Rick Warren - How To Become the Person God Meant You To Be

Now, it's really interesting. As little kids, we often want

to become things. Well, let me just ask you.

How many of.

You, when you were a kid you wanted to be

a fireman, a policeman, or an astronaut? Can I say

your hands? Yeah, that's that's one of the most How

many of you wanted to be a nurse when you're

growing up?

All right?

How many of you wanted to be Barbie?

Yeah? Here's the more likely question.

How many of you did not become what you thought

you would become when you were eight years old? Yeah,

that's universal, pretty universal. But the Bible says God created

you not just to be loved and not just to belong.

But the third calling in life is you are called

to become. Now, what is a calling? We said, that's

the same thing as a purpose. God has five purposes

for your life. God has five reasons for creating you.

God has five assignments, five missions, five rationales for your life.

The callings of God are the purposes of God for

your life. The Bible uses the word calling at least

ten times more often than the word purpose when it

talks about your life. Romans eight twenty eight twenty nine

from the Bible says this. We know that God causes

everything to work for the good together for the good

of those who love God. It's not all good, but

God causes everything to work together for the good of

those who love God and are called. There's that word

according to his purpose. There's that word for them. Calling

and purpose go together. Your calling in life is your

purpose in life. For God knew in his people in advance,

before you were even born. God knew you. He thought

you up. You were his idea. You're not an accident.

For God knew his people in advance, and he chose

them to become like his son. That's talking about Jesus.

Why don't you circle that phrase, become like his son.

That's your third calling in life. Once you get into

God's family. God wants you to grow up and become

like your older brother, Jesus Christ. He chose them to

become like his son so that his son Jesus would

be the first born with many brothers and sisters. All right,

I want you to write this down. My third calling

in life is to become like Christ. And what does

that mean. Well, you're not going to be a God.

You're never going to be a god. You're not even

going to be a little mini me God. God is

God and you're not. That's an antidote distress when you

realize that. But God wants you to become Godly. In

other words, he wants you to take on the characteristics

of his family, like father, like son. And the Bible

says that God is loving, and God is joyful, and

God is peaceful, and God is patient, and God is kind.

The Bible tells that God is self control, God is merciful.

These are called the fruit of the spirit. They're perfect

picture of Jesus. If you're going to become like Jesus,

it means to be filled with love, to be filled

with joy, to be filled with peace, to be filled

with patience, and all of those other qualities. Now five

times in the Bible it compares becoming like Jesus to

running a race. It is the race of life. Life

is not a fifty yard dash, it's a marathon. And

you're running this race right now. And the goal is

to become the man God wants you to be. The

goal is to become the woman God wants you to be.

This is your third calling in life, to become what

God made you to become. And as I said, the

Bible calls this a race, and the Bible talks about

walking the Christian walk. It talks about running the race,

it talks about finishing the course. And so what I

want to do this weekend is take the five different

passages of the Bible that compare life to a race

and compare becoming who God wants you to be to

a race, and draw out from them eight principles. I

call this the marathon to maturity. This is how you

get to where God wants you to be in life.

God doesn't want you to stay the same. He doesn't

want you to be in spiritual diapers your entire life.

He wants you to grow up. And what is full maturity?

Look at Jesus and you know that's what God wants

you to become. Like, now, how do I do this?

How do I run the marathon to maturity? Well, as

I look at these five passages, I can summarize them

in eight statements.

You might write these down.

The first step in making it to the end of

life and finishing the course God has for you is first,

I must simplify my life. I must simplify my life.

I have to cut out out and clean out and

discard all the junk that's holding me back from becoming

the person God wants me to become. You got to

clean out the clutter. You got to clean out your mind.

You got to clean out your schedule, You got to

clean up your relationships. You got to get rid of

unnecessary baggage. In other words, you don't run a marathon

in a parka. You don't wear nine layers of clothes.

If you've ever seen somebody running a marathon, they strip

down to the bear essentials, a pair of shorts, a

T shirt, and the lightest pair of shoes you can find.

You don't want to be carrying extra baggage through your life.

So really, if you're going to become the man God

wants you to be or the woman God wants you

to be, first thing you gotta do.

Is you gotta let go of some stuff.

You got to let you gotta eliminate the diversions, the distractions,

the detours, the dead ends, the time wasters. Hebrews Chapter

twelve is one of the books of the Bible chapters

that deals with this metaphor of of life is a race.

So we're going to spend a lot of time. In

Hebrews twelve, verse one says this, let us strip off

anything that slows us down or holds us back. Circle

that word anything. That word in Greek is the word odcosts,

and it actually means a weight. That means something bulky,

something a burden, something heavy that holds you back. Let

us strip off anything that slows us down or holds

us back, and especially those sins that wrap themselves so

tightly around our feet and trip us up.

We've all had that.

Let us run with patience the particular race that God

has set before us. You have a particular race that

God wants you to run in life, and everybody else

has a race that God wants them to run. Here's

the problem. Everybody wants you to run their race. Everybody

has a plan for your life. Your parents wanted you

to run the race they wanted you to run. You

may be married to a husband or wife who want

you to run the race. They want you to run.

You may have a boss who wants you to run

a race he or she wants you to run.

But you got to decide this Whose race am I

gonna run? In life? I can run my own race.

I can run a race that somebody else wants me

to run, or I can run the race that God

created me to run.

You can't run all three. I can't do.

God's plan for my life and my plan at the

same time, and I can't do your plan for my

life and God's.

Plan at the same time.

So the starting point, if you're gonna win in the

race of life, you got to decide which.

Race You're gonna run.

The particular race that God has designed for you, then

that's the one you want to run. They say, God,

I'm gonna strip off everything, the sins that mess me up.

I do a moral inventory, and I get the junk

out of my life, and I and the weights, the

things that hold me back that have and the hurts

and the hang ups that hold me back. I let

go of those things and I run the particular race,

which means you're going to have to let go of

some expectations too, because you can't please everybody else and

please God.

You got to decide.

Did God put me on this earth to please my parents,

to please my girlfriend, to please my teacher, to please

my clique, my club, my fans, my peers, my parents,

my partners, or did God put me on this earth

to live for the plan that he made me for,

and so you have to kind of say, I'm willing

to not just let go of sinds and not just.

Willing to let go of weights.

I'm willing to let go of what everybody else expects

me to do with my life. And when you're doing

When you're doing that, then you're saying God, I'm ready

to become the woman you made me to be. I'm

ready to become the man you made me to be.

That's the first step simplify my life. Step two is

in the next verse or the next part of that verse,

and it's this, don't get impatient or in a hurry.

This race is gonna take your entire life. You're not

gonna finish it in a week, a month, or even

next year. God's plan to make you the person he

wants you to be is a lifetime plan. It's gonna

take your entire life, and you can't run the race quickly.

It's not a short fifty yard dash. It's a marathon.

So you don't get impatient. You know, when I was

growing up as a kid, I actually was a long

distance runner, and pretty quickly you learn. Your coaches teach

you that if you're gonna run ten miles or fifteen miles,

or if you're gonna run a marathon, you.

Have to pace yourself.

You can't start out really really fast, because if you do,

you'll get winded, you run out of steam, you run

out of energy, you get fatigued, you give up.

And you don't finish. You got to pace yourself.

Now, when you become a Christian, you start growing really fast.

Just like babies in the early months, they grow enormously fast.

They'll double in size. You know, their first and they learned.

But thank god, you're not growing as fast as you

did your first year, aren't you glad? You'd look pretty funny.

In fact, you'd probably take up the whole row if

you grew as fast every year as you did your

first year. Growth slows down, but it's stable and it's secure,

and over a period of time, God says, I'm not

in a hurry to growing you to where I want

you to grow.

God is in a hurry. Not in a hurry. You are,

but he's not.

When God wants to make a mushroom, he takes six hours.

When God wants to make an oak, tree he takes

sixty years. Where do you want to be a mushroom

or an oak tree? I want to be solid like

an oak tree. I want my life to be deeply rooted.

I want it to be strong, stable, secure, so that

when the rogue winds of life and the storms of

life buffet me, and when I get blown over by

problems and pressures and suffering and sorrow and scandal and

loss and all of the financial problems that you have

in life, whatever it is, it doesn't blow you over

because you're as solid as an oak tree. I can

show you how to become a man of God. I

can teach you how to become a woman of God.

I cannot teach you how to do it quickly. It's

going to take your entire life. You spell maturity, tim

Now we get in a hurry, but God's not in

a hurry. So you need to just relax and realize

that He's not impatient with you. Champions know how to

pace themselves. Here's the second verse in Hebrews chapter twelve,

verse one. Notice that part it says, let us run

like the race of life. Let us run with patience.

The peculiar or particular race that God has set out

before us circle with patience. That's why you know each week,

at the end of every service, I always give you

like one or two baby steps to take. I usually

say take out a card you know this, and in

fact I got one this week. You're gonna look at

it later, and I'll say, take out the card my

decision to become. And each week I give you one

or two baby steps to take. Why Because if every

week you take one or two baby steps, at the

end of the year, you're much further down the road

than you thought you were going to be.

Matters or what on earth you're here for. Pastor Rick

wants to let you know that God has a good

plan and purpose for your life. In his best selling book,

The Purpose Driven Life, he lays out a simple, life

changing roadmap to help you discover and live it. This

book has transformed millions of lives and it could transform

someone you love. And great news, it's been updated for

today's generation. This edition includes a video introduction and audio

teaching from Pastor Rick for each chapter, and two powerful

bonus chapters on the biggest barriers to living a purpose

driven life. As you go through this book, you'll uncover

that your deepest meaning and fulfillment doesn't come from success

or status, but from understanding and living out the purpose

that God created you for. Request your copy today. When

you give a gift to help daily hope, share the

gospel around the world, it's our way of saying thanks.

Number three.

The third key to running the race of life God

as for you is I must spend time focusing on

Jesus every day. I must spend a little bit of time.

I'm not talking about an hour, two hours, three hours,

ten hours. I'm going to start with five minutes, ten minutes,

fifteen minutes. Spend some time focusing on Jesus every day.

And that's what the next verse said about this race

and life. Now, why do I need to spend some

time focus seeing my thoughts, my mind on Jesus. Because

whatever you want to become, you need to think about it.

If you want to become like Jesus, you need to

think about it. And if you want to be like somebody,

you become like whoever you spend the most time with.

If you hang out with people who have no ambition,

you're going to have no ambition. If you hang out

with people who are critical, you're going to become critical.

Whoever you spend the most time with is who you're

going to become like.

It's like that old cliche.

You can't soar with the eagles if you're running with

the turkeys. So maybe there's some relationships you need to

kind of, you know, not spend so much time with

those people because they're tearing you down.

They're taking you down.

But if you spend time with Jesus five, ten, fifteen

minutes a day, then you become more and more like him.

Now we call this a quiet time. A quiet time

is I don't care when you do it. You just

the best time, I think is in the morning. Get

up and you go find your favorite chair and you

sit down in it and you spend some time and

you read the Bible for five minutes, and then you

talk to God about stuff that's on your heart. God,

here's the stuff I'm worried about. Lord, here's the stuff

I'm concerned about. Here's my schedule today. I'm really stressed.

I need your help. And then you be quiet and

you let God talk to you, and you say, God,

is there anything you want to say to me?

And you be quiet.

The reason why God's never talked to you is you've

never been quiet long enough. You always got the radio on,

and you gotta just sit there and be quiet and God.

Sometimes God will put a thought in my mind and

sometimes like everything's say okay, go along with your life

and you move on. God doesn't have to speak aloud

to me. He's the one who created radio ways and

television ways. He can put a thought immediately in my mind.

We call it inspiration. The devil gives your thought, that's temptation.

God gives your thought, that's inspiration. You get a thought,

that's stupidity, just kidding.

You.

Gotta spend some time focusing on Jesus every day.

Here's what the Bible says Hebrews twelve, verse two.

We do this, in other words, run the race of

life by keeping our eyes on Jesus. That's focusing on

Him every day, on whom our faith depends from start.

That's the beginning of your race in life. To finish

the end of your race in life. You cannot become

like Jesus unless you spend time with Jesus. Now, let

me give you a little tip, because some of you

have had this habit in your life where you would

have what's called a quiet time, and every day you'd

sit down for five minutes or ten minutes and just

kind of center yourself and you get quiet, You read

the Bible, you pray, and then you go on with

your life. Maybe review your schedule for that day and say, Lord,

is there anything you need to change in this? But

you've stopped it, and then you started it, and then

you stopped it and you started. And let me give

you a little tip. Find a special place that that's

where you meet with God every day, and make that

your special place that when you go there, I'm gonna

go spend fifteen minutes with God, just being quiet, thinking, meditating,

looking at God's word, praying.

I don't care. Again.

It might be a lazy boy chair in your living

room and you get a cup of coffee and sit

down and sit back and get comfortable. Or you go

out in your backyard if you're an outdoor person and

you look outside and hear the birds and sit under

a tree.

Or you know you might you might go.

You just need to go where you can be alone,

where you can pray aloud. I highly recommend you pray aloud,

because when you pray, when I pray when I close

my eyes, I go to sleep. So when I when

I talk to God, I don't close my eyes, and

I don't just think close my eyes and talk like this,

I'd fall asleep. I talk aloud to God, I like

I have a conversation. You should do that too. So

you don't want to be sitting in Starbucks. Now, God,

let me tell you about I wouldn't recommend Starbucks being

the place. I talked to guy at the last service.

He said, my favorite place for my quiet time is

sitting on the toilet. And then excuse me, he said,

the bathroom is the only place that'squiet at my house.

I got a lot of little kids. Fine, okay, whatever

floats your boat, you find the spot that becomes special

and sacred.

Did you know that this was Jesus' habit.

Jesus liked to go to a standard place where he

could talk to the Father, for God the Father. Notice

this verse up here on the screen. Luke twenty two

says this Jesus went out as usual to the Mount

of Olives to pray. Now, not that it says he

went out as usual. That means it was his habit.

It was his custom. He liked to go. I've been

to this garden on the mount of Olives is whereas

there's a grove of olive trees. He liked to go there,

and that's where he would have his quiet time. You

need to choose a special place where you meet God

every day. Now here's the thing. The more time you

spend with God, the more you're going to become like him.

The more time you spend reading the Bible and studying

about Jesus, the more you're going to learn his love,

his patience, his peace, his character in your life. Tewod

Corinthians three says, all of us have had that veil removed.

You know, we don't have to wear a veil, so

that we can be mirrors that brightly reflect the glory

of the Lord. And as the spirit of the Lord

works within us, as God's spirit works within you day

after day, we become there's that word third calling we

become more and more like Him and reflect His glory

even more. Now, once you to circle a couple of things.

First circle the phrase.

More and more.

That means that in this race to maturity, to become

a woman of God, to become a man of God,

to become the person that God made you to be,

not what your parents wanted you to be, but what

God wants you be.

It takes time. It's more and more.

In other words, it's sequential, it is systematic, it is day.

It's one step at a time. It's a process. Becoming

implies that it doesn't happen instantly. You see, all of us,

what we want is a quick fix in our life.

We want one thing that'll take away all of our

problems and all of our hang ups and all of

our fears instantly. So we go around looking for that

one book to read that'll change my life, that one

message to listen to on a CD that'll change my life.

We want to take a pill, find a magic bullet,

have an experience in boom. It's just gonna instantly transfer

me and all of a sudden, I love everybody. Nobody

makes me impatient anymore. I'm just cool, copasetic and I

get I'm just I'm like Jesus, it ain't gonna happen.

It didn't happen that way. There is no there's instant

mashed potatoes. Okay, there's instant coffee. There is no instant

spiritual maturity. It just does happen. It takes time, one

step at a time. And God, as I said, is

never in a hurry. So as I spend time focusing

on Jesus every day, it says we become more and

more like Him. And then it says we reflect his

glory circle. That word reflect. If you spend time with God,

you're going to start reflecting the qualities of God, his love,

his joy, his peace, his patience. This reflection is actually

has a biological basis in your brain. Scientists have discovered

that inside your brain you have what are called mirror neurons.

A lot of study being done on this right now.

Mirror neurons. And what the mirror neurons do is they

allow you to feel what other people feel when you

look at them. It's why you're able to empathize and

sympathize with people. And so, for instance, if I were

to yawn right now, have the church with yawning. In fact,

me just saying the word yawn make some of you

want to yawn, and your mirror neurons are firing. It's

why when you go to a movie and you see

somebody in a scary situation, your body gets scared.

The mirror neurons are firing in your body.

And when you see somebody win a game and they're celebrating,

you feel that same joy. You didn't even play the game,

but you felt that because your mirror neurons are enjoying

the win that that guy just had. It allows you identify.

And when somebody's sad, you feel sad.

And if you're.

Watching a movie and somebody gets kissed, you feel that.

You feel good. You feel what it's like to feel loved,

to feel cherished, to feel embraced. Those are your mirror

neurons at work. When you spend time with God and

you focus on him, your mirror neurons begin to reflect

God's love, God's qualities in your life. You tend to

see things the way He sees.

It, and you become more and more like him. All right.

Number four, The fourth thing on the steps of finishing

the race of life is this, when it gets hard,

remember the reward. When life gets hard, you need to

remember the reward.

Now.

As I said, this goal for God to make you

the man he wants you to be, For God to

make you the woman he wants you to become. It's

a lifetime process. It's not a fifty yard dash. And

so you're going to go through a lot of problems

and pressures and trials and difficulties and ups and downs,

and God's going to use it all to make you

more like Jesus. Now, since God's number one goal is

to make you like Christ, that's what he wants you.

He wants you to be loved, he wants you to belong,

and he wants you to become like Christ. Then it

means God is going to take you and very closely.

If God's going to make you like Jesus, He's going

to take you through everything Jesus went through.

Were there times when Jesus was lonely? Yes?

Were there times when Jesus was criticized, Yes, times when

Jesus was betrayed?

Yes.

Were there times when Jesus was worn out with fatigue

and he had had to keep going?

Yes? Were there times when he was misunderstood? Yes?

And if God did not spare his own son those things,

why do you think he would spare you?

He won't.

The next time you start to ask why is this

happening to me, you need to realize God wants to

use it to build your attitude, to build your character.

God wants to use it to make you like Christ.

And instead of asking why, you need to say what

what do you want me to learn from this situation?

The Bible says Jesus learned obedience through suffering. The Bible

says Jesus was made complete through suffering. You're going to

learn them the same way. So you shouldn't be surprised

when problems come into your life because this isn't the

easy stage that happens in eternity. In eternity, no more sorrow,

no more suffering, no more sadness, no more problems, no

more difficulties. But right now you're gonna have all kinds

of problems because this is where you do the character development,

where you're growing and you're becoming, and when life gets hard,

you need to remember the rewards.

Problems are part of the process.

Life really matters or what on earth you're here for.

Pastor Rick wants to let you know that God has

a good plan and purpose for your life. In his

best selling book, The Purpose Driven Life, he lays out

a simple, life changing roadmap to help you discover and

live it. This book has transformed millions of lives, and

it could transform someone you love and news. It's been

updated for today's generation. This edition includes a video introduction

and audio teaching from Pastor Rick for each chapter, and

two powerful bonus chapters on the biggest barriers to living

a purpose driven life. As you go through this book,

you'll uncover that your deepest meaning and fulfillment doesn't come

from success or status, but from understanding and living out

the purpose that God created you for. Request your copy today.

When you give a gift to help Daily Hope share

the Gospel around the world, it's our way of saying thanks.