Rick Warren - Will I Accept God’s Destiny for Me—Part Two

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

did you know that one decision can shape the entire

direction of your life? Yeah? It can. And today Pastor

Rick Warren is going to continue with the story of Mary,

this young woman who humbly and courageously said yes to

God's call becoming the mother of Jesus. So let's dive

right in for the rest of this message. Here's Rick

with will I accept God's destiny for me?

Whatever worries you, God's concerned about, whatever makes you afraid.

God's concerned about whatever gets you uptight. God is concerned about.

There is nothing in your life that you're concerned about

that God isn't concerned about because you are always on

his mind. That's the second reason why you ought to

go with his plan, not your plan for your life. First,

he made you for his plan, and second, He's always

thinking about you. Whatever concerns me concerns God. You know,

if you ever watch the Fox News channel, there's that

show on there, the O'Reilly Report or the O'Reilly Factor,

And at the end, Bill O'Reilly has a sign off

and he says the spin stops here, and then he

has a final tagline, you remember what it is, he says,

because we're looking out for you. I don't believe Bill

O'Reilly's looking out for me. I don't believe that for

a minute. He doesn't even know who I am. He's

not looking out for me. Bill O'Reilly's looking out for himself.

I don't believe that we're always looking out for you.

He's not always looking out for me. But God is.

God is always looking out for you. Mary accepted God's

destiny because she knew God was always looking out for

It was gonna be tough. It wasn't gonna be easy.

God's destiny for your life will have problems. God's destiny

for your life will have criticism. God's definite destiny for

your life will have things that are really tough to do.

But He's looking out for you, and you're always on

his mind. Mary says this in Luke one eight, for

he has been mindful of the humble state of his

servant circle that word mindful. This is the second reason

she says, I can trust God because he's mindful of

the humble state of his servant. That's me, Mary says.

He says, what is mindful mean? It means he's alert,

he's attentive, he's aware, he's focused. He's paying attention when

nobody else is paying attention to you. God's paying attention

to you. He notices everything. In fact, Jesus said this

about your life. Look here on the screen, Matthew ten.

Not even a little sparrow can fall to the ground

without your Father noticing it. The very hairs on your

head are numbered. You don't even know how many hairs

in the head your head you've got. But God says,

I know. That's how much detail I pay attention to

in your life. I know how many hairs are on

your head. God knows how many hairs are in your ear,

and knows he knows it all. There's nothing God doesn't

know about your life. And Mary says, I can trust

God with my destiny. I'm willing to go with his

plan because first he made me for it, and second,

he's paying attention to everything in my life. Number three,

Mary says in her song The Magnificat that accepting God's

destiny for my life is best because it is the

key to blessing. God didn't want to bless your plan.

If you ignore God's plan for your life. And you

go out with your plan, well, good luck, because you're

on your own. God owes you nothing. If you just

say forget God, I'm gonna go with my plan for

my life. God owes you nothing. God only blesses when

we may do what we were created to do. Following

God's destiny is the way I get God's blessing on

my life. And Mary knew this. She knew that faith

and obedience to God were the key to his blessings.

She knew that that's what God would do in her life.

Look at this verse Luke one forty eight. She says

this from now on. From now on, she says, every

generation will call me blessed, for He the Mighty One,

is holy, and He's done great things for me. He

chose me, and God will show his mercy. Notice, she says,

not only will God bless me, said, God will show

his mercy to every generation who will worship and serve him.

She says, God doesn't just bless me, She'll bless He'll

bless anybody who worships and serve Him, who follows God's

plan for their lives. And what's Mary saying here? She's

gone If I accept God's destiny for my life. I'm

going to be the most blessed woman on the planet.

What God is going to do through me and through

my teenage body will never be forgotten. Now you think, well,

maybe that's true of Mary, but that's certainly not true

of me. You're dead wrong. You're dead wrong. Everything you do,

you do will be remembered for eternity. It's not going

to be remembered on earth, but everything you do will

be remembered for eternity. It's not just Mary's destiny. She's

at every whatever I do, it's gonna be remembered forever

and ever and ever. And everything you do is gonna

be remembered by God forever and ever and ever. That's

why you better make your life count. You better not

waste it. You better go with God's destiny for your life.

Now here's the question. Could Mary have said no to

God's destiny for her? Yes. God doesn't ever force his

plan on us. He gives us a choice because he

wants us to follow him because we love him, not

because we're forced to love him. If God had wanted to,

he could have given you no free will and you

hadn't to do what he wanted you to do. He

could have made you a puppet, a marionette on strings,

and you would have no choice. But God says, it's

only love if you choose to love. So you can

choose not to love God. You can choose to not

follow his destiny for your life. And the fact is

most of the people in the world miss their destiny.

Billions of people miss the destiny God created them for

because they choose to go after their own plan instead

of God's plan for their life. Could Mary missed it? Yes?

Could yes? Deuteronomy thirty, verse nineteen. On the screen, God says,

this this day, I have set before you life or death.

Blessings are curses. Now choose life. He said, it's your choice.

It's your decision. I'm not going to force it on you.

I'm gonna let you choose. Choose life so that you

and your children may live. Your choice does not only

affect your life, they affect the next generation. They affect

the next generation. Number four, Mary says, accepting God's destiny

for my life is best. It's better than any plan

I can come up with because Godd honors humility, and

it takes humility to say God I'm gonna go with

your plan, not my plan. It takes humility to say God,

I'm gonna go your way, not my way. That takes humility, pride,

arrogance says forget you, God, I'm gonna do what I

want to do. I got my plans, my dreams, my ambitions, God,

God says. The Bible says, God resists the proud, but

gives grace to the humble. The Bible says, before honor

is humility. The Bible says, humble yourself before the Lord,

and he will lift you up. I want God to

honor you in the next ten years. I want him

to honor your business. I want him to honor your family.

I want him to honor your life. The Bible says,

before honor is humility. I want God to lift you up.

I wanted him to lift up your finances. I want

him to lift up your health. The Bible says, humble

yourself before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

It starts with humility, and Mary talks about this in

the next couple verses, verses fifty to fifty three. Now

he has displayed his power God with many mighty deeds,

but he has scattered the people who are proud and

think they're the great ones, you know. In other words,

I don't need God. He has brought down mighty rulers

from their thrones, but he's raised up the humble. He

has filled the hungry with good things, but he sent

the rich away with nothing. Those people think, well, I

don't need anything. I don't need God. Notice this is

the great reversal. This is an amazing piece of poetry.

I wish you could hear it in the original language,

you know, I was. I'm watching this special on Taylor Swift.

She's a pretty amazing songwriter. She wrote her first song

at age ten, and by age fourteen, Taylor Swift was

hired by Sony to write songs. How'd you like to

be a fourteen year old being paid by Sony Corporation

to write songs? That's talent. But I want to tell

you the greatest teenage songwriter who ever lived was Mary

Mary's thirteen or fourteen. She's writing this poetry and it's

quite a song. In these ten verses, she mentions seventeen

different attributes of God, and she strings together ten different

verses from the Old Testament from memory. Could you do

that at thirteen, you couldn't do it now. You couldn't

do it now. And this is why God chooses Mary.

Mary knew the word. She wasn't educated. You're far better

educated than Mary ever was, but she knew the word.

And if you want God's blessing, you need to know

God's word. You need to study it and memorize it,

to meditate on it and get to know it. If

you want God's blessing, you need to know the word. Finally,

number six, number five, accepting God's destiny for my life

is best because God keeps his promises. This is the

fifth thing Mary sings about God keeps his promises. It's

a big theme of Mary's song that God is faithful.

God can be counted on. God is good and he

if he makes you a promise, you can count on it.

It's gonna happen. It may take a while, but it's

going to happen. And Luke one fifty four and fifty five.

And he God has kept the promise he has made

to our ancestors. What does that promise? That God would

send a savior, a messiah. And he has come to

the help of his servant Israel, and he has remembered.

God doesn't forget a promise he makes. I forget promises

I make. God remembers he has remembered to show mercy

to Abraham and all his descendants forever. And what in

what was she talking about? Two thousand years before Mary?

Abraham lift? Now that's it was two thousand years ago.

Mary lived, so four thousand years ago from today. Abraham

lived four thousand years ago. God makes a promise to Abraham,

I'm going to bless your family because through your line

one day, I'm going to send the savior of the world.

Through your family line. I'm going to send the promised

Messiah who will save everybody from their sins. That was

a promise made by God four thousand years ago to Abraham.

And Mary knew the story had been promised thousands of

years ago. And she's saying, he keeps his promise. He

keeps his promise. In fact, Mary's story began hundreds and

hundreds of years before Mary was even born. Look at

this verse in Isaiah chapter seven. This is thousands of

years ago for us. God tells Isaiah a prophecy. Therefore,

the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold a

virgin shall conceive he predicted this is thousands of years ago,

and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.

The destiny of Mary's life began thousands of years before

Mary was even born, and the same is true of you.

God planned your destiny before he created the world. The

Bible says that very clearly your destiny was planned, not

the moment you took your first breath. He was planned

thousands of years before you were even before. But the

Bible says, before he, before he formed the earth, God

had us in his mind. And he still gives you

the choice to accept it or to miss what he

planned before you were even born. Mary's destiny was planned,

she accepted it. And the truth is the Savior did

come to earth, and God did keep his promise, and

Jesus did come at Christmas, and then he died on

the cross for us. Now, it's interesting that in the scriptures,

not one time in the Bible are we told to

celebrate Jesus' birth. Now once never in the Bible are

we told to celebrate Jesus' birth, But we are told

over and over and over to celebrate his death and

his resurrection. Because if Jesus hadn't died on the cross

and been resurrected again, Christmas wouldn't even matter. Would you

bow your heads with me as we pray together? And

I want to pray a prayer surrender, and I'm going

to invite you to pray this. Will you accept God's

destiny for your life, just as Mary did, the one

that was planned for your life before you even work?

Or are you going to continue to go with your plan?

Would you pray this? Father? Today? I surrender humbly to

your plan for my life. I surrender humbly to your

plan for my life. I realize that you made me

for your purpose. I realize that no one cares more

about my life than you do. I know that going

with your plan and for my life is the key

to blessing. So I humble myself before you, knowing that

you honor humility. Thank you that you keep your promises.

I want to fulfill my destiny. Today I make a

faith commitment to you, just like Mary did. When I

don't understand it, and I don't understand all that's going

to be involved in it, but I'm saying yes to you,

Jesus in advance, Jesus Christ, I trust you with my life,

and I ask you to save me and change me

and help me to follow your plan from this day forward.

In your name, I pray Amen.

If you just prayed to receive Jesus congratulations, We would

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