Rick Warren - Being A Disciple In The Digital Age—Part Three

Hello, everybody, Welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. This is

the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Hey, we're so

glad you're here with us today. We are continuing in

a series called Talking about Stuff that Matters Now. In

this series, Rick looks into the scriptures and he's unpacking

what it means to live in community, have real conversation

about what matters most, and face discouragement with courage and faith.

It's honest, hopeful, So stay tuned. You won't want to

miss a second.

So let's get to it.

Here is the final part of a message called being

a Disciple in the Digital Age.

You know this thing about addiction? It was really funny

this week Josh my Son sent me an article from

Wired magazine. He knew us teaching on this, and it

was an article defending the internet and online and all

these different things gaming and social media to say, none

of these things are really addicting.

I'm going, what universe are you on? Guys?

Say none of these things are really addicting? Do you

know anything about dopamine? None of these things are really addicting?

And then I looked at the bottom and who wrote it?

And I said, I know that name. Where do I

know that name from? I think he wrote a book.

I think I read it about five years ago. And

I went back and I went in my library and

I found a book by the guy who had said,

none of these things are addicting. And he wrote this

book five years ago, Hooked how to build habit farming products.

I'm good, busted, busted.

He had written a book on how do you build

Believe me, night and day. Advertisers are trying to figure

out how to get you hooked so you'll keep coming back,

so you keep seeing their ads. You keep seeing their ads.

Let me give you one more, one more hazard. I

can be distracted from what's most important. If I spend

eleven years of my life looking at a screen, a

phone screen, a smart screen, I can be distracted. Excuse

me just a minute? Yes, hello, no, no, no, I'm sorry.

I'm preaching right now. Yeah yeah, okay, yes, I will

bring the milk and bread bye bye, Okay. Now, you

will pick up a phone any time, anywhere. And if

you allow this little thing to interrupt anything else in

your life, this has become your god. If you allow

this to interrupt anything, you'll pick it up.

Well.

I won't say all the things you could pick it

up doing, but you could pick it up. It means

I really value this more than I value anything else

in my life, because nothing will keep me. I'm picking

up the phone. It's become my god. Who owns the phone?

Do you own the phone? Or does it own you?

Who's the master and who's the slave? Which is the tool?

And which is the owner the master? If this can

interrupt you anytime, then this thing is running your life.

It's running your life. I can allow things to distract

me from what's most important. There's an interesting story in

the Bible. Jesus had a friend named Lazarus, and Lazarus

had two sisters, Mary and Martha. Mary, Martha and Lazarus

lived together in a home in Bethany. Bethany is a

small town near Jerusalem in Israel. Jesus was in Jerusalem.

I've been to both these cities, of course, and you

can walk from Jerusalem to Bethany in a half a day.

It's just not that far you can get there. Lazarus

got very deathly sick, in fact, he was almost dead,

and word was sent to Jesus, Lord, come to our

house in Bethany because they thought, if Jesus gets here,

he can heal Lazarus. We know it, he's healed people before.

And Jesus was in Jerusalem. Instead of getting there in

a half day, it took him three days to get there.

What was he doing. He's walking around, he's talking to

other people, he's ministering to people and something like that.

Jesus didn't want to get there to heal Lazarus. He

wanted to get there to raise Lazarus from the dead.

He wanted to do a bigger miracle, so he waited

until Lazarus had died. So finally, after Lazarus dies, he

shows up at Mary and Martha's house in Bethany, and

as he walks into the house, Mary sits down at

the feet of Jesus and just starts listening to him talk.

Martha goes, we ought to.

Have a meal, and she gets up and she starts

preparing everything, and she's all busy and all all messed

up and very flustered and worried. And here's how the

story where he goes In the Bible Luke, chapter ten,

verse forty to forty two, Mary sat quietly at Jesus' feet,

listening to everything he said. Friends, you need to do

that every day of your life. You need to sit

at Jesus' feet listening to everything he says. That's called

a quiet time. You sit quietly with this book and

you pray and you read, and you pray and you read,

and you do it every day and you say, God,

is there anything you want to tell me today?

And you let God speak to you.

You check in with the commander in chief on a

daily basis. Mary sat quietly at Jesus' feet. That's quiet time,

listening to everything he said. But Martha was distracted, you

might circle that word. She was distracted by all she

had to do. She said, Lord, don't you care that

my sister has left me to do all the work

by myself.

Tell her to help me. Martha is having a pity party.

And Jesus, I think Jesus says it like this.

Martha, Martha, Martha, Martha, you are worried and you're too

distracted by many things. But really, Martha, there's only one

thing that is truly important, and Mary chose it. If

you have an opportunity to look at your phone and

your social media, or spend time sitting quietly.

At the feet of Jesus.

What are you going to choose If an average American

is spending three point four hours a day looking at this,

how much time are you spending alone with Jesus. Something's

out of whack here. Why do you spend more time

with stuff you don't believe than with someone and something

you do believe? The night might need to be a

realignment in your life of how much input am I

getting from the truth that sets me free? And how

how much input am I getting from lives that make

me stressed out? Three point four hours here, I don't

know anybody spending three point four hours with Jesus Christ

every day. Well, that shows in our lifestyle. It shows

and how we're doing I can be distracted from what's

most important. Now that's the negative side. I want to

talk to you, and actually Tom's going to help me

with this. Just quickly summarize five ways, five ways that

you can use your phone for the glory of God.

So, based on what Pastor Rick's been teaching us, do

we need to take a sledgehammer to our cell phones?

No?

No, how do I use it for good? How can

I use my smartphone for God's glory. I'm going to

share the first few of these, and then Pastor Rick's

going to come back and end this message. If you've

been around Saddleback for any time, you know that God

has given us five purposes to live for, not eight.

Not to the Bible clear reveals five specific purposes. So

my cell phone, my smartphone, how can I use it

to fulfill those purposes? This is purpose driven smartphones, purpose

driven technology. All right, Five things. Number one, We're going

to go through these quickly. Number one, you use it

to express my worship. I use the technology that God's

put in my hands to express my worship. God has

not told us where we have to worship. He's told

us that we have to worship, and he's also told

us the heart we need in worship. Look at what

Jesus said about this up on the screen. Jesus taught

us that true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit

and in truth. So that's something I need to take

into my life all of my life, not just once

a week when I come to worship, but true worship

is in spirit and in truth all through the day,

all through my life. Look at this next verse Proverbs

twenty five says, all day long, I put my hope

and trust in You. So because I've got my phone

with me all day long, it can help me all

day long to put my hope and trust in Jesus Christ.

There's a lot of different ways that you can do that.

You can use songs.

You can listen to songs all throughout the day. You

can in your car listen to the favorite song you have,

turn it up really loud, and sing along with it.

When I do that, I really think I can sing.

I can't sing, but if you put it up really loud,

I feel like I can sing. And you should do that.

You can find new songs, you can share songs that

you're hearing with other people. You use it to express

my worship. Worship is singing, but worship is a lot

of other things. Worship is giving. I don't know if

you knew that you can actually commit to give to

tithe on your cell phone. Is it any greater a

commitment if you make it here or you make it

on your cell phone. No, it's about your spirit, it's

about your heart. It's not where, it's what God's doing

in your life. So yeah, use it to express my

worship number two. I use it to encourage fellowship, to

encourage connection with other people. The very thing that can

sometimes break connection, our smartphones, we can use it to

enhance to encourage connection. Robins twelve to ten says, love

each other with genuine affection and take delight in honoring

each other. Any time you honor someone, you are you

are taking delight in something that God takes delight.

In, and you're encouraging.

You're enhancing fellowship, your strengthening, strengthening fellowship. Social media is

not a place to show off, as Rick has been

telling us. It's a place to show up in other

people's lives, and it's place to show up especially with encouragement,

because we all need encouragement every day. The Bible says

in First Sessians five eleven, encourage each other and give

each other's strength. So instead of looking to social media

as a place where you can get encouragement, that dose

of encouragement that you need, look to it as a

place where you can give encouragement to other people. When

you feel discouraged throughout the day, let me tell you,

let me give you just a prescription. The best thing

you can do is look for somebody to encourage. Immediately

grab your phone and encourage somebody else and watch how

God multiplies what God wants to do through the fellowship

in your life. Third thing you can do is you

use it to enhance my spiritual growth, express my worship,

encourage fellowship. And number three, I use it to enhance

my spiritual growth. I use it so that I can

get closer to Christ on a daily basis, because I

have this with me on a daily basis. Grow two

Peter three eighteen says, grow in spiritual strength and become

better acquainted with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

And there are so.

Many ways to do this with the technology that God

has given to us, so many hundreds of apps, probably

thousands upon thousands of apps and websites that you can

go to, places where you can do Bible studies, places

where you can value God's.

Word in your life.

Proverbs tells us that it's better to much better to

have wisdom and the knowledge than to have.

Gold or silver.

And when you value God's word in your life, you're

valuing spiritual growth in your life. I've talked to a

lot of Peo people over the years. They struggle with

spiritual growth. I think all of us do. And one

of the reasons we struggle is we try to grow

spiritually based on one day a week. I just come

one day a week, I learn it all, and then

I'm going to grow spiritually and it's not going to work.

It's like trying to have a meal one day a week,

great big meal on the weekend. I starve the rest

of the week, and I think I'm going to be

physically healthy. With the tools God has given us, you

can bring them into your life every day, things like

daily hope. The pastor Rick has done. Bible says in

Some one nineteen thirty seven, keep me from looking at

worthless things and let me live by your word.

So it's just this choice.

Is what I'm looking at now? Is it worthless or

is it worthwhile? Is it worthwhile for my spiritual growth?

And then number four fourth purpose of life is ministry.

So I use it to expand my ministry. I use

it to expand my ministry. I start to think of

social media as a place where I can serve others.

Jesus said, I didn't come to be served, but to

serve others. So social media is not place for you

to be served. It's a place for you to serve

other people. Saw I'm one sixteen twelve says what can

I give back to God for all the blessings that

He's poured out to me?

So?

What can I give back to others for God's blessings?

Through social media? If I learn something, how can I

share it with somebody else? If I read in an

article it helps me grow, how can I share it

with somebody else? Or Rick talked earlier about people who

want to argue with you, how can you minister to them?

I'll tell you how you can pray for them When

they want to argue with you.

You pray for them.

Now, don't tell them you're praying for them because I

want to argue with you about that. I just I'll

promise you they will. But you just choose to pray

for them, and you are ministering them as you do that.

And then the fifth thing you can do, and Rick's

going to come and talk to us about this write

this in with me, is I use it to extend

my witness.

I use it to extend my witness. You know, Saddleback

has always been an early adopter of every technology. When

we start using When fax machines or first came out

like a nineteen eighty I think there were like four

fact machines in the world. I started a thing called

the Facts of Life and it was a daily devotional

for Business Leader. We would fax it out twenty four

hours a day. We Saddleback was the first church on

the Internet nineteen ninety two, is long before Internet Explorer

and Netscape, or that we were using my FTP and

Gopher and Mosaic. Those of you guys who knew that

we were the first church on the Internet.

But I have to admit that I was a.

Late adapter to social media because it sounded so self centered.

One of my staff, who was the director of technology

at the time for saddle Back Church, pastor here brilliant guy.

He wrote the Microsoft certification test and he was on

staff at Saddleback Church, the test that everybody at Microsoft

has to fake.

And you know, he came to me.

He said, Rick, there's this new thing coming out called Twitter,

and he goes, it's going to be a big deal,

big platform.

You should get on it. You can influence a lot

of people. And I said, what does it do?

He said, well, in a few sentences, you just tell

people what you're doing at that point in your life.

I said, are you kidding me? I said, that sounds

like the most narcissistic.

Thing I could ever think of.

I said, you know, I don't want people knowing everything

I do. They shouldn't care what I do. They should

be thinking about their own lives. And so I didn't

go on it for many years now. He actually put

my name in their reserved account. When I years later

went on Twitter, I had sixty thousand followers and had

never twittered anything, tweeted anything. But what changed my mind

about social media because it just seemed, you know, the

opposite of it's not about you, because social media is

so much it's all about you, and I'm going I'm

not interested in that kind of channel.

But I went up and I was doing a funeral

for a very well known.

Christian leader, and I was doing it up in Pasadena,

and the other pastor who was doing the funeral with

me was a guy named John Piper, a very well

known pastor from the East Coast. John's one of the

most humble guys I've ever known in my life, certainly

not on any kind of ego self promotion idea and

he leans over to me while we're on stage. He

goes at the funeral, he goes, Rick, I'm on Twitter.

I looked at him and go, you gotta be kidding me,

because it didn't just fit his person. And I said,

what in the world do you do? And I said,

I use it to mintor people ding. The light goes

on and I go, that I can do. You will

never see me with a picture of a celebrity on Twitter.

You will never see me posting my little latte and

stuff like that. What I do is I use social

media to encourage people. Like a recent tweet I did.

I said, sometimes God removes people from your life for

your own protection, don't run after them. A lot of

people needed that, a lot of people needed that.

And that's the kind of thing you can do. Now.

The fifth thing you can do, as Tom said, is

this extends your witness The Bible says in Second Corinthians

five eighteen and twenty through Christ, God has made peace

between us and himself, and he gave us the work

of telling everyone about the peace we can have with him.

That's called witnessing.

Gave us the work of telling everybody else about the

peace we can have with God. So we have been

sent out to speak for Christ. Look at the next verse,

First Chronicles sixteen twenty four. Publish God's glorious deeds among

every nation.

Tell everyone about the amazing things he does.

Now, friends, you and I have an advantage over every

other Christian who's lived for two thousand years. You and

I have an advantage over every believer who's ever lived

throughout history. We have a tool that literally can go

around the world. Jesus said, go make disciples of every nation.

Who was he talking to you? You, every single believer.

If you're a believer, you are to be a witness.

You are to be an ambassador. You are to share

what you know about your life with the whole world. Now,

for two thousand years, to go to the whole world

mean meant you had to get on a steamship and

go for six months to travel to another country to

tell somebody, or in recent years, get on a plane

and travel around the world to tell somebody about the

good news of the Lord. Today you don't have to

leave your home. You can sit at home in your

bedroom in your PJS and say a good word about

the Lord, and it goes to the entire globe. That

is a benefit, a blessing, and a responsibility we have

no other Christians have ever had in history.

You can talk to the whole world.

You can be a witness to the whole world through

social media. Jesus said, you will be my witness. If

you do it on Twitter, you will be my twitness.

So God wants all of us to be twitnesses, to

be witnesses of the whole world.

And you can do this. You can do this. Let's

bower heads, would you pray?

Say God, I want to be a disciple in the

digital age. I don't want to waste precious time, the

time of my life. I don't want to be seduced

by the world's values. I want to be a God pleaser,

not a people pleaser. I don't want to be drawn

into unproductive arguments. Help me to not be tempted to

compete and show off. I don't want to be addicted

to the approval of others, and I don't want to

be distracted from.

What's most important.

So God, help me to use my phone to express

my worship.

All day long.

Help me to use my phone to encourage fellowship, to

look for people, to encourage and show love to and

to honor others. Help me to use my phone to

enhance my spiritual growth, to listen to good messages, to

read good material, to buy good Christian solid books. Help

me to use my phone to expand my ministry. And

when I'm just courage, to look for other people, to

encourage and to offer a helping hand to those who

need comfort. And Lord, I want you to use me

to extend my witness. I want to publish the good news,

and when I get to Heaven, I want to hear

you say, well done, good and faithful servant.

You shared the good news.

With other people around the world, and so I commit

to doing that Today.

In your name, I pray.

If you're not a believer, if you haven't opened your

life to Christ, say Jesus Christ, come into my life today.

I want to know you.

I want to learn to trust you and love you.

And I pray this in your name. Amen.

Hey, if you've just prayed along with Rick to accept

Jesus in your life, Rick would love to hear from you.

Just email Rick at pastorick dot com. Hey, do you

know someone who's graduating this year? Maybe it's your son,

a daughter, grandchild, perhaps a neighbor or even a family friend.

As you celebrate this important milestone and as they begin

the next phase of their journey, they need to know

that God created them, loves them, and has a plan

for their life. So that's why Rick Warren created a

special resource just for graduates called The Purpose Driven Life,

Selected Thoughts and Scriptures for the Graduate. It's filled with

inspirational scripture, biblical wisdom from Rick, and beautiful imagery. This

unique hardcover giftbook provides a priceless reminder of the bountiful

life that God has planned for your graduate, and it's

going to inspire them to seek His unique plan and

purpose for their life. So please don't miss this opportunity

to minister to the graduate in your life today. Be

sure to request your copy of The Purpose Driven Life

for Graduates when you give a gift to Daily Hope.

Just go to Pastorick dot com to get your copy

of this great resource. That's pastorick dot com. Or you

can text the word hope to seven oh three oh nine. Again,

that's the word hope to seven oh three oh nine,

And we thank you so much for your support. It

helps us share the hope of Christ with people all

around the world. Be sure to join us next time

as we look into God's Word for our daily hope.

This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and

your generous financial support.