Rick Warren - Why God Lets You Win Before Testing You Part 2

Now, let me just say this to you. You can

be expected to be tested in your success. Whatever level

of success you have in life, God will test you.

If you pass the test, you get more. If you don't,

you get less. Jesus said it. It's taught all the

way through Scripture A. Proverbs fourteen twenty one. You want

to be happy, well, the Bible says this. If you

want to be happy, be kind to the poor. It

is a sin to despise anyone. You're walking down the street,

you see a homeless person. They're sitting there hoping for

a buck or something, and you just ignore them. It's

a sin to despise anybody. If you want to be happy,

be kind the poor. Look at this next verse, Proverbs

fourteen thirty one. Whoever mistreats the poor insults their maker.

God considers it a personal affront when you diss a

homeless person. Whoever mistreats the poor. Let me go back

that one. Whoever mistreats the poor insults the maker. But

whoever is kind to the needy honors God. That's how

you honor God. God says, you honor me when you

honor the people I made Proverbs twenty one thirteen those

who shut their ears to the cries of the poor

will be ignored in their own time of need. This

is what happens in small groups. When you care for

other people in your small group in their need, they'll

be there for you in your need. You're going to

reput yourself you don't ever help anybody. Are you doing

anything totally unselfish to help other people who couldn't possibly

help you back? God says, that's like bank and goodwill

in the bank of heaven. Let me show you another one.

You want to be a leader Proverbs twenty nine fourteen.

Love this in the message fair phrase. Leadership gains authority

and respect when the voiceless poor are treated fairly. You

want to be a leader in the community, leader at work,

leader on a sports team, leader at school. Leadership and

authority and respect comes when the voiceless poor are treated fairly.

You know, most of you know this story that when

I wrote the book Purpose Driven Life, it became a

huge global success, far more than I could have ever imagined.

It was the best selling book in the world for

many years, like four or five years. It was number

one in the New York Times for over three years.

It's the most translated book in the world except for

the Bible. It's in one hundred and thirty seven languages.

And when that book became the best selling nonfiction hardback

in American history, it brought in tons and tons of

money to me. And it also brought in tons of

tons of influence. And all of a sudden, I'm getting

calls from people like Bill Gates and Jack Welch and

the President of the United States and the head of

the UN. And I'm getting asked to speak at Davos

World Economic Forum and Ted and the UN and Congress.

And I didn't want it to be this famous person,

but the book kind of ruined that, you know. And

and you know, all of a sudden enormous amounts of money,

tens of millions of dollars start coming in, and all

of a sudden enormous amount of notoriety or fame. And

I you know, when you write a book in the

first sense of the book is it's not about you,

then you know the money is not for you and

the fame is not for you. So I'm gonna go, Okay, lord,

what am I Obviously I know this money is not

for me. What do you want to do with it.

I'll just give it away, But how do you want

it to be given away? And you know, I'm a

pretty simple guy. If I got a pair of jeans

and a good T shirt, I'm happy. You know, I

don't need a lot of bling. And so I began

to pray through scripture, and God gave me two passages

of scripture, one from the New Testament and what to

do with the money, and one from the Old Testament

on what to do with the The Fame of the

Notoriety in First Corinthia. Paul says this, those who teach

the Gospel should make a living by the Gospel. In

other words, it's okay to pay your pastor, it's okay

to pay a missionary, a priest, it's skate to pay

people who serve God full time. That's fine, but Paul says,

but I will not accept that right. I have the

right to be paid for what I do. I will

not accept that right because I want to serve the

Gospel for free. So I'm a slave to no man.

And when I read that, I thought, that's what I

want to do. And so kay and I made five decisions,

and what to do with the money. All of a sudden,

unexpected success. What are we going to do with the success,

money and fame. What are we going to do with it? Well,

we're going to use it to serve the poor. We're

going to use it to help other people. And so

we made five decisions. First, we said, we're not going

to spend the money on us. I still live in

the same house I've lived in twenty five years. I

drive a sixteen year old Ford truck. I bought my

watch at Walmart. Actually this one was given to me.

It keeps the same time. Is your rolex doesn't go

any faster or any slower? Okay, you know I paid

fifteen bucks for it. Okay, I don't need a whole

lot of things because I don't need things to prove

my worth. So I said, I'm not We're not going

to change our lifestyle one bit. Second, I stopped taking

a salary from the church in two thousand and two. Third,

I added up all the church had paid me in

the previous twenty two years. Many of you know this,

and I gave it all back. So I've now served

this church free for thirty six years. I'm a volunteer pastor. Okay,

so no nobody pays me to do this, okay, So

those of you who volunteer in this church will welcome

to the club. I'm a volunteer pastor, okay. In fact,

I'm a full time volunteer, and when some of you retire,

I expect you to volunteer full time. Okay, because I'm

a volunteer pastor. You know, this is the difference between

professional and amateur. A professional is paid to do good.

Those of us are amateurs, were good for nothing. Actually,

the word amateur comes from the word amore. You know

what that is the word love. And an amateur does

it out of love. The professional does it to be

paid for it. I am not a professional pastor. I'm

an amateur pastor. I do it because I love you

and because I love Jesus. Nobody pays me to do this.

And then we set up a foundation called Acts of

Mercy to help the vulnerable and the poor and people

with aids and children and widows and orphans and all

kinds of things like that. And then the last thing,

most of you know, okay, and I became reversed tithers.

Now we'd been raising our tithe every year. We got

married forty one years ago, when we got married, we

gave ten percent to the Lord. The next year we

gave eleven, next year we gave twelve. A third year

of marriage, we raised at three percent, And every year

we raised our tithe giving to away because I just

wanted my heart to grow bigger. Every year, every time

I give, it breaks the grip of materialism in my life.

Every time I give, my heart grows bigger. Every time

I give, I become more like Jesus. I want to

be like Jesus. And so on years it was very

tight financially and the cupboards were bare, we would still

raise our giving like a quarter of a percent, And

on years I'd get a raise, or we'd have a

windfall or something, and we'd raise it four or five percent.

Most of you know that today, can I give away

ninety one percent and live on nine? I've played this

game with God for now, you know, forty one years.

God says, you give to me, and I'll give to you,

and we'll see who wins. And I've lost that for

forty one years. I dare you to try that one.

That was actually the easy part. What do you do

with all that money? Just give it away and it's

been so much fun just giving it away, so we did.

We just gave it all away. The second thing, though,

was what do you do with the fame, the attention.

This is the thing that you get when you the

more successful you become. And I was reading for that

and I came up on Psalm seventy two. Psalm seventy

two is a prayer by Solomon, the son of David,

who was the king of Israel at that time. He's

the most powerful man in the world in Israel, he

is the king of the United Kingdom. It's apex of power.

He's the wisest man in the world, and he's the

wealthiest man in the world. And in Psalm seventy two,

it's his prayer for more influence. When you read this prayer,

it sounds so self centered because in this prayer Psalm

seventy two, Solomon says this, God, I want you to

make me more successful than I already am. I want

you to make me famous. I want you to spread

the fame of my name to every nation. I want

everybody to know who I am. I want you to

give me more influence, more power, more visibility. It sounds

totally self centered. Until you read the motivation. And then

he says, so that here's the motivation, So that the

king may support the widow and orphan, The king may

release the oppressed, the king may help the poor. That

the King may care for the sick. That the King

may you know, help those who are in prison and oppressed.

That the King may be the defender of the immigrant

and the foreigner. Today he's mentioning all the people have

marginalized in society, and he's saying, you know, today he say,

so that I can help the mentally ill and the handicapped,

and the aged, and the elderly, and all the people

that we want to push off to the side of society.

And in that passage, I remember tears were coming down

my face as I read that passage, God said to me,

the purpose of influence is to speak up for those

who have no influence.

If you want to live a life full of purpose

and joy, then you need to transform the way you think.

And to help you do this, Pastor It created a

brand new set of scripture cards with fifty two hand

selected verses from his series Rethinking Your Life. These verses

will guide you into a deeper understanding of your purpose

and faith, and you'll find yourself gaining the strength to

overcome temptation and conquer discouragement. When you allow God's word

to transform your mind, you'll see your life through his eyes,

apply his wisdom, and step into a life of purpose

and joy. This set of beautifully designed cards will help

you memorize scripture so you can recall God's word when

you need it the most. And today, when you give

a gift to help daily hope, take the hope of

Jesus to a world in need, will send you the

rethinking your life scripture card set to say thanks.

God did not give you success, so you can be

a fat cat and prideful and buy an island and

you know, have drinks with little umbrellas in them. God

gives you success not for your benefit, but for the

benefit of others. And when you understand that, God will

give you more. And if you're faithful and little, then

you'll be faithful and much. I know some people hear

that story and say, well, yeah, Rick, if God gave

me millions of dollars, I'd give millions away too. No,

you wouldn't, because you're not doing it now. I had

a track record of being generous when I didn't have

the money. I had a thirty six year track record

on that. And the fact is, you know why God

made that let me be the author of the best

selling book in American history. He knew what I'd do

with the money. He knew he could tryrust me with

the money, that it wasn't going to use it on me,

and that the first sentence would be, it's not about you.

One of the verses that God showed me when I

was having to go, because it scared me to death.

I said, I know what success does to people. A

lot of money, a lot of fame can ruin you

very quickly. And one of the verses God gave me

this verse on the screen Proverbs thirty one to eight

and nine. Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves.

Insure justice for those who are perishing. By the way,

that would include the unborn, because they can't speak for themselves,

and they are certainly perishing. Speak up for those who

can't speak for themselves. Insure justice for those who are perishing. Yes,

speak up for the poor and the helpless, and see

that they get justice. So we are to repent. Change

your attitude, and we are to serve the poor. This

is the warning that God gives to nebucan Ezer. He

totally ignores it. And so the third thing that happens

right down, the third problem is we put off doing

what we know is right. And this is the third

reason that Nebeknezer fell, and it's going to be the

third reason that you might fall in your success if

you don't hear the warning. We put off doing what

we know is right. We procrastinate, we postpone, we delay,

we defer, we dawdle. Daniel four verse twenty eight says

this after he had had this dream interpreted twelve months later.

Oh wait a minute, twelve months later, what's he been

doing for the last year? God says, you're gonna lose

your kingdom and you're gonna lose your mind if you

don't change. Let me ask you that personally, if God

warned you, The truth is he has warned you. It's

right here in this book, and he says, if you'll

do these things, I'm gonna bless you and you're going

to succeed in life. If you don't do that these things,

you're gonna fail. You're gonna hit the wall. You're gonna

have dead ends, delays, difficulties, and things are not gonna

go the way you wanted to go. There's a way

that seems right into a man, but the ends thereof

are the ways of death. So we put off doing

what we know is right. He knew what to do,

and it says here, twelve months later, because he hadn't

done anything, all of what nebukin Ezra dreamed did actually

happen to him. He lost it all. He's taking a

walk on a flat roof of his royal palace in Babylon,

and as he took looked out across the city and

I'm sure it was quite magnificent the skyline, he boasted

to himself. He's talking. I'm sure he's going. Man Neby,

you know, he calls himself Nebby, Nebbe. You are the man,

You're the dude. You're number one. You You, I mean,

everybody wants to be you. You know, gotta be a

good look. And he's so hard to see he is

that you are the man. And as the words were

still on his lips, a voice came from heaven. This

is what God declares to you, decrees to you, Kingdom,

your powers being taken away. You're no longer the ruler

of this kingdom. You're going to be deposed from the palace,

ostracized by everyone, forced to live with the wild animals.

And immediately it all happened. He lost his kingdom and

he lost his mind. He literally went insane. History confirms

us that there was a period of time. Now we

don't actually know how long he was in this loss

where he lost his mind, lost his kingdom, because the

Bible says you're going to lose it for seven periods,

and some scholars think that means seven seasons, which would

have been a little bit less than two years, and

some people think it means seven years, which would have

been a long time. But it wasn't like a month

or two. He has a major CEO burnout, and it's

public and it's embarrassing, and the guy who is the

most powerful man in the world is now drooling on

himself and acting like an animal in the desert and

can't even make sense. That's humbly, that's humiliating. He's out

of touch with reality, becomes a fool, he's unreasonably he

acts like an animal. By the way, you haven't ever

seen it like this. But have you ever seen a

friend who all of a sudden decides to not do

what God wants him to do and they walk off

a cliff and do something self destructive And you're going,

what in the world have you lost your mind?

You?

Wait a minute, tell me you're gonna leave your wife

and kids for her? Or have you lost your mind?

Wait a minute, you're gonna leave your husband and you're

gonna break up your marriage for that guy? Have you

lost your mind? People do this all the time, self

destructive behavior because they're running from God. And so his

life just collapses in a very public and humiliating way,

and we see it all the time. In fact, the

news love to cover this kind of stuff. But God

has mercy on Nebucanezer. And after this period of humiliation,

whether it's two and a half years or a couple

years or seven years, we don't know, he restored his mind.

And I want you to see now the steps that

Nehemiah took back to sanity. This is the road to recovery.

And he did three things. When you have a major

failure in your life, you need to do these exact

three things. He looked up, he woke up, and he

spoke up. Let's look at the first number one. Write

this down. Three steps to recovery after failure. First, look

up to God. Look up to God. And the Bible

says in Daniel four, verse thirty four, at this time,

after this time past, you know when he had lost

his mind, I Nebuicanzer. He's given the testimony. This chapter

is his testimony. I nebuican Azer looked up to heaven

and my sanity returned. Literally, it says in the Hebrews,

he lifted up his eyes to heaven. Do you need

to do that today? Some of you've never taken this

first step. You're in a heap of trouble right now.

You're in a mess. You're in a mess in your life.

It's going the wrong way. But you're looking at everything

else and everybody else to solve it. You're look into

other people. You're looking to the government, or you're looking

to yourself. You expect your husband or your wife to

solve it. Whatever. You're in a mess, you need to

look up to God. You need to get your eyes

on Heaven. Refocus on God, not be looking at anything

and everybody else. Now, by the way, sometimes God has

to lay you flat on your back to get you

to look up. I hope he doesn't have to do

that to you. Just do this now, look up to God.

The second thing he did is he woke up. Here's

the second step. Wake up to God's greatness and start worshiping.

Wake up to God's greatness, not your own greatness, but

God's greatness, and start worshiping him. Worshiping it just means

focus on God. When you focus on God's greatness, that's

called worship. You wake up to God's greatness and you

start worshiping. You get your focus off yourself, off your problem,

off your humiliation, and you get your focus back on God.

How do you do that when you start worshiping again?

If in the past you used to read your Bible

a little bit every day, or try to pray every

day and read the Bible, that's called the quiet time.

You need to do that with regularity. You need to

develop that habit and start focusing worshiping on God every day.

If you've been inconsistent in your small group, or you

haven't been in a small group for a while, you

need to get in a small group again. You need

to start going every week and be consistent worshiping God.

You see in good times you start backing off. Go Hey,

I don't need to go to church this week. I'll

go once a month. That's cool. You know now that

we got money, let's buy a boat, our cabin or

a condo or an RV and we'll spend three weeks

playing and once a month we'll go to church. Really,

is there anything more important in your life than worshiping

God and hearing from Him on a regular basis. If

you know something that will help your life more than

going to worship God, stand up and tell us right now,

because I'll go do it with you, because I'm not

going to waste my life. Just tell us no getting

in touch with God every week in worship. You need

you know when the doors are open at a church,

I'm going to be there. Why Because I've often wondered

what if that was the week God wanted to speak

to me that was going to turn the direction of

my life, build the career that I never even imagined.

And if I didn't go that week, I missed it.

I missed it. I don't want to miss what God

says to me. Some of you need to make the recommitment.

To be at worship every single week, not like once

a month or every two weeks or whatever I do.

It's more important for me to hear from God than

to hear from television or hear from anything else going

on in life. So I wake up to God's greatness

and I start worshiping again, and I'm there and I

worship God all the time. Verse thirty four, nebuchan Ezra says,

my sanity returned and I praised and worshiped the most high,

that's God, and I honored the one who lives forever.

This is the second step to recovery. My sanity returned

when I started praising and worshiping and you know, being

grateful for the things God has done in my life. Now,

I want you to write this down. I don't know

what bad thing you're going through right now, but I

will tell you this. We get better. We get better

when we replace pride with We get better in any

area of our lives when we replace pride in ourselves

with praise to God. Now, let me say it again,

every time things are going good in your life, this

is as much a test as the bad times, as

the delays, the difficulties, and the suffering and the pain.

Every time things are going good in your life, God's

going to go Are they going to become prideful? Are

they going to become praiseful? Are they going to just think, Hey,

look how cool we are I am, or look how

cool God is. I would not have any of this

if it weren't for God. Friends, if you're having trouble

staying consistent in your Bible study and quiet time, one

thing you can do is have a daily Hope devotional

and podcast emailed to you every single day. Did you

know that? Now each devotional, each daily devotional gives you

a Bible verse and both a written and an audio

teaching about that verse. Now I mention this because that's

exactly what one of my listeners has done. Marla wrote me,

and she says that getting daily Hope devotionals have helped

deepen her relationship with the Lord and helped her be

more consistent. Marla writes this, Hello, Pastor Rick, I've been

a Christian all my life, but I felt lost for

the past few years. But a friend of mine told

me about your Daily Hope emails, and I've been getting

them for about a month now. I read them every morning,

and my meditation and prayer practices have become more regular

and definitely more meaningful. My relationship to God has grown

because of you and the Daily Hope ministry. I now

listen to your podcast every day on my way to

or from work, and I love it. They have really

helped me as a mother, as a wife, as a boss,

and as a friend. So I'm going to share them

with my oldest daughter, who's nineteen. She's trying to find

friends and find her way in college. So thank you,

thank you, thank you well, thank you, Marla, thank you

for writing. I'm so encouraged to hear how God uses

Daily Hope to change lives and help people just like

you grow closer to Him. You know, I think it's

great that you are sharing your Daily Hope podcast with

your daughter, and I would invite all of our listeners

to do this. I have no doubt that she is

going to learn to lean on the Lord, and as

she does that, she'll develop biblical discernment that means knowing

which way to go and who to relate to, and

it's going to help her find her way in college.

Now you'll find the Daily Hope podcast on my website.

Dailyhopetv dot com. All of these podcasts are free, and

the reason we're able to do that is because the

generous gifts from listeners like you. So those of you

who are supporting us financially a million thanks. You're making

a difference. You're changing lives. Your gifts are causing people

to come into the Kingdom, grow in Christ, and become

all God intended for them to be.

If you want to live a life full of purpose

and joy, then you need to transform the way you think.

And to help you do this, Pastor Rick created a

brand new set of scripture cards with fifty two hand

selected verses from his series Rethinking Your Life. These verses

will guide you into a deeper understanding of your purpose

and faith, and you'll find yourself gaining the strength to

overcome temptation and conquer discouragement. When you allow God's word

to transform your mind, you'll see your life through his eyes,

apply his wisdom, and step into a life of purpose

and joy. This set of beautifully designed cards will help

you memorize scripture so you can recall God's word when

you need it the most, and today, when you give

a gift to help Daily Hope take the hope of

Jesus to a world in need. We'll send you the

Rethinking your Life scripture card set to say thanks.