Rick Warren - Why God Made You—Part One

Hello everybody, and welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. This

is the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Now today

we're continuing into the new year, and we're digging deeper

into one of life's biggest questions, does my life really matter?

In today's message, Rick's going to continue his powerful series

Live Your Calling. What on Earth Am I here for?

In it, you'll discover how living out God's purpose for

your life brings real meaning, direction, and joy no matter

where you're starting from. So sit back, relax, and here's

part one of a message called Why God Made You.

Mark Train once said, the two most important days in

your life our number one the day you're born, and

number two the day you figure out why.

Why you were born.

God has never created anything without a purpose. Every plant

has a purpose, every star has a purpose, every animal

has a purpose. God does not create things without a reason,

without a purpose. And if your heart is beating and

your breathing, there's a purpose for your life because God

never makes anything without a purpose. And the very fact

that you're alive makes your life meaningful. That God had

a reason for creating you. And that's what we're gonna

look at this weekend.

Why God made you?

Now, if you want to know the purpose of your life,

you got to start with God.

You can't find it on TV, you can't find it.

In the movies, you can't find it. You know, reading

a book, you can't find it. A lot of people say, well,

the way you need to find your purpose is look within,

like trust the force, Luke, look within. That doesn't work.

I tried that a lot of times. Look within also

has a bunch of confusion. You can't tell you what

your purpose is because you didn't make you.

Does that make sense?

Only your creator can tell you what your purpose is.

You can't tell yourself because you weren't alive when he

whoever thought you up thought you up. If I were

to hold up in a just in any kind of

invention that you had never seen, and I held up

and I said, tell me what this is? What's the

purpose of this invention? You wouldn't have the slightest idea.

And the only way you would know the purpose of

an invention you'd never seen is either a talk to

the inventor, the creator who made it, and they can

tell you what it does, or b read the owner's

manual the same is true for your life. The only

way you're ever going to know your purpose for your life.

Why you're here on this planet, what on earth you're

here for? Is a talk to your creator, God who

made you, and be read the Owner's Manual. Now, the

Bible says this, look there on your outline. Ephesians chapter

one from the Bible says, it is in Christ that

we find out who we are and what we're living for.

So you said, I really got to find myself. You're

gonna find yourself in Christ. It is in Christ we

find out who we are, what we're living for, part

of the overall purpose that He God is working out

in everything and everyone. The next verse, Colossians chapter one,

verse sixteen says this, everything, absolutely everything, got started in

Christ and finds its purpose in him. You were made

by God, You were made for God. Until you understand

that your life is never gonna make sense.

You're gonna go through life one and what on earth

am I here for? You got to start with God.

Now, the Bible says that you were made to last forever.

One day your heart is going to stop. That's going

to be the end of your body. But it's not

going to be the end of you. That's gonna be

the end of your time on Earth. But it's not

gonna be the end of you. God has long range

plans for your life, and I'm not exaggerating, because He

wants you to live forever and ever and ever and

ever and ever and ever and ever. So you're gonna

actually spend more time on the other side of death

than you do on this time side. On this side

you get eighty years at the most, maybe a hundred.

That's it.

That's not really a whole lot of time. After you die,

you move into eternity, and you're gonna spend trillions and

trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions and trillions onto

infinity and beyond.

For the rest of your life.

So this is like a little tiny millimeter of your life.

The few measly years you're here on Earth. Most of

your life is gonna be on the other side. And

have you ever thought about this? If God wants to

take me to heaven, why doesn't he just take me

there instantly? Why didn't just make me and start with

me in heaven? Why does God put you on this

planet for eighty years?

Really? Why does he do that? Well?

The Bible says, you're not ready for heaven. There are

some things you need to learn, and God says, this

life follow me. This life is preparation.

For the next.

If you want to know why you're on this planet,

it is to get ready for the next life. This

life is preparation for the next. This is the preschool.

This is the warm up act.

This is the.

Get ready stage. This is the kindergarten. This is the

dress rehearsal before the real show begins. This is the

first lap around track before the real race begins. This

is the warm up act, getting ready for eternity, because

that's the real show that's gonna go on forever and

ever and ever. Now, in heaven, you're going to do

a number of things, and the Bible tells us what's

gonna happen in heaven, and what God wants you to

do here on earth is practice what you're gonna do

in heaven forever, so when you get to heaven you

know what to do.

Now, I'm going to explain to.

You this evening exactly what God wants you to practice

while you're here on earth. This may be the most

important message you've ever heard in your life. Because I

can't think of anything more fundamental than why am I

here on earth and what am I supposed to do

with my life. If I only had one sermon to preach,

it would be this message to teach you why God

made you and what you're supposed to do with your life.

God wants you to practice five things on this planet.

We call them our purposes, the reasons for living.

We often use the word callings. There are five callings, but.

There are five things God wants you to do with

your life here on earth for five reasons. He made

you for five reasons. Now I want you to write

these down. Number one, the first purpose of your life

is this. God planned me. God planned me for his pleasure.

God planned me for his pleasure. God created you just

to love you. That's the whole idea. The Bible says

that God is love. I've told you this many times.

It doesn't say God has love. It says God is love.

It is the essence of his nature, it is his character,

it is who God is. God is love. And if

God wasn't a God of love, you would not be

able to love anybody else Because you're made in God's image.

The only reason You're able to love is because God said, I'm.

Going to make men and women in my own image.

And if God was not a god of love, there

would be no love in the universe, that would be

no love between human beings. Now, the Bible says that

God made you simply to love you.

God made you to love you. He didn't need you.

God is totally satisfied in himself. Father's not holy spirit,

but he wanted you. That shows how valuable you are.

Now let me show you some verses about how God

planned you for his pleasure. He planned he created you

just so we could love you. Revelation four, verse eleven.

You God created everything, and it is for your pleasure.

Circle that for your pleasure that they exist, and they

were created. Everything was created because God gets enjoyment out

of it.

He wanted to love it.

God loves every rock, every plant, every animal, every star,

and every human being. So one verse four, the Lord

takes pleasure in his people. Anybody here a parent, who

has anybody here?

Have kids?

All right, those of you who are parents, do you

get pleasure? How many of you get pleasure in your kids?

You see most of the time? Yeah, yeah, Well, you

know what God takes pleasure in you all of the time.

Why because He made you, He created you, He's your

heavenly father. Did you know that God gets pleasure in

just watching you beu? Some people think that God is

only smiling at them when they're doing something quote religious

that if you know, if you're feeding the poor, you're

helping the sick, you're confessing your sins, you're going to church,

you're giving a tithe, you're being generous. That when you

do these kind of spiritual things, reading your Bible and praying,

then God smiles.

But the rest of the.

Time, God's kind of bored with you.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

God gets pleasure in watching you be you because He

made you you, and when you do something that's so

typical of you, he goes, that's my girl, that's my boy,

That's what I made them to do. You know, when

my children were little, I used to sneak into their

rooms at night and sit by their bedside and watch

them sleep. And I got so much pleasure out of

just watching them breathe. You know, I would watch their

little chest.

Rise and lower and rise and lower and rise and lower,

and I got so much pleasure just watching my kids breathe. Why,

Because I am their creator, I'm their father.

I made them. They wouldn't exist without me. Now, they

didn't have to do anything special. They didn't have to

be reading the Bible or memorizing scripture or witnessing to

other two year olds. They just had to be themselves.

And I got pleasure out of watching them sleep. Did

you know that God gets pleasure out of watching you sleep?

In fact, the way you act sometimes he's more pleased

with that. But the fact is, if my kids had

acted like the devil all day at night, they're angels.

And God gives pleasure out of watching his.

Children just be his children.

Here's what the Bible says Ephesians, chapter one, verse four.

Long before he God laid down the earth found ation.

Other words, I mean is long before God created the universe.

God had us in mind.

Whoo. God had us in mind, and he settled on

us as.

The focus of his love circle the word focus. The

focus of God's love is not animals. He loves animals,

but that's not the focus of his love. The focus

of God's love is not the environment. He loves the environment,

but that's not his focus. His focus of his love

is us. And the reason why is because He has

given us the capacity to love him back. This is

what makes you different from animals. Animals can't pray, animals

can't talk to God. Animals can't worship because they're not

made in God's image. God gave you the freedom of

choice and the freedom to respond. You can learn to

love and love him back. God knows everything about you.

You know almost nothing about God. God loves you in

spite of everything those about you. God wants you to

learn to know him and love him back. And the

Bible calls this worship. And it's the first purpose of

your life. That God planned me for his pleasure and

he wants me to.

Learn to love him back.

One day, a guy who was walking down the street

in Jerusalem and he comes up to Jesus. He says, Lord,

what's the most important commandment in the whole Bible? And

Jesus says, I'll summarize the whole Bible and two sentences,

this is it.

Cliff notes on the Bible.

Love God with all your heart, love Him with all

your soul, all your mind, all your strength. Oh and

by the way, second law, love your neighbor as yourself.

Life is all about love. If you don't get that,

you miss the first purpose of your life. And the

first purpose is to love God with all your heart

and soul and mind and strength, to get to know him.

God wants you to know him and love him back.

Here's what he says in the Book of Hoseiah in

the Bible, chapter six, verse six. God says, I don't

want your sacrifices. I want your loved talking to you.

I don't want your offerings. I want you to know me.

Now circle the word love and circle the word no.

Because that is the first purpose of your life, to

know God and to love God. The most important thing

you can know in life is that God loves you,

and the most important thing you can do in life

is love him back.

So, as I've.

Said to you many times, you ought to get up

in the morning and say God, I want to know

you and love you more.

I have done this.

Every single morning of my life for decades. I don't

get out of bed.

In the morning. Before I do this.

I sit on the edge of my bed before my

feet touched the ground, and I just say this, Dear God,

it's another day. And if I don't get anything else done. Today,

I want to know you a little bit better, and

I want to love you a little bit more, because

that's the first purpose of life. I was planned for

God's pleasure. And if at the end of the day

that day everything went wrong, it was terrible. I sin,

there were mistakes. There are all kinds of grief and

problems and difficulties. If at the end of the day

I know God a little bit better and love him

a little bit more, I didn't waste that day. On

the other hand, it doesn't matter how many things you accomplished,

how many things you achieve, how famous you become, how

much money you make. If at the end of each

day you don't know God a little bit better and

love him a little bit more, you just wasted that day.

Because God did not create you and put you on

earth just to mark things off your to do list.

He put you here for the very first purpose, and

there are five purposes of your life.

To know Him and love Him. Write this down. The

first purpose of my life is to know and love God. Bam.

That's it. It's pretty simple. Love God with all your heart.

You got to get to know him before you can

love him. To know and love God. Now, the tragedy

is a lot of people are going through life missing

the number one purpose of life. They know everything else.

They know sports scores, they know music, so they know

who's on the cover of People magazine, they know who

is the winner.

Of the Voice.

They know all kinds of things in pop culture. But

they don't know God. And that's the most important thing

in life. It's what you were put here to do,

to know God. Fir Timothy, Chapter six the Bible says this,

some people have missed the most important thing in life.

They don't know God. They don't know God.

Now, how do you know when you don't know God?

How do you know when you're disconnected from God? How

do you know when in that moment you're not knowing

and loving God. God has given us a warning sign

and that goes off like a bright yellow light in

your life every time you get disconnected from God. And

that warning sign is this.

Worry. Are any of you familiar with this term worry? Yeah?

Yeah, Well, anytime when you worry, you're acting like God

doesn't exist. You're acting like if it's to be it's

up to me. No, it's not up to you, it's

up to God. And when you worry, you're acting like

it's all your responsibility that you don't have a heavenly

father who loves you. That there aren't seven thousand promises

in the Bible, that God hasn't already agreed to take

care of all your needs. You're acting like an orphan,

like you don't have to have any father.

God doesn't exist.

Worry is practical atheism. It's practically it's acting like an

atheist and worry. The Bible says in Matthew six point

thirty two, people who don't know God are always worrying. Now,

God planned me for his pleasure. So the first purpose

of my life is to know and love God. Not

only did God plan me for his pleasure. Number two,

God formed me for his family. God formed me for

his family. God wanted a family, and you were created

to be a part of it. The whole reason the

universe exists. You want to know why the universe exists.

God wanted a family. He wanted children. Now, he didn't

need us, but he wanted us. He wanted to show

his love to something, so he created us as objects

of his love. And he created the entire universe to

create this galaxy to create this planet, so it's on

an access Do you know that one degree this way

we'd burn up. In one degree this way we'd freeze up.

It's just the perfect angle that would sustain life at

this point from the sun. Just so he could create

the human race, just so he could create you, just

so he could love you. That's how valuable you are

to God. God thought you up before he thought up

the universe. The Bible says this very clearly, that you

the focus of his love. Ephesians, chapter one, verse five.

God's unchanging plan, it never has changed, has always been

to adopt us into his own family. Whoooa whoa by

bringing this to himself through Jesus Christ, and this gave

him God great pleasure. God wanted a family and wanted

you to be a part of it. God never meant

for you to go through life alone. Whether you marry

or not is irrelevant. Whether you are your family stays

together splits up, is irrelevant.

To this point.

God wanted you in his family, and the first thing

he told Adam is it's not good for men.

To be alone.

You're made to be in a spiritual family that he

created to take care of you. So you're not lonely

in life. And by the way, I said this before,

your spiritual family is going to outlast your physical family.

No physical family lasts. People grow up, they move off,

they get married, they start their own family. People divorce,

people die, people separate. No physical family lasts forever. But

your spiritual family is going to last forever and ever

and ever. In fact, it's the only thing on planet

Earth that is going to last forever and ever and ever,

your spiritual family. First Peter Chapter one says this verse three,

God has given us the privilege of being born again,

so that we are now members of God's family, God's

own family circle that word members.

Now, I said this last week.

Or a couple weeks ago, that when you were born physically,

you automatically became a part of the human race.

You didn't have a choice. You didn't have a choice.

You automatically became a part of human race. But you

didn't become a part of a spiritual family or a

physical family until somebody chose to take you home. Being

a part of God's family is He's not automatic. It's

a choice. Now, listen to me very closely on this.

Are you telling me that everybody is not a child

of God. That's exactly what I'm telling you. You got

to choose to be in God's family. You got to

let him adopt you. Everybody is created by God. Everybody

is loved by God. God has never made a person

he didn't love. God has never made a person he

did not want in his family. But he gives you

the choice, and He's not going to force you in.

A lot of people choose to opt out. They are

not children of God because they choose to opt out.

And God's not going to force you into an adoption.

You got to want to be adopted into his family.

Now, what is God's family?

One Timothy chapter three says that family is the church.

The family is the Church of the Living God, the

support and foundation of the truth. Now, notice that the

church is not an organization. The church is not an institution.

The church is not a political entity. It's not a business,

it's not a society, it's not an organization. God says,

the church is a family. It's God's family. And we

are children of God, which makes us brothers and sisters

in the family of God. And God's purpose for your

life is not just to know Him and love him,

but to belong to his family. He doesn't want you

just to believe. He wants you to belong, to be connected.

A Christian without a church family is an orphan. Now

it says that that family is a church, a support

and foundation of the true circle.

Support and foundation.

What happens when a building has no support and foundation,

It collapses? And we see that all around us. We

see collapsed marriages, and if you grew up in a

family where the marriage collapsed, we see it and collapsed businesses.

We see it in collapsed dreams. We see it in

collapsed economies. We see it in the collapsed weather, we

see it in collapsed health. When you don't have the

support and foundation of God's family, you're not gonna make

it through the tough times of life. You need support

and you need a foundation, and the Bible says that

is the church, God's family. You cannot fulfill God's purposes

for your life by yourself. Sorry, you can't. You can try,

but you will fail. You cannot fulfill the purpose God

made you for by yourself. We're better together. We're made

to be in community, We're made to be in harmony.

We're made to be in family. We're made to be

in relationship. That's why you need the spiritual support of

a spiritual family. Now, the Bible says in one Peter

two seventeen, love your spiritual family.

What a great message from Pastor Rick today. There's something

I always take away from his message. Here's Rick to

tell you how you can help support this ministry.

Jesus told his disciples that they should live their lives

according to five specific purposes. He said, you've got to

love God with all your heart. That's worship, and love

your neighbors yourself. That's ministry. That's called the Great Commandment.

And then Jesus said, go make disciples. That's evangelism, Baptize

them into the Family of God. That's fellowship, a sign

of fellowship. And then he said, teach them obey everything

I've taught you. That's discipleship. And we call that the

Great Commission. We believe it daily hope that a great

commitment to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission will

produce a great Christian, a great church, a great company,

a great community. You know, I started daily hope so

I could spread the good news about Jesus, not just

across America, but all around the world, and we want

people to know that God's word is filled with hope

and truth and the power that we need to follow

him every day is available to every single one. You

know as well as I do, that the Word of

God changes lives. It's a live it's active, and it

breathes new life and new love into all of our lives.

So wherever you listen to this, whether you listen on

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write me, pray for me, and support this ministry and

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