Rick Warren - God Can Use Anybody—Part Three

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 the final part of a

message called God can use anybody.

You know here at Saddleback Church. The letters in our

name S A, D, D, L, E, B, A C K.

Every letter represents a value. We've taught on this many

times and many of you remember that the S stands

for second chance, Place of Grace. This is a place

where we give people a second chance. This is a

place for people who want to start over. This is

people a place for people who want a fresh start.

That's the miracle of mercy. That's the grace place. And

I want you to hear an example of madic example

of starting over a place of grace. Danny Dushane is

going to come out in just a minute and share

his dramatic story. He was a double lifer in prison

for thirty two years. He is going to lead our

Mercy ministry to prisons, to prisons, and you know two

and a half million people Americans are incarcerated in a prison.

We want to start a Saddleback Church in every prison.

And I thought, who could better know how to do

this than a guy who spent thirty two years in prison.

And so I want you. Thirteen years ago Danny actually

gave his testimony here at Saddleback. He was in prison

at the time. We couldn't videotape him. We couldn't even

take a picture of him at the time, but they

allowed us to call on the phone and I played

that phone call to hear and so he's back to

give his testimony a second time. I want you to

give a new, warm welcome to our newest pastor at Saddleback,

Danny Dushane. Give him a warm welcome.

God bless you. Hello, Saddleback family.

My name is Danny Dushane, and I would like to

share with you how God.

Has shown me great mercy and how.

God, because he is merciful, is able to use anyone,

even in the most unlikely places. I would also like

to share how being part of a small group is

a powerful way to experience God's mercy and to show

his mercy to others you know, as Pastor Rick just said,

I've been part of the Saddleback family since two thousand

and three and.

Thirteen years ago.

I shared part of my story with you through a

taped phone call from the prison that I was in.

But that's getting a little ahead of my story. I

grew up in Reading, California with my mom and stepdad

and five brothers. One thing I remember about my childhood

is that I had a lot of freedom to do

whatever I wanted to do. I was a latch key kid,

and by the fourth grade I was spending entire summers

by myself.

My parents had nice homes and cars.

And I grew up thinking that the goal of life

was just having nice things. Possessions became a substitute for

loving relationships. This way of thinking led to insecurities and

difficulties in standing against high school pressures. I started partying

on the weekends and discovered how easy it was to

make friends because I was the one who had the

car and had the freedom to throw a party while

my parents were out.

Shortly after I turned.

Sixteen, I came home from school one day and my

parents were sitting with a friend with thousands of in

cash spread out on the kitchen table. I was told

that they were going on a business trip to Peru

and that I would see them at Christmas. So I

was left to take care of my eighteen month old

little brother, who with the help of some family friends,

but my parents did not return from that trip. Instead,

on Christmas Eve nineteen seventy nine, I learned that my

parents had been arrested in Mexico for smuggling cocaine. This

was a total shock, since my parents were neither drug

users nor drinkers. The news that my parents were in

jail in another country filled me with fear, but soon

my fear turned to anger to cope with all the

painful emotions I felt. On that Christmas Day, I drove

to a parking lot and got high in my car.

Getting high gave me temporary relief, and I remember committing

myself to a life of getting high every day. Little

did I realize that the decision to start my fear

and anger and soothed myself with drugs would become an

addiction that would imprison me. Long before I went to

prison at sixteen years old, I didn't know if I

would ever see my parents again, and feeling abandoned as

a teenager, I stuffed all my pain using drugs and alcohol.

I became more and more impulsive and began a downward

spiral of one bad decision after another. I started committing

crimes to support my drug habits. I was expelled from

school and then lost my new home as well. I

take full responsibility for my self destructive decisions. There were

people around me who loved me and tried to help,

but I quickly became addicted to my way of dealing

with all my loneliness and pain. I was already in

prison to my way of life. Two years later, my

mother was released from prison and tried to reunite our family,

But at eighteen, I was already a dual addict alcohol

in marijuana. I began to dread going to sleep at

night if I didn't have something to drink and smoke

in the morning.

My life was out of control.

I robbed and stole and hurt others because I chose

to please myself. As my debts piled up, I struggled

to keep myself supplied with an increasing need for alcohol

and drugs. I was reckless and never worried about getting

caught for my crimes, and I certainly didn't consider the

consequences to others.

I was only thinking of myself.

All this came to a crisis when I was part

of a crime in which two men were killed. Thankfully,

I was quickly arrested in September of nineteen eighty two,

which I also call being rescued. Sitting in a county

jail before my trial. It took about three weeks to

withdraw from the drugs and alcohol, but once I became sober,

the full weight of my crimes came crashing down on

my conscious I was overwhelmed with depression and remorse. As

I realized how many people I had heard. I believed

I was lost and going to Hell. I was truly,

truly afraid. It was at my lowest point that God's

mercy showed up in my life. God began bringing a

lot of Christians to see me, who shared the love

and mercy of God with me. At first, this good

news seemed over my head. It seemed unbelievable and too

good to be true that God loved me and wanted

to show me mercy after all I had done to

hurt others from growing up, I honestly did not know.

How to trust.

I had lived too long pretending to be something on

the outside while being someone else on the inside. But

the message of God's mercy eventually got through to me.

I learned that Jesus could give me a fresh start,

changing me from the inside out, not from the external.

I learned that God was concerned about me personally, even

after making such a wreck of my life. I decided

to open up my life to Jesus and begin to

serve him with whatever kind of life I had left. And,

knowing my crimes, I didn't expect the rest of my

life to be very long. On November seventh, nineteen eighty two,

in a county jail, waiting my trial, I asked Jesus

to forgive all my sins come inside, and to take

charge as the lord of my life. At this point,

I'd like to say again thank you to Mandy, to Aubrey,

and to Carol, who shared God's message of mercy and

grace with me. The Bible says in Romans four twenty

that where sin increase, grace increased all the more.

And I rapidly grew spiritually.

While in the county jail, I was hungry to know

more about this God who had shown me love and mercy,

and I wanted him to use me in prison.

Graciously, God blessed me with mentors.

Spiritual fathers and spiritual mothers who took the time and

raised me in the Lord. At my trial, I was

convicted and given a double life sentence for two deaths,

and as a nineteen year old, I was sent to

prison for life in August nineteen eighty three, never expecting

to see the outside world again, but I was thankful

to be in Christ and inside I had been liberated.

Let me make this clear.

I never expected that I would ever be paroled, but

I was free.

Now.

I could describe many examples of ministry and hardships from

life inside. But let me just say I'm Danny Dushane

and not Andy Dufrey from the Shawshank Redemption movie. And

I have to say that movie. It's really just a movie.

But I do want to tell you how so I

became part of this saddleback church while in prison, and

how God used purpose driven small groups to transform the

lives of many inmates and brought a spiritual revival in

our prison that resulted in the birth of a new church.

God wants to use you by his mercy, and he

will do amazing things with your life, regardless of your

past mistakes, if you totally surrender your life to His love.

In prison, I read The Purpose Driven Life by Pastor Rick,

and in two thousand and three I contacted Pastor Rick

and told him that a small group of about twenty

of us inmates wanted to participate in the national forty

Days of Purpose campaign that churches on the outside were doing.

We thought perhaps fifty men would participate in the small groups,

but as we went door to door asking if men

in the prison were interested, more than two hundred guys

signed up. Within a few weeks, our prison was buzzing

with cell groups, which had a double meaning in our context.

Through the power of these purpose driven small groups studying

God's work together, we began to see radical transformation in

the lives of guys we never imagined would respond to

the gospel. God's mercy was at work and we had

a new ministry. Then, on August thirty first, two thousand

and three, Pastor Rick brought a team of pastors from

zaddleback to encourage us and lead a service on the yard.

It was amazing for one day, the prison yard of

this higher security prison became a saddleback campus. Rick was

given a microphone and he preached to the entire prison

on the yard. Now, for those of you who might

worry about your pastor's safety, rest assured that Rick was

protected by a single line of yellow caution tape.

But I should add.

We also had over one hundred men whose lives had

been changed through the purpose driven life sitting right in

front of him, and there was no way they'd let

anybody hurt Rick.

Pastor.

Rick spoke on the road to recovery, then gave a

public invitation, inviting men from all across the yard to

come and kneel with him in the dirt and pray

as salvation prayer aloud in front of the entire prison population.

It was a moment of amazing grace. Then Rick said, we're.

Going to baptize now in front of the entire prison population.

So we rolled out a large laundry band filled with

water under the guard tower. That night, more than one

hundred men gathered on the prison yard to claim the

Sierra Prison as God's holy ground.

As an act of humble reverence.

This group of men stood in his circle in the

prison yard, and we all removed our shoes as we

began to pray for the men in each of the

cell blocked buildings. Together, we officially established a purpose driven

church with a mission and ministry to impact the entire

population in faith. We believed that God, in his mercy

was going to use us all for his glory. A

few months later, Pastor John Baker returned to the prison

and trained our church leaders to be celebrate recovery small

group leaders in the prison. We were able to use

the prison visiting room and also another building, which gave

us the capacity of running sixty small groups a week.

I cannot overstate the power of godly small groups in

changing people's lives and that they had never received. For

many guys, being part of a small group was the

first time in their lives that they had ever received

support to do the right thing. I will say this

to every man, regardless of whether you are behind bars

or outside, you cannot be all God wants you to

be on your own. You need support, You need a

small group. And I'm sure my life would have been

very different if I'd had the support of a small group.

When I was a teenager.

We followed up the forty Days of Purpose campaign with

another saddleback small group study on the Book of James.

Then we studied the Purpose Driven Church together and many

other small group discipleship studies, and of course, we kept

repeating the Celebrate Recovery step studies and even offered the

purpose driven Life again and again to new groups of guys.

In our purpose driven Church, we appointed directors for each

of the purposes and basis of membership, maturity, ministry, and mission.

As our church continued to.

Grow, the climate and atmosphere of the prison changed so

much that it began to attract the attention of the media.

Not only was our church growing, but we were having

such a positive influence on the prison that local news stations,

then the k Love radio station, and eventually the New

York Times reported on the impact of the ministry of

a group of guys inmates who had formed a purpose

driven church in a prison. One of the big changes

was a reduction in violence in the prison. Prior to

doing the forty Days of Purpose campaign, racial and gang

violence often controlled the prison. But during our forty Days

of Purpose, when we launched all those small groups, not

a single fight or riot interrupted Pastor Rick told me.

So.

Pastor Rick told me that the warden called him and said,

what have you done to my prison?

He said, everyone is peaceful.

As a result of what was happening in our prison,

many other prisons began using the forty Days of Purpose

and Celebrate Recovery programs. They are now both used nationwide.

You may not know that each year Saddleback honors churches

around the world that are building on God's five purposes

by giving those churches the Healthy Church Award. It was

so encouraging to arm men when in two thousand and

four Saddleback Church awarded the church we had started in

prison with one of the three Healthy Church Awards for

that year.

And yeah, that's me. Here's the pastor in prison.

With a black eye. All I can say is that

you cannot expect to have a spiritual revival in a

prison without at least some opposition. The media attention given

to our church and questions about me and other Christians

crossing racial boundaries were causes of several assaults on.

Me and our other church leaders.

At one point, the prison captain considered moving me from

the prison for safety, but God brought us through that

time of opposition, and in less than a year of growth,

we were granted in an entire two hundred men building

cell block to be used by those participating in Celebrate Recovery.

To this day, Celebrate Recovery small groups continued to be

the core curriculum for those in recovery, and in order

to live in that cell block, you must commit to

be part of Celebrate Recovery, commit to be in a

small group, commit to having an accountability partner or a sponsor,

and to complete Pastor Rick's video series on how to

live in fellowship and community with one another. Again, God

is used ordinary people in unlikely places because of his mercy.

Now I want to personally express my gratitude to Pastor

Rick for this letter, his support in the Saddle Backed Church,

and the pastors of Saddleback for their support over all

the years, and appreciate them because on Christmas Eve, December

twenty fourteen, I was released after thirty two years in prison.

God's mercy.

Since my release, I've been writing waves of God's mercy

and grace. First of all, God gave me the gift

of a wonderful wife, Susan.

We were married a year after my release. You can

claps now.

Susan and I will be leading a mercy campaign small

group in our house that we are calling Welcome Home.

After working for a year as a drug and alcohol

counselor at a San Francisco methadone clinic, I've been released

to finally join.

The Saddleback staff.

I've been asked to serve as Saddleback's pastor of prison

ministries through Celebrate Recovery. As I stand here today, I

am aware that I'm only here by God's mercy. I

am very grateful for the pastors, the friends, and family

that God has shown his mercy through. You know, the

Bible says in James two thirteen that mercy triumphs over judgment,

and my life is an example of that truth. I

know now that God has brought me from the inside

out to proclaim that God's mercy is the key to

inner freedom. Whether your prison is physical, emotional, spiritual, or relational.

By God's mercy and grace, I will serve you for

jesus sake as best that I am able. This is

the most amazing church, and thank you for welcoming me home.

Saddleback.

God bless you. Thank you for your mercy. Thank God

for his mercy.

Go ahead, God bless you. Bring on you.

You're a new pastor.

God bless you. This is Susan Love you guys, Thank you.

Now. Do you believe me when I say God can

use anybody?

Now?

Do you believe that the mercy of God will change everything?

And it really doesn't matter where you've been. What matters

the direction of your feet right now, I don't care

how how much you've messed up. You're welcome and wanted

at Saddleback Church. And this is a place, the s

second chance, place of grace. And it's all about being

used by God. Now, what kept Danny going for thirty

two years in a prison? Can you imagine being in

a prison for thirty two years? What kept him going?

He followed the fifth and final secret of being used

by God? And it is this Paul's last secret. Stay

focused on eternity. Stay focused on eternity. You've got to

maintain an eternal perspective. That way you don't get overwhelmed

by your current problems. The bigger your picture of God,

the smaller your problems are. The more you understand what's

going to happen in eternity. The less you're bothered by

the bad things that happen here on earth. If you

have a big picture of God, you have a small

picture of your problems. And if you lose your eternal perspective,

you forget that it's not about now, it's not only

not about you, it's not about now. That then your

problems are going to overwhelm you. In Tewod Corinthians, verse

chapter four, verse seventeen, these little troubles, Paul says, are

getting us ready for an eternal glory that will make

all of our troubles seem like nothing. These little troubles,

what shipwreck, prison, sentences, beat five times and all those things,

He says, these small problems. That's eternal perspective. When you

understand how short life is, it's not even one hundred years,

and how long eternity is. This is small potatoes. And

you can put up with all kinds of stuff on

this planet if you know what's going to happen in eternity,

and you know the rewards and the blessing and the

joy of being used by God. These little troubles are

getting us ready for an eternal glory that will make

all of our troubles seem like nothing. And then in

verse eighteen, he says, so we don't look at the

troubles we can see right now. We're going to stay

focused on eternity. We don't look at the troubles we

can see right now. That's a choice. Rather, we look

forward to what we have not yet seen. For the

troubles that we see right now in your life, they'll

soon be over, but the joys to come in eternity

will last forever. Now, friends, there are only three motivations

in life. You're going to live your life on one

of these three motivations. The first kind of motivation is

internal motivation, and many people live their lives based on

eternal motivation. I want to be happy, I want to

be popular, I want to be rich, I want to

be loved, I want to be famous. Whatever you got

your internal motivation that motivates you through life. Or you

can be motivated not by internal motivation but external motivation,

and you're afraid of being fired, or you want to

get the promotion, and it's external care and stick, and

it's the reward or the penalty of other people around you.

And you're motivated by what other people think, and that's external.

But the highest motivation in life is not internal motivation.

It's not external motivation, it's eternal motivation. It's being motivated

by the fact that this life is a test and

it's the get ready stage for the real show, which

is going to go on trillions and trillions and trillions

of years in heaven. Now, what is the key to

staying focused now in spite of your problems, Because when

you get tired, you lose your focus. When you get tired,

you forget about eternity. When you get tired, all you

can see is all the problems you got right now

and the bills you have to pay. The key to

staying focused write this down. Danny DeShane mentioned it four

or five times in his testimony. Small groups. Small groups

are the key to staying focused. You need perspective from

the support of other people. You need a support system

in your life. Paul never went anywhere without a small group.

Paul never did anything in his life by himself. Everything

Paul did the most used by God person in history,

he did with a small group. He took a small

group with him everywhere he went. I've often told you

over and over how for thirty five years I wouldn't

be the pastor of the church if it weren't for

my small group. There were times in my life where

there were difficulties that my small group showered me with prayer,

showered me with mercy, showered me with love, showered me

with wise counseul. The Bible says this, for Ecclesiastes four

to twelve. A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated.

But two can stand back to back. That's support and

can conquer. And three that's three people. That's a small

group right there. Three people are even better. For a

triple braided chord is not easily broken. You get four people,

get five people. You got a support system in your life.

Jesus said it as clear as I can possibly say

it Matthew eighteen twenty. For wherever two or three come together,

that's called a small group. Wherever two or three come

together in my name, I will be there with them.

You want Jesus with you, get in a small group

where two or three are gathered, come together in my name,

I will be with them. Now let me close with

just two questions.

Two questions.

Number one, what's the prison that's been holding you back?

What prison. Have you been locked up in what in

your past has prevented you from being used by God

in the present? And you're locked up by fear, or

you're locked up by anger, or you're imprisoned by regret

or you're imprisoned by resentment. Are you been heard in

the past, or you've had a major failure or you've

had a shame or you've had excuse?

What is keeping you?

What's holding you back from going God? I'm all in.

I've only been partial in, but I'm going to be

all in now for you. Second question, do you really

want to live the rest of your life just for yourself?

You're not a big enough reason to live. That's not

a big enough reason to get out of bed in

the morning. Do you want to live the rest of

your life just for yourself? Or do you want to

live your life to be used by God for the

purpose that you were created to live for. You don't

want to miss your purpose in life? And as I

close with prayer, are you going to be all in?

If so, just tell God God I'm all in. I'm

all in. I'm not going to be a casual Christian anymore.

Say Dear God, I thank you for your mercy, and

I want to fully understand it. I want to stop

living for myself and I'm going to start being used

by you for the purpose that you created me for.

I admit I've been afraid to go all in with

you in the past, but I'm not going to listen

to my fears anymore. I'm not going to let the

past hold me back. I'm all in in Jesus's name.

Amen.

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 at you. 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 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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