Rick Warren - Don't Let Anyone Steal Your Identity—Part Two

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. And now here's part two of a

message called don't let anyone steal your identity.

Here's the second pillar of your identity. Kay's gonna come

and talk about this. In Christ, my value and worth

are priceless.

As Rick said, my value and my worth are priceless

Isaiah forty three, Verse four. God says you are precious

to me. Now, precious is a really emotional word. It's

not a word that we use very often. We don't

hear people talk about it. When I hear the word precious,

there's something in me that just thinks it's got to

be said with a Southern accent, like, well, honey, you

are so precious to me, you know you just it

fits with the Southern accent. But in Hebrew and the

Old Testament was written in Hebrew and so Isaiah. In

Hebrew it means highly valued or esteemed. In English it

means valued, wanted, treasured, cherished. And whether you are comfortable

using that emotional word precious to describe how you feel

about people you love or have people use that about you,

or whether you're comfortable even admitting the longings that you

have in your heart. We all want to be loved,

to be highly esteemed, to be valued, to be treasured,

to be cherished by at least one other person in

this world. And the good news is that God has

already said you are precious to me. Well, how do

we know that that's how God feels about us? He

says it, But what's the visible proof of that? Two

ways that I can think of. First is we are

all made in the image of God. In Genesis one,

twenty six and twenty seven, there on the screen, God says,

let us make man mankind in our image, in our likeness.

So God created mankind in his own image, in the

image of God. He created them male and female. He

created them in Latin, the words for image of God

is immago day, and immago day is what all of

us contain. All of us contain the image of God.

We were made in His likeness, and it defines us

as surely as this phrase that we've been using in Christ.

Before we were in Christ. We were all made in

the image of God. And what does that mean that

we are made in the image of God. Well, God

is not a physical being, is a spiritual being spirit,

and so it doesn't have anything to do with well,

you look like God, but I don't look like God.

It's not about appearance. It is the characteristics of God.

God is a three part being. Great theology that there's

so much to unpack on this. He is a triune God.

He's made in three parts. He's God, he's Son, he's

Holy Spirit. And we, as human beings who are made

in His image, are also made in three parts. We

have a body, we have a soul, and we have

a spirit. To be made in the image of God

means that we have emotions like God has emotions. God

uses words like precious. We've said that's an emotional word.

God has emotions. We as human beings made in His

image have emotions. We have the capacity for rational thought,

not just instinct. We have the capacity to develop a

spiritual connection with the creator of the universe. And that

means that every single person, every single person, carries the

spark of the divine and we have the image of

God stamped on us. Now, this must become an unshakable

conviction in you, because when you understand that you and

every other person on this planet has been stamped with

the image of God, that establishes personhood. Anyone made in

the image of God is a person, regardless of how

functional they are, how well they can contribute in society,

whether they are born or unborn, every person has been

stamped with the image of God. And it's the driving

force for why we as human beings care for the weak.

It's why we care for the vulnerable. It's why we

care for those on the edges, those that are too

sick to contribute to the community through employment, or those

that are too young or those that are too old

to care for others, or those that need to be

taken care of, those who are incapacitated in their body,

or their mind or their spirit, those who cannot speak

their own name or put a spoon to their mouth,

or those who are not yet born and have not

made a measurable contribution to society. All our stamped with

the image of God. I've talked to you a little

bit in the last year or so about my mom.

She's ninety five and is in last stages of Alzheimer's,

and she is really a shell of the person that

she used to be. She was a vibrant woman. She

was an excellent Bible teacher. My dad was a pastor,

and she was an amazing pastor's wife, and creative and warm,

and she was one of those ladies that you know,

they always say, well, you could eat her house was

so clean you could eat off of her floor that

was made for my mom. She was just always, always busy.

And now at ninety five and last stages of Alzheimer's,

it is impossible to have much of a rational conversation

with her because her little sentence loop is about fifteen

seconds long, and then she's forgotten what she's said. And

most of the time she lives with delusions and thinks

that she's been kidnapped and that people are trying to

kill her and the caregivers are just being nice to her,

but they're gonna you know, they're gonna hurt her behind

closed doors. She's in a wheelchair because her legs won't

hold her up anymore. She needs help with hygiene, she

needs help with dressing herself. She can't teach Bible studies anymore.

She can't even read the Bible because the Bible in

any other book don't make sense to her. And so

in society's eyes, my mother's worth and value is declining

by the day, and she feels it, she knows it,

and in some of her coherent moments she's able to say,

I wish I could just die. I just wish I

could die. Life is not how it used to be.

I can't do anything for anybody anymore. And so my

main task with my mom these days is to remind

her every day that she has been stamped with imago day,

that the image of God she bears, the divine spark,

she matter. She is a person, she has value, she

has worth, even though she can't contribute in the ways

that she has done all of her life. She matters.

And that is not only how we treat those who

are weak and vulnerable, because they've all been stamped with

the image of God. But this is how we are

to treat each other, every one of us, able bodied,

able mind, whatever condition you find yourself in, no matter

if the person that you're looking at is doing something heinous, horrible, terrible, criminal, evil,

and deserves some sort of punishment or some sort of

consequence for their behavior, every single person, even at our

very worst, maintains the spark of the divine, maintains in

Mago day. And that means that you and I, in

very practical terms, never ever have the right to speak

of another human being in degrading terms, to talk of

human beings as animals, call them names like dogs or

cockroaches or vermin or infestations, or undesirable or even deplorable.

This is all against Immago Day. It is all anytime

we speak in degrading terms of other human beings, even

at their very worst, we are negating in our by

our words, what God says is true about us. Our

identity is we bear the image of God. The second

way that we know that we are valuable, that's concrete way,

I mean, it's an incredible truth to know that we

are stamped with the image of God. But another way

that we can know that we are that our value

is priceless to God is because Jesus died for us.

Rick has already mentioned that. But the Bible says that

Jesus Christ came to earth in human form to die

on a cross for all of our sins, our rebellion

against God's right to reign and rule in our lives.

And he died for all of the sins for all time,

for all of the people who ever were born, who

would ever live, those who were alive when he died

on the cross, those who have been born since his

death and resurrection, and those who will be born long

after you and I are gone. Jesus died for all

of our sin in that moment, and he took the

penalty and paid the ransom that we should have paid

one Peter one eighteen. I'm going to come back to

that other verse, so hold on, but look at first

Peter one eighteen. It says you were rescued from the

useless way of life that you learned, but you weren't

ransomed by silver or gold, but with the precious blood

of Christ. There's that word again, precious. It was used

in the Old Testament, and it meant highly esteemed and valued,

and in the Greek in which the New Testament was written,

it means the same thing. And so God said, I'm

going to use something that is precious, highly valued to me,

the lifeblood of my son, to rescue and redeem something

someone else who is highly esteemed, valuable, precious to me.

And that was me, and that was you. So God

says again, not only because we've been stamped with the

image of God, but because he gave his lifeblood for us,

we are precious to him. Well, there are two debilitating

lies I think that can arise from our need to

know that we matter. And the first one is that

some have concluded that really none of us do matter,

that the universe is a cold and sterile and unfeeling, uncaring,

random place, And because the universe is that way, that

means that we as human beings also are random and

meaningless and at the end of the day, don't really matter.

Rick is going to be talking about that more in

the series, not so much today, but just know that

that is a lie. The second lie that I think

that we have to contend with about our whether we

matter or not is let's just say you get past

that first one and you do believe that human beings

matter and that we're stamped with the image of God.

What can creep in is a fear that if we

reveal to other people really the shameful things that we

have done, the terrible things that go through our minds

on a daily basis, that we won't matter to them.

Maybe will matter to God, but we won't matter to

another human being, Because, honestly, there is a lot of

junk in all of our lives. There's stuff that we

are embarrassed and ashamed of. There are days that we

would love to recall, wipe out. Man, I wish I

had not done what I did on that day. I

wish I had not said what I said to that

person on that day. If I could rewind history, I

would do it in a heartbeat, because I am so

ashamed of what I did and what I said. But

that doesn't even cover the things that nobody will really

ever know about that go through our minds every day.

If I would be horrified if you could see how

many times I am so self centered, how I am

completely self absorbed. How often wouldn't you hate it if

everybody knew that they could see into your head when

you're interpreting a conversation and or interaction and inside really

what you're thinking of, Well, you know what, that doesn't

do anything for me, so I don't have to talk

to that person, or that person's got nothing to give me,

so I don't have to listen to it. I mean

the self absorption, the self centered its, the selfishness. I

mean the stuff that's even worse for meth the ugly thoughts,

the hateful thoughts, the violent thoughts, the pornographic thoughts, the

judgmental the vindictive thoughts that fill our minds. And when

those things, we know they're there. Other people don't necessarily

know they're there, but it can lead us to that

place of believing God may accept me, God may love me,

but other people won't. And so conclude in the end,

I really don't matter that much because people would run

from me, they would discard me like a used tissue

if they knew what I was really like. But here's

the comfort. God does already know. God does already know,

He knows it all, and he has already declared that

you are precious to him, that you are highly valued,

even in your sin, in your worst moments, in your

most evil moments, in your most despicable moments, in your

most shameful moments, His love for you does not shift

or change. You are precious, your value, and Jesus has

come for us. And because of the high price that

Jesus was willing to pay for us, the Bible says

we belong to God, we belong to him. Look at

First Corinthians seven twenty three. It says you have been

bought and paid for by Christ, so you belong to him.

In the world of value, provenance really matters, whether in

the world of antiques, where that jewelry came from, who

wore that piece of jewelry, who painted that painting, who

owned it, who owns that piece of art, whose house

was that who used to have that car? Whose yacht

was at? Those things matter? Ownership matters, and the Bible says,

our provenance is God. God is our owner. Jesus has

bought and paid for us, and our lives belonged to him,

So our provenance are worth our value. So much comes

from belonging to God. Ownership makes all the difference in

the world. Rick has been a collector all his life.

I mean, he collected rocks, he collected stamps, he collected coins,

he collected national geographic magazines, he collected letters from famous people.

I mean, he's collected it all. And he used to

call it his valuable property. And so when he and

I first met, that was one of the things I

learned about him, as he was very particular about his

valuable property, the things that he had collected. And he

also collected some weird and random things like chicken wishbones.

And the first time I visited his parents' home into

the bedroom he had grown up with as a little kid,

it was strong with desiccated and dried out chicken wishbones.

And I married him anyway, So that's on me. I

knew what I was getting into. I'm so glad he's

settled on collecting old books and old things from history

and theology, you know, and of course whoever it belonged

to matters to him. But the really funny thing to

me about this talking about ownership and provenance and where

something came from is that, I mean, Rick would not

say this about himself, but he's kind of well known,

and some people, you know, might even say he's famous.

And so there are people who want to own things

that belong to Rick Warren. So there have been people

digging in our trash over the years, and it just

cracks me up because I'm thinking, really, his used root

beer bottle is that valuable. But it's the provenance. It's

who you belong to and who it belonged to. You

and I. In our it is so strong and it

is so secure. We've been stamped with the image of

God and Mago day is written all over our lives

and we have been bought and paid for by Jesus Christ,

and we belong to God, our owner. Our provenance comes

from God, and that identity strengthens us to live in

this world in such a confident way. Rick is going

to talk about the next point about how in Christ

I have something to offer to the world.

Thanks baby, Now, I've told you many times that you're

not an accident. They're accidental parents. There are no accidental children.

They're illegitimate parents. There are no illegitimate children. Your parents

may not have planned you, but God did. And the

reason you're alive is because He wanted you alive. Remember

before you were born, thousands millions of years before you're born,

he chose you. He said, I'm going to choose to

create you. If you hadn't been chosen by God, you

think you'd be alive right now? Not a chance. If

you hadn't been loved and accepted, and if you weren't

valuable and priceless to God, you think you'd be taking

your next breath. Not a chance. Now, there's a third

pillar of these four legs of the table, which are

your self identity, your self worth. And as Key said,

the third leg of the stool, or a third leg

of the table, is in Christ. I have something to

offer to the world. Why God didn't create anything without

a purpose. So if your heart's beating and your breathing,

there's a purpose. And that purpose is to make a

contribution to the world. God uniquely shaped you for a contribution.

He wired you in certain certain way. Nobody else in

history has your DNA. Nobody, nobody in the past, nobody

in the future will ever be you. God doesn't create

clones or copies. Even identical twins are different in thousands

and thousands of different ways. You have a unique thumbprint,

voice print, iPrint, footprint, heartbeat. You're not one in a million,

You're one in trillions. There's nobody ever going to be

like you in the past and the future. That's how

specifically God custom made you, and he wants you to

be you. God doesn't want you to be anybody else.

God that'd want you to be me. God doesn't want

me to be you. God doesn't want you to be

the person next to you, or why can't you be

more like your brother or your sister, your dad or

your mother. God wants you to be you. If you

hadn't wanted to be you, you wouldn't exist. And yet

we spend our entire lives trying to be somebody we're not.

We spend our entire lives trying to well, I want

to be like that guy, and I want to be

like that woman, and we missed the whole purpose of

our lives. God made you to be you. He doesn't

want you to be anybody else. God puts you on

this planet and made you you, and that means there's

a contribution that only you can make. I can't make it,

nobody else can make it. Only you can make it.

God did not put you on this planet just to

use resources. Live a self centered life. Breathe there, take

up space and die. If you're here, there is a purpose,

there's a plan, and there is a contribution God intends

for you to make. That doesn't mean your contribution is

going to be known by everybody in the whole world.

We don't need everybody in the whole world to make

a contribution that everybody in the world knows about. There's

seven billion of us. But He wants you to make

a contribution in the part of the world where you live,

and that gives your life value and meaning. If you're alive.

There is a purpose and reason and a contribution that

God wants you to make. Let me show you some

things from the Bible. Ephesians two, verse ten says this,

we are each God's masterpiece. Did you know that's in

the Bible? You are a masterpiece. You're a van Goh,

You're a renoir. You're a manee, you're a rembrand. You

are a masterpiece. That word there in Greek is actually

the word poema. We get the word poem from it.

You are a masterpiece. You're not a reject, You're not

a defect. God says, you're a masterpiece just as you are.

Stop trying to be somebody else. He said, I made

you to be you, and God looks at you, and

he goes, that's my girl, that's my boy. And you

don't have to be somebody else for God to smile

at you. In fact, God smiles when you be you.

When you try to be somebody you're not God. Friends,

But what are you doing? I didn't make you to

be somebody else. If I'd wanted you to be somebody else,

I would not have hated you. That would have just

made them. So why are you trying to be somebody else?

You are God's masterpiece. We are God's masterpiece. He created

us in Christ, Jesus. There's that phrase again in Christ,

to do the good things He has planned in advance

for us to do with our lives. Did you know

that before you were born, God planned the good things

he wanted you to do with your life, The contribution

you would make with your life. It's not my contribution,

it's your contribution that, by the way, doing the good

things with your life. There's a word for that in

the Bible. It's called your ministry. Everybody has a ministry.

Everybody has. This is my thing of good things that

I do that help other people in the world. That's

my ministry. And true success is doing what God planned

you to do. My job as your coach, that's what

I am as a pastor or I'm a spiritual coach.

I'm your spiritual coach. My job is to help you

find your niche, your niche the area in your life. Oh,

this is what I was wired to do, and not

to be somebody else, but to do what God wired

you to do and for you to fulfill your ministry.

So when you get to heaven one day, God goes, hey,

did you do what I made you to do with

your life?

Uh?

No, I watched a lot of TV. Wrong answer. Did

you do what I made you to do with your life?

He says, We're God's masterpiece, created to do what He

planted in dance for us to do all those good things.

This is real success. Most people have no idea what

success really is. Some people's success means make a lot

of money. You can make a ton of money and

be an absolute failure in your life. Some people think

being successful means being famous. You can be famous as

all get out and be a total failure with your life.

Some people think success is having a lot of power.

You can have an enormous about amount of power and

being an egotistical, narcissistic twit. It means nothing. What is

real success? Okay, here's what the Bible says. Real success is.

Real success is being who God made you to be,

not trying to be somebody else, not trying to be

what your parents wanted you to be. Real success is

being what God wired you to be. And when you

be who God wired you to be. When you be you,

God goes you got it. That's why I put you

on earth. I put you on earth to be you.

You're not that guy. You're not that guy. You're not

that guy. You're not her, You're not her. This is

who I made you to be. That is real success.

And that's part of my job to help you figure

that out and not copy somebody else. If you try

to be somebody else in life, you are absolutely going

to fail because you can't be anybody but you. You're

going to fail. So stop trying to be somebody else.

Be who God made you to be. Be who you are.

In Christ. Here's another verse. Colossians chapter two, verse nine

and ten says this In Christ, there's that phrase again.

In Christ, there is all of God in a human body.

God came to earth in human form two thousand years

ago split history into AD and BC. In Christ, there

is all of God in a human body. God Jesus

is God just in human flesh. So you have everything

when you have Christ and you are filled with God.

Did you know that through your union with Christ, and

he has authority over every other power. Now, there's a

difference between power and a authority. When a policeman stands

up and stands in the road and says stop in

the name of the law and a giant semi mack

truck stops, who has the most power, the policeman or

the truck. The truck has the most power, but the

policeman has the authority, and authority always trumps power. You're

not the most powerful person in the world, but you

have God in you. You know what that means. You

have authority, you have authority. You've never even tapped. We're

going to talk about that in this series. You have authority,

you have never even tapped. You don't have the power.

The power is in in you. The power is in God.

But he says you have the authority because you're filled

with God. And he's saying that God has already put

in you everything. You need to be you. You lack

nothing to be a success in life if you understand

the success is being you. Now, if you think being

a success is being somebody else, yeah, you don't have

their gifts, you don't have their talents, you don't have

their opportunities. Oh yeah, then you do lack a lot

of things if you think success is being somebody else.

But if you think a successful life is being who

God made me to be, You've already got everything because

God put it in you when he planned you, and

when he birthed you, and when he wired you. Now,

do you understand what I'm saying here that you lack

nothing to be the success God made you to be.

So it really doesn't matter what anybody thinks about you.

Why are you so hung up on what other people

think about you? What other people think about you is

none of your business. It's none of your business. You

shouldn't even care about it. What you should live for

is an audience of one. As I said, if God

likes me and I like me, what's your problem. I

wasn't builled, I wasn't created, I wasn't planned. I wasn't

birth to please you. I was created and planned to

please God. And if that's what I'm focused on, it's

always going to be the right thing. So here's what

I'm begging you to do, as your pastor, stop being

a people pleaser and start being a God pleaser. Stop

being a people pleaser and start being a God pleaser. Then,

by the way, it's a whole lot easier to do

because it's only one person. If you're be going to

be a people pleaser, have you noticed that I don't

always agree? You know, once you get crowd A please,

crowd B gets ticked at you, and then you get

crowd B please, crowd a gets upset. One mantuer the

hero the next miniture of the zero a terrible way

to live. Stop being a people pleaser. Make a commitment

that on this day, I'm gonna stop being a people pleaser.

I'm start going to be a God pleaser. I'm gonna

worry about his God, is this what you want me

to do? It will always be the right thing. He

will never ever steer you in the wrong direction. So

what I'm saying is it inside you and God made you.

You're already competent, you have the right capacity, you're already capable.

You just lack the confidence to be who God made

you to be.

Wow, thanks Pastor Rick for such an amazing message today.

And now here's Rick to tell you about today's offer.

You know, ever since the publication of The Purpose Driven Life,

people have been asking me how they can teach their

young children about the purpose of life. And they say,

and I agree, that it's never too early to start

teaching your children that they're loved by God and He

has a purpose for the life. It's never too soon

to tell a child God made you unique so you

could fulfill your special life mission on earth, and God

planned you just for that. Now here's the super good news.

We have taken the principles that are in The Purpose

Driven Life and we've written them into short devotionals aimed

specifically at children ages four to eight years old. Today,

more than ever, kids at this age need to hear

the message that they're not an accident. They need to

hear even before the universe was created, God had you

in mind, and he planned you for his purposes. You

were made to last forever. Now this book is called

The Purpose Driven Life, one hundred Illustrated Devotions for Children,

and it includes engaging illustrations and devotionals speak directly to

the daily challenges that all of our kids are facing.

And as a way of saying thanks to you for

your financial gift to Daily Hope, I want to send

you a copy of the Purpose Driven Life one hundred

Illustrated Devotions for Children. This will be a great thing

to give kids or to grandkids, and at the same time,

your support continues to help us tell people all around

the world about God's love and God's purpose for them.

Be sure to request your copy of The Purpose Driven

Life one hundred Illustrated Devotions for Children 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