

So you get up in the morning and say, Lord,

I just want to remind myself I'm completely forgiven. Who

is that a way to start the day. You think

you'll be happier if you start the day gone. Everything

I've ever done wrong is completely forgiven.

Is that a good thing? To start the day with.

Yes, that's a habit of happiness. I relax in God's grace.

You know, one of my other mentors was the founder

of modern management, Peter Drucker. And I asked Peter, and

I said, Peter, what was it that caused you to

finally step across the line and invite Jesus Christ into

your heart?

And he told me this. He was in his nineties

by this time. He said, Rick.

The day that I finally understood the true meaning of grace,

I realized.

I'm never getting a better deal.

And that's true, And why would anybody reject the grace

of God. In the Bible, the word joy is the

Greek word kara, and in the Bible the word grace

is the word chorus. They come from the same word

kara and chorus. We get the word charisma from that

word or charismatic. Joy and grace go together. The more

grace you live by, the more joy.

You're going to have in your life.

That's the first habit, relax in God's grace. Now, in

the next verse, verse seven, we get the second daily

habit of happiness, and it's this, Remember what matters most

every day? I need to remember what matters most. When

I get up in the morning, I need to remind

myself what counts and what doesn't count. I should not

be distracted by what's inconsequential in life, what's petty, what's trivial,

what really doesn't matter, what's unimportant? Now, why is this

an important habit? Have you realized? Have you noticed how

easy it is to lose your joy over some small thing.

It's usually the small irritations that cause you to lose

your happiness. Somebody cuts you off in the middle of

the road, you're trying to make a turn and they

won't let you do it.

You lose your happiness.

Or you know you're having a bad hair day, or

the clothes you put on don't fit anymore. That'll cause

you to lose your happiness real quick.

Okay.

And it's the little things. And yet do those things

really matter in life? No, they do not. And so

if you want to be a happy person, Paul says

in Philippians three, you need to remember what matters most,

not worry about all the stuff you used to think

was so important before you knew Jesus Christ.

Verse seven.

He says, this, all those things that I once thought

were so important to me, I now consider worth nothing

because of Christ. All those things that I thought were

so important to me, I now consider worth nothing now

that I know Christ. Okay, what was the most important

thing to you before you met Jesus? Christ so always said,

could work? Yeah, some would say career, some would say

making money.

Maybe it was getting a date.

Maybe it was being popular, Maybe it was having security.

It could be.

Being famous, or you know whatever, making a lot, a

whole lot of money. Paul says, you know what, all

those things, They're just not that important to me anymore.

I'm not running the rat race because even if you

win the rat race, you're still a rat And I

don't need to worry about keeping up with the Joneses

because they just refinanced for bankruptcy. So, you know, he says,

all those things I used to think were so important,

being cool, looking cool, you know, having the goods, looking good,

feeling good. He goes, that's just not that important anymore,

because it's not going to matter in the long scheme

of thing. He says, the stuff doesn't matter anymore. How

do you know if you've really been saved? How do

you know if you've been saved by Jesus Christ. I'll

tell you how you know your values change. If your

values haven't changed, you haven't been saved. Because you can't

have somebody as big as God come into your life

and it not changed you.

It changes your values. All those things I used.

To think were cool, I don't care about them anymore.

I gave my life to Christ as a young man.

And I actually remember one time, I'm a young guy

coming up to me and he was a friend of mine,

and he was he was really into the drug scene.

Every weekend he'd go party hardy, He'd he'd get drunk,

he'd take a lot of drugs. He'd sleep with a

different girl every weekend. He was living a pretty pretty

wild life. And he came to me and he said,

you know, Rick, the problem with you is as a Christian,

you're restricted.

He said, you don't get to have any fun.

You got all these these don'ts in your life. He said,

you're you're restricted. And I looked at him and I said,

to this friend of mine, I said, you know what.

I take all the drugs I want to take, I

get drunk. All I want to get drunk. I party

wild as much as I want to party well, and

I sleep with as many women as I want to

sleep with. Here's the difference. Jesus Christ changed my want

to I don't want to do those things. I don't

want to do those things. They are cheap thrills. Are

you kidding me? I'm on a permanent high, and I

don't have a hangover from it. Because all those things

that used to seem so cool, so important, so valuable,

really they're worthless.

They don't matter. Now here's the problem.

When you first become a Christian, you realize that, but

as time goes on, the world around you tries to

brainwash you back into thinking the stuff that's not important

is important, like having the newest pair of shoes and

having the newest clothes and things like that. And because

here's the trap, you might write this down. The trap

that's going to keep you from this this habit is

pop culture, the culture around us. Because every day there

are thousands of advertising messages that says you aren't worth

anything until you've got our product, and this should matter

to you. And even television news makes every item sound

like it's the most important thing of the day.

It's not.

Nothing is as worthless as yesterday's newspaper.

That's why you line the kitty thing.

With it, okay, because you don't because the news is over.

It's not worth anything today, And the world tells you

because it's immediate and it's current, it's important, noh to

urge it. And the immediate and the relevant are not

necessarily important. So what you have to ask yourself is

this question on everything, how much will this matter in

one hundred years? How much will this matter in five years?

How much of what I'm worrying about right now is

going to matter tomorrow? You see, it's not going to

matter tomorrow much less for eternity. You need to live

in light of eternity. Everybody and everything around you is

constantly telling you that the petty and the trivial is important,

and America and around the world we're on trivial pursuit,

you know, we're living for things that aren't gonna matter,

and so to be counter culture, which means you're going

to be a whole lot happier than everybody else is.

You've got to focus not on what's current, but what's eternal,

and live in light of eternity and realize that if

this isn't going to matter and eternity. What'sn't gonna matter?

Why am I worried about it? Why am I stressed out?

Why am I Why am I anxious? Why am I fearful?

Why am I so uptight over this?

It's not even gonna matter next week, much less for eternity.

So the second habit is every day, remember what matters most?

All the things I used to think were important, says

they're worth nothing because of Christ.

Look at verse eight. He says it again.

Paul says, yes, everything else is worthless when compared to

the priceless gain of knowing Christ. Jesus my Lord. He says,

that's the most important thing. Tom, I'm going to talk

about that in a minute.

He says.

I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage,

so that I may have Christ and become one with

him circle the world.

Garbage.

That's an interesting word, because the Greek word the translators

were kind of scared of, afraid of telling.

You what the word really means.

That's the politically correct word, that's the polite word, the

proper word for that Greek word there where it's translated garbage.

How shall I say it? Manure what Paul is saying here.

He said, after I became a Christian, after I began

a relationship with Jesus, I stopped the religion thing. I

started the relationship thing.

He says.

All that other stuff I used to worry about get up,

tight out, and get stressed. He said, it isn't worth poop.

Jim Elliett, the famous missionary, said, he is no fool

who gives up what he cannot keep for that which

he cannot lose. Yeah, I'm giving up a lot of

things here that other people think are really important right

now that don't mean thing to me because I'm gainey

eternal life and rewards in heaven that I cannot lose.

Thank you for listening to Pastor Rick's davy 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. Here's Rick to tell you more.

If you'd like to learn more about the Habits of Happiness,

I've got a new resource to help you. It's called

the Habits of Happiness Guided Experience Book. In this resource,

you're going to learn how seeing things from God's perspective

will help you develop the Biblical habits of happiness. And

you're going to discover how happiness runs deeper than any

circumstance or any feeling or any relationship. Now, I'm excited

because this book is filled with Biblical truth, practical life

application exercises, and a lot of space for you to

write down your responses to what God is teaching you.

It's a really powerful workbook and it's a comprehensive study

tool I believe is going to help you grow to

your next level of spiritual maturity.

This Bible study is only available on Daily Hope and

quantities are limited, so be sure to request the Habits

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