Rick Warren - How Much You Matter to God—Part Two

Hello, and thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's

Daily Hope. This is the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren,

and today we are continuing in a series called the

Miracle of Mercy. Rick will show us how God's mercy

can lift your guilt, heal your wounds, and transform the

way you live. And now here's part two of a

message called how Much You Matter to God.

Now, there's a third thing that we lose when we

are spiritually lost, and it's found in the story of

the Lost Coin. And it is this, I lose my

potential when I'm disconnected from God. That's what it means

to be spiritually lost. When I'm disconnected from God, I

lose my potential. My potential to do great and good

things in the world are dramatically limited when I'm disconnected

from God. Now I'm holding right now an American quarter. Okay,

this coin right here, during its lifetime will pass through

thousands and thousands of hands. In fact, uh, you know,

scientists tell us the dirtiest thing you own is money

because no telling how many people have handled it, uh,

and and all of the places that it's been and

you know, they've even done some tests and sometimes find

actually you know, like drug powder on on on on

coins that have been passed through uh for for you know,

drug sales and things like that. Now this coin, uh

as I said, will be passed through thousands of hands,

and it has great potential for good. Coins put together

can do a lot of good uh I mean this coin,

you know, and given enough of them, you could feed

a family with with these coins, you could you could

build a business with these coins. You could you could

save a life, you could create beauty, you could have enjoyed,

pay for enjoyable experiences. You could leave a leg. There's

a lot of good things you could do with these coin.

But it can't do any of those good things if

it's lost. If it's lost, it can't do anything good

and make a good impact because it's just lost. Now,

if I lose this coin, a lost coin isn't worthless.

It's just wasted. Do you understand the difference. It's still

worth a quarter is still worth a quarter, okay, twenty

five cents. It hasn't lost any of its value, but

it has lost its potential to do good, and it

has lost its ability to make a difference. Its worth

is wasted when it is lost now. God made you

to do great things, far greater than you could ever

possibly imagine you if God showed you what he could

do with your life, if you gave him one hundred

percent of your life and live for him all the time,

it would blow your mind. Because you have listened to

so many tapes from your past where people say you

can't do that, you shouldn't even try that, Who do

you think you are? What makes you think you could

do that? And everything in society has told you to

limit your vision, to limit your dreams, to limit your expectations,

to not expect so much, and on and on. You

have no idea what God could do through your life

if it was completely placed in his hands, and then

he could do all kinds of things. Only your creator

knows fully what you're capable of. You don't even know

fully what you're capable of, because there's parts of you

you don't even know about that you don't even understand.

But what I'm saying is that if you're disconnected from God,

you are spiritually lost, then you lose all that potential.

You can't be what God wants you to be if

you're not even connected to God you'll miss what God

has planned for your life, and that's a wasted life.

The Bible says it like this in one Corinthians two nine.

No one has ever seen or heard or even imagined.

In other words, you can't even think of how great

this is, even imagine the wonderful things that God has

prepared and arranged for those who love him. Now he's

not just talking about an eternity. He's not just talking

about Heaven. He's talking about here and now. You can't

even imagine what God could do with your life it

was if it was totally given to him. Every moment

of your life. You lose your direction, you lose your protection,

and you lose your potential. Number four, The fourth thing

I lose when I'm spiritually lost is I lose my happiness.

I lose my happiness. Now we find this in the

story of the Lost Son. These three stories that Jesus told,

one right after another, bam bam bam. And when the

younger son chooses to rebel against his father, I'm leaving home.

I'm striking out on my own. I want half of

my family inheritance. Now I'm not going to wait. I'm impatient. Well,

the Bible says that he went out and he wasted it,

and then he lost all that God wanted to do

in his life, and he lost his happiness. Luke, fifteen fourteen.

The younger son wasted all he'd been given, and eventually

he became miserable and lonely. Circle that word miserable. Eventually

he loses it all. Now why was he miserable? Well,

I'll tell you this. Nothing destroys happiness faster than conflict

and relationships. And he had a conflict with his dad.

Let me say that again. Nothing will destroy your happiness

faster than conflict in relationships. It's almost a cliche when

we talk about Hollywood that you can find all kinds

of people there who are rich and famous and miserable.

Why because many of them have not learned how to

build lasting relationships, and they go through serial marriages, one

right after another, in relationship one right after another, and

on and on. They don't know how, and they have

conflict in their relationships. Because when you're out of fellowship

with God, you're going to be out of fellowship with

other people. When you're in harmony with God, it gives

you the peace to be in harmony with other people.

And you can't be in harmony with other people long

term without being in harmony with God. So this creates

strained relationships. This creates disharmony, It creates tension in our lives,

It creates some conflict, resentment, guilt, regrets, all these things

in our relationships. You see, you weren't designed to live

in conft to God. When God, your creator, made you,

he wired you to be at peace with God. So

when I fund my nose to God, said God, I'm

going to be my own God, I'm going to do

my own thing. I'm going to go my own way.

I'm going to rebel just like the son did against

his loving Father. And I'm going to go and do

whatever I want to do and live my way instead

of living your way. That creates conflict between you and

your creator, and your body does not handle that very

well at all. Do you feel close to God? But

do you feel separated from God? Some of me saying, well, Rick,

I used to feel close to God, but I don't

feel close to God like I used to. Well, guess

who moved? Okay, God didn't move, He's the unmovable. You moved.

I've said this many times you're as close to God

as you choose to be. Then if you're far away

from God, he didn't move, you did, and you chose

to move away from God. I lose my happiness. Then, finally,

the fifth thing I lose is I lose my home

in heaven. When I'm spiritually lost, I lose my home

in heaven. Now, God allows people to rebel and to

disobey Him on earth. He gives us a free choice.

God gives you the freedom to say, I don't want

to worship God. I don't want to love God. I

don't want to live for God. You don't have to

live for God. You live for yourself. You're the entire

rest of your life. You don't have to love God.

You can just love yourself or what anything else you

want to love. You don't have to love God because

if God forced you to love him, it wouldn't be

real love. So you were created in God's image and

you were given the freedom to make choices. The problem is,

that's our greatest blessing and it's our greatest curse because

we make bad choices all the time, and we choose

to love ourselves instead of love God. We choose to

go our way instead of God's way, and we choose

to do our thing instead of God's thing, and God says, fine,

you may do it. You know you may. God is

like Burger king, Have it your way, have it your way,

and your entire life, God will say to you, have

it your way, have it your way. But one day

you're gonna die and you're gonna stand before God and

he's gonna say, well, have it your way. You clearly

didn't want me in your life on earth. Why in

the world would you want me in your life in eternity.

You clearly wanted to live separated from me on earth,

so I guess you can live separated from me for

the rest of eternity. It makes no sense to reject

God's will, guidance, power, love, mercy in my life all

my life and then want to die and go live

in his house. That's illogical. If you don't like God, now,

what would make you think you're gonna love him in

eternity Heaven. God allows people to rebel, just like the

Son was allowed to rebel against Father. But there are

no no rebellion. There's no rebel in heaven. There are

no rebels against God in heaven, and so one of

the things you lose is you lose your home in heaven.

Preparing for the next life is the most important thing

you can do in this life, because you're going to

spend far more time there than here now, Jesus said

in Luke, chapter nine, verse twenty five, what good is

it for a man to gain the whole world if

he loses his soul? What good is it if you

get your picture on the cover of Time magazine, or

or you make a million dollars, or you know, you

reach every goal on your bucket list, but you lose

your soul because you're in rebellion against God. Let me

ask you, what are you acting like? Is more important

than eternity? What right now is more important to you

than knowing and loving and please in God? Whatever that

is is. You're God now. These three stories that I

just shared with you, that Jesus taught actually tell us

the reasons are the ways people get spiritually lost. For instance,

like sheep, we can be lost by nature. It just

comes naturally. You don't have to do anything. If you're

a human being, it's naturally to get We naturally go

our own way. We naturally want to be our own boss.

We naturally want to ignore God. By human nature, we

want to be God, and so we wander and we

drift and we lose our direction. And so, like sheep,

we can be lost by nature. But like coins in

the Lost Coin, we can be lost by circumstances too.

This one comes in too. In other words, here's a

coin and it inadvertently gets kicked off the table, knocked

off the table. Nobody meant to it, but it got

knocked off the table. And of course in those days

they didn't have tile floors or wooden floors. Often this

dirt floor with straw on it. And if you not

a coin off a table, how are you going to

find it in a floor full of straw? I mean,

that might take a long time, and so it's difficult

to find. But circumstances can knock you off the table.

Has an unfortunate circumstance separated you from God, you know,

because of what we do through the Peace Plan, I'm

often on the scene at some of the major disasters

like Katrina and the earthquakes and fires and floods and

stuff like that. And what I've noticed is that when

a disaster hits an area, some people turn to God,

and some people turn away from God. I don't know why,

but it just happens. Some people turn to God and

find comfort, some people turn away from God. Why they

turn away from God, I don't know, because he's the

only one who can give them comfort. But the point

here is that coins can be knocked off and lost

by circumstance. And you might have had some tough circumstances

in your life that have caused you to turn your

back on God. Don't do that. That's just not very smart.

Don't do that. There are outside forces around you that

don't want you to be connected to God, that don't

want you to know God. There are people, there are things,

there's satan, there's values, there are events that can pull

you away from God. Then the third way we can

be lost is like the son, and I can be

lost by my own choices. He chose to leave home,

he chose to turn his back on the loving Father.

This young kid just goes. I think I know more

than my dad does. A lot of people think I

think I know more than God does. So I'm just

gonna do what I want to. I know what will

make me happy more than God does. So I'm going

to do what I say to do rather than what

God says to do. And we make choices so I

can lose all of these things. But the one thing

all three stories point out is this, and write this down.

I don't lose my value. I may be lost spiritually,

but I have not lost my value. I may have

lost my direction. I may have lost my protection, I

may have lost my potential. Okay, I may have lost

my happiness. I may have lost my home in heaven,

but I have not lost my value. And that's why

Jesus said, I've come to seek and to save that

which is lost, because you are valuable. You're worth saving.

You're worth Jesus said, dying on the cross, for I

came to seek and save those who are lost. As

I said earlier, in art, when you lose the masterpiece,

the value actually goes up. So here's the bottom line.

Let them stand. So far, we're all disconnected from God.

We're disconnected from God by our nature, by our circumstance,

and by our choices. And when we're just connected from God,

we lose those five things that we just went over.

But the good news is a because of God's mercy

and That's what we're talking about in this series. Because

of God's mercy, Jesus came to earth to seek and

to save that which is lost. He's not waiting on us.

He takes the initiative to seek and to save the lost.

So what does God's mercy do when I'm lost? In

other words, how does his mercy save me? Now you've

heard this word many many times, salvation, and you'll hear

people say, well, I'm saved or before I was saved,

And you hear this phrase all of time. What does

that mean to be saved? What is salvation? Well, it's

a big word and it's like a multifaceted diamond. And

there are many, many, many, many many other words in

the Bible to describe salvation. Besides the word salvation, the

Bible uses words like forgiveness, the Bible is where like freedom.

The Bible uses words like fulfillment, pardon, peace, power, redemption.

In these three stories we find three additional words, and

they are the word rescue, recover, and reconnect. And each

of these stories shows us an aspect of salvation. So

why don't you write these down? What happens when I

am saved? How does God's mercy save me, and what

happens well, Number one, Salvation rescues me from myself. Salvation

rescues me from myself. And you know what, I need

to be saved from me more than I need to

be saved from anything else. I don't know if you've

realized this, but you are your biggest problem. Not other people.

You are your biggest problem. I talked to a guy

the other day and he hid been through like eight

or nine relationship failures, and he said, I don't understand.

I said, well, what do you think is the common

denominator in all those relationships? It's you, buddy, okay, And

you can go to another nine relationships and it's not

gonna They're not gonna work out any better until something

changes in you. You are your own biggest problem. It

always will be your biggest problem. Your own fears, your

own anxieties, your own misconceptions, the stuff you believe about God,

about you, about life, about others. You are your own

biggest problem. And a lot of times we need a

savior to save us from ourselves, to rescue us one

Timathy two five. The Bible says Jesus is the only one,

the only one who can bring us to God. Nobody

else can bring you to God. Did you see that

Jesus is the only one who can bring us to God.

He became a human being. He was God, came a

human being and gave himself to rescue all of the circle.

The word rescue. Now, I know some of you may

be thinking, well, you know, Rick, I don't really need

to be rescued from anything. Oh. Really, you have no

pain in your life, zero pain, no pain in your life. Huh. Okay,

you have no problems in your life, right, no problems. No,

you have no pressure in your life. Your life is

at total peace. You have no worries, you have no fears,

you have no anxiety, you have no guilt, you have

no regret, you have no resentment, you have no conflict.

Oh no, No, you don't need any rescuing from anything

except you're out of touch with reality, and you do

need help from that, okay, because you have problems that

you can't solve. If you could have, you would have,

but you can't, so you don't. And there are things

in you that you don't like about you and you'd

like to change, but you can't. You need to be

rescued and that's one facet of salvation. Jesus came to

rescue all of us. Now, some of the problems you

have in your life, you say, Rick, I've tried, and

I've tried, and I've tried, and I've tried. Some problems

will never be solved by trying. They're only solved by trusting.

They're not solved by trying you trying harder. They're solved

by you trusting God to do what he can do

that you can't do, in ways that you don't have

and in manners and methods that you don't even have

access to. Salvation rescues me from myself. You got to trust,

not try, Psalm fifty, verse fifteen. Trust me, God says,

in your times of trouble, and I will rescue you.

There's that word again. I will rescue you, and you

will give me glory. He will set you free. So,

like a shepherd going after the sheep who takes initiative,

Salvation rescues me for myself. That sheep needs to be

saved from itself. It just doesn't know enough how to

get back to the pin on its own. Shepherd's got

to get out there, said, come on, little lammy, we're

going back this way and then pointing back in the

right way.

Hey, did you know that the number one attribute of

God in scripture is his mercy? It is and he

wants to be merciful too. Jesus said, blessed are the merciful,

for they will be shown mercy Matthew five seven. Now

you can dive deeper into our current study with Pastor

Rick's Miracle of Mercy study Kit. Through his six session

video and workbook study, he'll show you the five marks

of mercy. You'll discover how mercy forgives the fallen, helps

the herding, is patient with difficult people, is kind to

its enemies, and cares for the loss. And as you

grow in mercy, you'll experience the blessing God promises to

the merciful. The Miracle of Mercy sixth session video study

Kit is perfect for both personal and small group study time,

so please be sure to request your copy today. When

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