Rick Warren - God's Mercy and My Failures—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. All right, we'll pick up where we

left off with part two of a message called God's

Mercy and My Failures.

I just think the crisis that's going on. Jesus Christ

has been arrested. He's back behind this wall, going through

mock trials and being tortured. And I, Peter, I'm on

the other side of the wall, out in the courtyard,

wondering what's going on. And then all of a sudden,

stranger comes up and says, hey, you're with that guy.

And he says, no, no, no, no, I'm not. He's

worried about what other people think. And now his anger

comes out, and the Bible says this in verse seventy

one of Matthew twenty six. Then Peter went out to

the entrance of the courtyard, and there another woman saw

him and said to those standing there, this man, this

guy pointing at Peter. This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.

Now again Peter denied it, and this time he swore, okay,

now he's cussing. He swore an oath and said, I

don't even know the men.

Okay.

But after a while, it says the men who had

been standing there, evidently a bunch of people milling around

just bystanders. The men who were standing there came over

to Peter and said, we know that you are one

of them. Don't you hate being called one of them?

That's like the kiss of death at the office. You're

one of them. We all want to be one of us.

We all want to be one of the in crowd.

And one of the reasons why you never talk about

your faith to anybody else is because you don't want

to be one of them. You want to be one

of us, one of the guys, one of the boys,

one of the girls. And he said, hey, we know

you're one of them. Again, that's the fear of disapproval. Okay,

Peter's getting up tight here. We know that you're one

of them because your Galilean accent gives you away. Now,

Jesus was from Galilee. The Twelve Disciples in his small group,

we're all from Galilee. So the accent gave him away.

Just like in America in the South, people from the

south have a Southern accent, people from the north have

a north East have a Northeastern accent. People in Midwest

have Midwestern accent. Only Californians speak English perfectly, okay, the

Canadians speak with a Canadian accent.

And so he said, we understand. We know who you are.

You're one of them because you have the Galilean accent.

It gives you way, it says Peter. The Bible says,

Peter lost his temper. I started cursing and swearing. I

don't know the man, and immediately he heard the rooster crow. Now,

swearing is always a sign of frustration. Swearing is always

a sign of fear. When you get afraid, you go emotional,

and you're not thinking rational, you're not thinking logical, you're

not thinking reasonable, you're thinking emotional. And when people swear,

it's because they've they've given up on their logic and

they have to resort to emotion. He's not thinking, he's

speaking without thinking. The Bible says this causes so many

problems in our lives. James Chapter three, Verse five and six.

The tongue is a small thing, but what enormous damage

it can do?

Everybody agree with that? Yeah? Oh yeah?

And am I want to give an example of today,

just today driving in the car to church. Okay, you

said the wrong thing and it lit a fire. Okay,

the tongue is small thing, but what enormous damage it

can do. Just as a tiny spark can burn up

a great forest, Your tongue, your tiny.

Little petite tongue, is a.

Flame of fire. That part of your body, This is

God talking. That part of your body is full of wickedness,

and it can poison everything else in your life.

And we all know that's true.

You've seen relationships poisoned, you've seen deals poisoned, you've seen

future dreams poisoned, all because of a misplaced word. The

Bible says, it is set on fire. Your tongue is

set on fire by Hell itself, and it can turn

our whole lives into a blazing flame of destruction and disaster.

So we overestimate our strengths, We fear the disapproval of others,

and we speak without thinking. Peter did all three, and

he had the biggest failure of his lif and we

do all three and we have failures in our life. Now,

that's what Peter did wrong? What did he do right?

What did he do right? Peter actually did three things right.

Once he failed, he actually did several things right. And

these are actually some of the steps to recovering from

a financial failure, a marriage failure, relational failure, career failure,

or any other failure in your life.

What do you do?

You do these three things? Number one, first thing you

do grieve. You grieve. You grieve the failure. You don't

minimize the failure. You don't pretend it didn't happen. You

don't justify the failure. You don't rationalize the failure. You

don't make excuses for the failure. You grieve it. You

feel the pain. You don't brush it off, you don't

downplay it. You feel the pain, and you don't rush

to feel better. Now, listen, this is the principle of life.

About to tell you to get past it, you gotta.

Go through it.

That's true in so many areas, but it's particularly true

with failure. To get past your failure, that failure in

your eye, you gotta go through it. You can't go

around your failure. You can't go over your failure. You

can't go under your failure. You can't ignore your failure.

You need to grieve the failure. You need to feel

the pain. Now, we don't like feeling bad, but grief

is a good thing. Grief is the way we get

through the failure, and grief is the way we learn

the lessons. So often we want to just when we fail,

we want to just forget it, push it aside, stuff

our emotions, and then immediately go to the next thing.

When you stuff your emotions, when you swallow your emotions,

your stomach keeps score. It's kind of like what if

you took a can of coke and you shook it

up for a long time and then you put it

in the freezer. What's going to happen to it. It's

gonna explode eventually, it's gonna come out sideways. And this

happens in your life when you don't deal with your

emotions properly. This is why sometimes six months after failure,

a marriage falls apart, or six months after somebody gets

laid off work, there's another problem, and there's a physical

health problem.

Things like this.

Because you've shaken up the can and you've got all

these emotions feeling inside of shame and regret and fear

and insecurity and all the things that come with failure,

and you're not dealing with them. And so you shake

it up, and you said, we're just gonna put this

in refrigerator and try to forget about it, and we're

gonna freeze it, and it's gonna explode, and it's gonna

come out sideways in an affair or in wrong behavior,

or in impulsivity or an addiction, or all kinds of

other things. I have seen this thousands of times in

people's lives. You don't minimize it. You don't rush to

feel better to get past your failure. You've got to

go through the failure, and you got to grieve. In

Matthew twenty six, seventy five, when Peter heard the rooster crow,

he remembered that Jesus had said, before the rooster crows,

you'll deny me three times, then Jesus. Then Peter went

outside and wept bitterly. Circle the wept bitterly. That's grieving. Now,

imagine how disappointed Peter must have felt in himself. He

goes man, I've just lived with the Son of God

for three and a half years. I watched him do miracles.

I watched him heal people. I watched him raise the dead.

I watched him teach like no one has ever taught.

I watched him offer mercy and forgiveness to me dozens

and dozens and dozens of times. I watched him never

do anything wrong. And yet the first time that I'm

put to test about my commitment, my faithfulness, my trust

in Jesus, I deny him three times in a row

because I'm worried about what three strangers think. Are you

more worried about what strangers think about your faith and God?

Are you more embarrassed to let people know that you're

a believer? That's that fear. And he's disappointed. But Peter,

I love the fact that he owns up to his failure.

He doesn't go well, I had there was a good

reason I did this. You know, they might have killed

me or or you know he didn't do No, he

just goes out and he grieves, and he's humbled by this,

and he's regretful of it. Grief, as I said, is

a good thing. It is the key to healing. A

lot of people want to take shortcuts when they have

a failure. They want to bypass a failure. You want

to just put it out aside, out of mind, and

go out and say, yeah, I had a failed business here,

I'm gonna go start another one right now. The next day, Yeah,

I just had a marriage fail. But I don't turn around.

I'm going to find somebody immediately. I gotta find somebody

else immediately. And they rebound into another relationship and they

never learned the lesson. The problem is if you don't

go through the greed, you don't learn what God wants

you to learn in that failure. And then you take

the same old you into the new marriage, into the

new job, into the new goal, into the new dream,

and nothing's changed because you didn't learn anything, because you

weren't willing to feel bad for just a little bit,

and you're afraid of negative feelings.

You're afraid of feeling bad. It's okay to feel bad.

Grief is the way we.

Get through transitions and losses and failures in life. The

greater the failure in your life, the more time it's

going to take. The greater the loss in your life,

the greater it's going to take. You have to let

God work in your heart, and you have to let

time work in your heart. You cannot force healing, you

cannot rush healing. You cannot will it by sheer willpower.

I'm going to be different now you can't do it.

Recovery is an act of God's mercy. Healing is an

act of mercy, and it comes slowly with time, and

recovery and growth coming in stages. And all God wants

you to do is just be honest. I blew it

to be humble. The Bible says this in Psalm fifty one.

And by the way, this is a from Psalm fifty

one as the prayer David wrote after he committed adultery.

The whole prayer is this prayer confession, and in verse seventeen,

he says the sacrifice God wants is a broken and

contrite spirit, and God will not reject a humble and

repentant heart. Now he's saying, God is looking for humility, contriteness.

Just you're right, God, I blew it.

And when you come to God and say God, I'm

broken hearted over this. I had all my hopes penned

on this, but it didn't work.

It failed.

It failed, the business failed, the dream failed, the relationship failed. God,

it failed, and I'm broken hearted over it. I'm a

little bit more humble than I was. I don't think

I'm the captain of my soul anymore. I don't think

I'm the manager of the universe. I don't think I've

got it all figured out. I'm coming with a humble

spirit and a contrite heart and a repentant attitude. God goes,

that's the person who's going to recover. So he does

the first thing right is simply by grieving. Now, the

Bible says there that when Peter heard the rooster crow,

he wept bitterly.

Okay, he ate crow.

He went out and he said, oh, I have really

messed up, and he felt the pain. And you know what,

I imagine that every time for the rest of Peter's

life when he heard a rooster crow, what do you

think it reminded him of? Every time he heard a

rooster crow? Probably reminded me my biggest failure in life.

It was a trigger.

It's truer and by the way you have in your life,

and there's certain things that when you hear them or

smell them, or think them, or listen to them, or

whatever you see them. It triggers the memory of your failures.

Now you can't stop the triggers. Sorry, can't do that.

I can't even tell you how to even stop those triggers.

But you can stop what they do to you. And

you do have a choice. You don't have a choice

over your triggers. There are some things that are gonna

happen in your life. When that happens, it reminds you

of the painful failure in your life. But your choice

then is will I choose to focus on the mistake,

the failure, the pain, or am I going to choose

to focus on God's forgiveness, God's mercy and God's grace.

That's choice, and that's what you can do. And here's

what's gonna happen. When you start changing your focus. Satan's

gonna stop passling you about this Satan your triggers, and

he wants to condemn you. And here's what happens. You see,

before you fail in some area or before you commit

a sin, Satan always minimizes the sin.

He minimizes it.

He goes, this is no big deal, go ahead and

do it. I mean, everybody does this. Times have changed,

things are different, We're in a different culture. Doesn't matter

what God has said, this is okay, times have changed.

Everybody does it. Go ahead, it's no big deal. He

minimizes the sin. The moment you commit that sin, Satan

changes his strategy to the exact opposite, and he starts

maximizing it. And he starts going, are you kidding me?

That's the biggest sin I've ever heard of. God will

never use you. You're never gonna be blessed, You're never

gonna have an answered prayer. Who do you think you are?

You may as well just chuck it in. You may

just give up because you are used material. You're wasted,

you're wrong, You're in the dust. If you're gonna sit

on the bench the rest of your life, forget it.

It's over. This is so big God could not possibly

ever use you.

See how he switched.

He starts saying it's so big deal before you do it,

and then afterwards it goes it's the biggest deal in

your life because He does not want you focused on

the mercy of God. He wants you focused on your pain.

See when you don't understand who you are you don't

have that when he still have that soul pain, You

don't know your identity. You've give in to these kind

of fears over and over and over, and Satan and

other people and just whip you around and manipulate you

with all kinds of memory triggers. You need to say,

you know what, every time that trigger brings the thought

that that memory, that painful mistake, I'm just gonna go, Yep,

it was wrong. And then I'm gonna go thank God

for his grace, Thank God for his mercy, thank God

for his love, thank God for his forgiveness, and I just, oh,

thank you God. I am a trophy of grace. Now

here's an interesting thing. If Satan figures out that every

time he uses that trigger, you're gonna praise God. He's

going to stop bugging you about it because he certainly

doesn't want you. All of a sudden, it's not working anymore.

If he can pull a trigger and you get into depression,

he's going to keep pulling it. But if he can

pull a trigger and it causes you to praise God

for his mercy and forgiveness and greace, focus, he goes, oh,

I don't want him doing that so he will stop.

In a couple of weeks ago, we sang that song,

I'm no longer a slave to fear. I am a

child of God. This is what we're talking about here,

Understanding the deeper pain that causes you to give in,

to overestimate your strength, to speak when you shouldn't, and

to live for the approval of other people. When you

know who you are and who you are, you know

God's mercy and God's grace is going to be there.

I'm a child of God.

So even though I've just really messed up, God's gonna

still love me. He's not gonna change. That's the miracle

of mercy.

Now.

The second thing Peter did right, and this is gonna

sound funny to you, but it's what it says write

here in scripture, let my small group support me. And

that's exactly what Peter did. The very first thing Jesus

did when he started his ministry is he formed a

small group and he chose twelve people to be part

of that small group. This is why we make such

a big deal about small groups at Saddleback Church because

Jesus did it, and for three hundred years, all Christianity

was done in small groups. They didn't have big gatherings

like this. All Christianity for three hundred years was done.

In small groups.

Let me just show you some example of Peter getting

support from his small group after his biggest failure. Matthew,

excuse me, Mark sixteen, verse ten. Easter morning. You know

that Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had gone up

to the tomb of Jesus, and the Angel said, he's

not here, He's gone. Go tell the disciples. And so

it said.

Mary Magdalene went and found.

The disciples together, grieving and weeping, circle the word together.

I want you to listen very close. When you go.

Through a major failure in your life, you must resist

the urge to isolate yourself. When you go through a

major failure in life, you must resist the urge to

insulate yourself. When you get laid off from work, you

don't want anybody to know about it. When you have

a bankruptcy, you don't want anybody to know about it.

When you have a failure in your life, you don't

want you want to keep it a secret. That's the

worst thing you could do. You need you don't need

to tell everybody. You need to tell a few people

who love you, who are going to pray for you,

and who will support you. Because when you share a

problem in your life, it's cut in half. The burden

is cutting out. When you share a joy in your

small group, it's doubled. You were never meant to go

through life on your own. You were never meant to

go through life by yourself. We were better together. We're

meant for community. And the basic unit of life is

the small group. Jesus formed a small group. And where

does Peter go instantly after he's had his biggest failure.

He didn't go hide in a cave. He goes to

small group. The disciples were together, grieving and weeping. Now

you need God to supports.

More than ever.

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 p. Seven.

Now you can dive deeper into our current study with

Pastor Rick's Miracle of Mercy study kid through his sixth

session video and workbook study. He'll show you the five

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

helps the hurting, 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.

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