Rick Warren - Helping Others Like Jesus—Part Three

Hey, everyone, Welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible

teaching ministry of Rick Warren. And today we're continuing with

this powerful series called the Jesus Model. In this series,

Rick will walk you step by step through the process

of true biblical discipleship. Rick's giving you practical tools to

grow spiritually, experience God's peace, live with greater purpose, and

become more like Jesus in every area of your life. Okay,

and now here's the final part of a message called

helping others like Jesus.

Now, the second thing Jesus said I came to do,

and he said I want you to do is I

want you to heal, help, comfort the broken hearted, heal

the broken art Now, hurting people friends are all around you.

And as a pastor for over thirty years now I

know one thing for certain.

Everybody has a hidden wound.

Everybody everybody has a hidden wound, a hurt, a broken heart.

They're all around you. Let me give you a little secret.

One of the ways to find people who are hurting

around you is look for people who are hurting others.

When people are hurting others, they are revealing their own hurt.

Hurt people hurt people. Hurt people, hurt people. So the

people who hurt you are just crying out because they

need massive doses of love themselves. They're hurting others because

they're hurting themselves. Now, maybe you're overwhelmed, maybe you feel

a little broken hearted. I want you to watch a

second video.

This year has held a lot of different things for

our family. There's been just a lot of hardship and

a lot of struggle, a lot of desperate moments, and

I'd kind of come to the end of myself in

the last couple of months, and we'd have had so

little sleep. Our kids have had a lot of health problems,

and I think Tommy and I were saying that maybe

there was four nights in the last year that we've

had eight hours of sleep, and just a sleep factor

has warn us completely just threadbare.

One of the toughest times in my life was when

within three weeks time, I found out that my husband

and my daughter both had cancer. And this was unbelievable, unbelievable,

and I didn't know that maybe both of them were

going to be taken from me within a period of time.

And I was praying and I was crying out to

Lord of saying, God, I just can't handle this.

And I remember that Kay said when she was lying

there in the clinic room when she learned that she

had cancer, that a scripture came to her. And it's

been my scripture ever since. He knows the way I take,

and when he's through with me, I shall come forth

as pure girl. It was Job talking and Kay was

saying the same thing. He knows what's happening. It's not

unknown to him. It'll be okay.

This place of brokenness, you know, Paul talks about when

I'm weak, he is strong. And it's in this place

of utter desperation that God's spirit comes in, invades their

life and strengthens us.

And God's power is made great in our weakness.

Jesus does not minimize our pain. He is there and

he enters into it and he's with us. And I'm

so grateful that he's a God who feels what we feel.

Now.

I don't know what hurt you're going through, what broken heart,

what wounds you're hiding, But I do know that what

Bobby and Kay and Amy said is true. God knows

what you're going through. He's not aloof He cares about

it when you're at your weakest point. God will be

strong and will give you the strength if you will

turn to him. And the Jesus is not some removed

person minimizing your pain. He is entering it with you

and feeling it with you at that moment. Now, I

want you to take your pencil, and I want you

to write down the name of somebody in your life

who's hurting. Okay, write down the name somebody a family member,

a friend, a relative, somebody, a coworker who has a

broken heart, who's been dealing with disappointment, discouragement, defeat, despair, whatever.

Write down the name of somebody who's felt rejection or

resentment or regret or hurt, and write that name down.

We're going to pray for him in just a minute.

Now.

The third thing Jesus said I came to do, and

he says, I want you to do this too. I

want you to be involved in this is he said,

I came to proclaim freedom to those who feel imprisoned. Now,

he said, well, I don't know body anybody in prison.

Let me use a different word. Have you ever heard

anybody say I feel trapped? That's called a prison. There

are people who feel trapped in a relationship. There are

people who feel trapped by a habit. There are people

who feel trapped by their finances. There are people feel

trapped by their health. There are people who feel trapped

by their secrets, people who feel trapped by their past.

And there are few people who feel trapped by their

circumstances and the problems that they're facing.

They're all over. Everybody feels this.

We're all in different prisons, and so God says, I

want you to proclaim freedom to them.

What do you do? Well? First, I want you to

watch this, and then I'll explain.

I've been imprisoned probably most of my life, I could say,

with fear of being alone and unprotected, and I certainly

never wanted to spend a night alone in my house.

I've struggled for the last fifteen years with panic attacks,

and although they're not a daily part of my life now,

they were a massive part of my adolescence and somewhat

a part of my adulthood, and it was crippling, absolutely crippling.

And when my husband died about three years ago, some

of my first thoughts were, how am I going to live?

I don't know how to live without someone in the

house with me. It really bothered me. I felt imprisoned

by it, that I didn't have a growth that I

needed in spiritual values and spiritual closeness to Christ, and

I was always a little bit ashamed about it.

It was one of the most humbling experiences, and I

remember just crying out to God, going, I just want

to be normal, I just want to feel normal. I

want to do all the normal stuff. God just free

me up.

And I spent my first night alone in that house

and thought I would die, but I didn't.

He didn't make it go away that night, but I

did feel God whispered into my heart that He was

present and he was there, and that the freedom was

around the corner. And it has been a process and

a journey and a lot of three steps forward, two

steps back. But I have definitely learned so much about

how God wants to walk through the pain with me,

how God wants to empower me with his spirit, how

I am not alone.

God was a very present help in time of trouble,

one of my favorite verses. So that's what I did.

And now three years later, no problems, I felt like

God had let me out of that prison of fear.

Now you've got fears.

What do you do when you feel captive to a fear?

And how do you help other people get over their fears? Well,

the Bible is filled with truth, and the Bible says

the truth will set you free. And the Bible gives

us at least a dozen major ways. That's a whole

nother series of seminar on fear. But let me just

give you a couple of quickies right up front. One

way is you must learn to practice the presence of Christ.

What does that mean.

You need to learn the habit of reminding yourself every

single moment of the day, God.

Is with me.

You need to practice talking to Him all the time,

a running conversation. When you're walking down the street, you're

getting in your car, you're taking a bath, you're going

to the bathroom, doesn't matter what you're doing, you talk

to God all the time. You just have this running

conversation with God and you tell him how you're feeling,

and you realize that He's always with you. A lot

of times you say I'm going to go spend some

time with God. Well, let me tell you something, All

time is God time.

He's with you. All the time you're just not aware

of it.

But when you become aware of it, the more aware

you become, the more your fear is going to go down.

Because when He is near, you lose your fear. When

God is near, you lose your fear. Why God is love,

and the Bible says this, there is no fear in love.

Perfect love cast out all fear. The more you feel

loved by God, the less fearful you'll be. The more

fearful you are, the less you understand the love of God.

And so the more you get God's love in your life,

and the more you practice talking to a moment by moment,

the less afraid you're gonna be. You're just gonna be

afraid of things. And let me give you another thing.

You want to break the fear out of your life.

You want to break through that prison. You must move

against the fear. That's called faith. What does it mean

you do the very thing you're most afraid to do.

It's the only way to get rid of fear. You're

not going to go around it, over it, under it,

and no, the only way you break through fear is

go straight at it, and you go you do the

thing you fear the most. And when you do that

thing you fear the most, that's called faith. You open

the door of the closet and the boogeyman isn't as

big as you thought he was. You see, the fear

is always worse than the reality. The fear of failure

is worse than failure.

Failures no big deal. You just get up and do it,

stort over.

The fear of rejection is worse than rejection. The fear

of embarrassment is worse than embarrassment. Why because it goes

on for hours and days and years, the embarrassment just

a few seconds. The fear is always worse than reality.

Fear is fea r false evidence appearing real. It's a fake,

it's a cop out. It's a conjob. And it's spiritual

oppression from Satan. He's putting those thoughts in your mind

to try to make you afraid. I want you to

write down the name of a person who you know

is trapped by a fear or an addiction, or a compulsion,

or a secret or a habit or a relation. Somebody

you know they're really in prison, they're stretched out, they're trapped.

And I want you to begin praying for them. Jesus says,

that's what Christians come to do. Then number four, he says,

I came toclaim recovery of sight to the blind.

I love that word.

Recovery, circle it because we believe and celebrate recovery. At

Saddleback Church, God says part of jesus ministry is the

ministry of recovery. And he says, I want to help

people recover their site. Now what does that mean. It

means you must be willing to offer insight to people

who are spiritually blind or relationally blind, and remember the

truth will set you free. How do you help blind

people see the faults in their life? How do you

help people see how they're messing up their life? You

tell them the truth And let me tell you something.

This is the hardest thing to do, but it's the

most loving thing to do. Sometimes a surgeon has to

cut yet to heal you. It doesn't do it good

for surgeon to say, oh, you got cancer, just think

happy thoughts. It'll all work out in the end.

No, it won't.

If you got cancer, you're gonna die of it unless

somebody helps you. You're gonna die unless somebody cuts it

out or does something with it. How many times have

you seen a friend, a loved one, a brother, a sister,

a parent, a friend at work and you see them

making a stupid mistake like I'm gonna leave my husband.

I'm going to leave my wife, but because God wants

me to be happy, and you said nothing. Love tells

the truth. Love cares enough to get in the face

and say, I am not going to let you ruin

your life. I am not gonna let you blow your life.

I'm not gonna make don't you make this stupid mistake.

I'm not gonna you're marrying the wrong person. Do not

take those drugs, Do not accept that decision. Do not

move in with that person. He said, it's none of

my business. It is your business if you care. It

is apathy. It is unlove that says silent. Love helps

the blind to see by telling them the truth. And

sometimes the most loving thing you can do is go

to that person in your family who's manipulating everybody for

several generations and say stop it. We're not gonna let

you do this anymore. You're not gonna manipulate. There's gonna

be some boundaries here, and I don't like it.

And you don't like it.

And this is painful, and it's painful, but we're not

gonna let this go on. That's called love. Jesus said,

I came to provide recovery of sight to the blind.

I want you to write down the name of a

person you need to tell the truth to. Who do

you need to tell the truth to?

Somebody?

You know who's blind to the effect of their actions.

They don't see it. They don't see what they're doing

to the kids. They don't see what they're doing to you.

They don't see what they're doing self defeating ways. They're

in a fog. They're confused about which way to go.

And you can invite them to your small group. You

can invite them to church. You can give them a

Christian book. You help them get the truth. By the way,

speaking of Christian books in blindness, thought i'd show you

this to you.

This is the purpose driven life in braille. Isn't that cool? Yeah?

In braille?

And this part right here, I really like this part.

It's really inspirational. I can feel I can feel the

inspiration coming off that page. Recovery of Sight to the Blind. See,

we're all blind in different areas. We need to invite

people to help us.

The truth will set us free. Watch this video.

When I think of blindness, I don't automatically think of

spiritual blindness. I think for me. I remember being in

a school for the blind in Rwanda, and I'd never

been in a place like this. It was just this

basic little building and it was full of probably fifty

mostly young men and women, who were blind.

I'm an eighty five year old woman, and so my

health is declining naturally, and my eyes aren't quite as

good as they used to be. I don't walk quite

as steadily as I used to walk.

And what was so impactful to me about this was

realizing that in our country, people who are blind have

accesses and access to resources and braille and braille education

and books. It's difficult. I don't mean to minimize it,

but there's access. But suddenly, sitting in another place where

they really had nothing, I saw them as forgotten. They

were already and now they were struggling with being blind,

and in the country that they lived in, that put

them at the bottom of the rung of people who

were cared for. They were forgotten.

And I know that Jesus he met every need he

could meet. If he saw those who were blind, he

wanted to heal them. He saw those who were weak,

he wanted to help them.

Jesus took special pains to be with people who were blind,

people who were deaf. I mean he intentionally. Yeah, lots

of times they came to him, but he sought them

out and he never pushed them away, and they were

not forgotten ones to him. And it just cementted in

my mind the fact that I believe our lives are

to be about caring for the forgotten ones.

I'm thankful that Jesus cares about all who were hurting

in some way, and so I want to hurt for them.

I want to hurt in that way that I can

help them. I just have a tender heart for people

who are hurting in those ways.

There's a fifth theory that God says, I want you

to care about fifth people, and he said that is

I want you to release the oppressed. He said, that's

what I came to do, release the oppressed. And God

is saying here, I want you to care about the

people in life who are kicked around, who are knocked around,

who are picked on, who are put down. Do you

know anybody like that at work? Of course you do

you know anybody like that at school or in your neighborhood.

Of course you do you know anybody like that in

your family? Yes, where everybody piles on them, there's the

easy target. They're joked about, either in their presence or behind.

They're ridiculed, maybe for the language they have or the

way they look different from you. Racial prejudice is real

and it needs to be confronted and dealt with. The

Bible says we are to release the oppressed. We are

to help people who are who are you know, tend

to be put down and taken for granted and made

fun of, and things like that. God says, I want

you to release the oppressed. And by the way, spiritual oppression,

as I said, which is depression. You certainly know somebody

who's depressed and they need your help.

I want you to watch this last video.

When I think of oppression, I think of some of

the people I've met around the world. I think of

the little girls that have been rescued from the sex

trade that I met in Cambodia. I think of the

women who were sold into prostitution in India and the

hopelessness in both of them, the women saying, how could

I leave this? What would I do differently? I have

no hope, There's nothing, There's nothing else I know how

to do. In our country, in even our church, there

are women who are living in oppressive relationships. And as women,

we need to take responsibility to make sure that we

speak out God's message that that's not okay. And as men,

as fathers raising your boys and raising your girls for

the next generation, you need to make sure that you

are modeling to them that that is not okay with God.

That God treats women and children with dignity and with

respect and with kindness, not with oppression. He is all

about releasing oppression and helping us to live with the

kind of a freedom that can only come when we

are in relationship with Him.

One of the saddest days of my life, I think

was in my husband's life, was when we found out

that our son was into drugs, and so we thought,

you know, if we can't raise our own son right,

then we don't have the right to be up teaching

other people how to raise their kids, how to teach

and live. And this was very hard for us. But

the wonderful thing. The thing is that our friends in

the church told us that's not right. You can still

teach us. Go ahead and live your life and be strong,

and we still believe in you. Failure doesn't have to

be the end of things. The good thing is that

he changed, he was able to break that and now

has become a wonderful dad and a wonderful person. He's

raising his son in a good way. And so the

good part is that he's back.

Now. Friends.

What we've talked about today is the heart of Christianity.

It's the core of our faith. It is what God

wants us to do. The Bible tells us in Matthew

twenty five that at that judgment, the one thing you're

going to be judged on, at that particular judgment is

how you treated other people. Yeah, you're gonna be judged

on that, how you treated other people. Jesus said, I'll say,

I was hungry and you fed me. I was thirsty

and you gave me drink. I was naked and you

clothed me. I was sick and in prison, and you

visited me. And will say, when did we do that?

Lord?

And Jesus will say, when you did it to any

of the least of my brothers. You did it to me.

Who did Jesus come for, he said, I came. The

doctor doesn't come for the healthy. The doctor comes for

those who need who need help. I made a list

of who Jesus came for. The chewed up, the crossed off,

the crying out, the dropped out, the edged out, the

freaked out, the have nots, the held back, the hungover,

the knocked around and left out, the loaded down and

looked over. Jesus came for the locked up, the led astray,

the laid off, and the let down. He came from

the messed up and the mixed up, and the passed

over and the picked on, the penned down, the pushed around,

the put down and the ripped off.

It came down. The came for the runover and the rundown.

The screwed up, the shrugged off, the shut in and

the shutout. He came for the smashed up and the

stacked against and the strung out. He came for the

thrown away and the turned off, and the used up,

and the walked over, the washed out, the worn out,

the wiped out, and they're written off. He came for

you now saddleback. We call doing these five things the

Peace Plan. The peace plan that we're doing is not

something that we do overseas. In fact, the last thing

I want you to write this down is this peace

is a lifestyle. Would you write that down? Peace is

a lifestyle. It's not a project. It's not something you

go somewhere and do and then you come back. Projects

are good, that's good. But peace is a lifestyle. It

is a lifestyle of doing these five things. Sharing the

good news, healing the broken hearted, offering freedom, offering insight

to those who need it, releasing the oppressed, giving justice.

And that's what we do in the Peace Plan. To

bring the good news to the spiritually poor and to

heal the broken hearted. We promote reconciliation, get right with God,

get right with other people. That brings healing to broken heartedness,

and it brings spiritual bounty to spiritually poor people. Promoting

reconciliation to release the oppressed and to empower the kicked around,

and to offer insight to the blind and confused. We

equip servant leaders who don't abuse, and don't oppress, and

don't distress to bring good news to the materially poor.

We assist the poor to heal the hurting, both physically

and emotionally. We care for the sick and to release

those who are oppressed by ignorance and imprisoned by a

lack of education. We educate the next generation. What are

we doing here at Satava? We just do what Jesus

told us to do. It's a lifestyle wherever you are,

and my challenge to you is that you will decide today.

I'm going to be intentional about this and I'm going

to be intense about this with the people God brings

into my life this week, because these five categories.

They're all around you. That's power. Heads.

You're going to go on leading a self centered life

and think only about yourself? Are you going to develop

the kind of life where God says I'll take care

of your needs when you take care of the needs

of others. I want you to look. You look with

your head bowed at your outline and look at the names.

If you haven't filled a name in in any one

of those, just fill it in. And I want us

to pray for these people right now. Would you say, Lord,

for this person who needs the good news.

Help me to share it with them. And Lord.

For this person who's broken hearted and down and discouraged

and disappointed and feels rejected, feels hurting, help me to

heal their hurt by offering love and comfort. And Father,

for this person who needs freedom. They're trapped, they feel

trapped in a relationship, trapped in an addiction, trapped by

a secret, trapped by their fears. Help me to show

them that the truth will set them free. For those

who are confused, who are blind, who don't know which

way to go, who don't know what to do with

their lives, help me to point the way, to point

them to the light of the world. Jesus, For the

friends and the people in my life who are obviously

kicked around. For the person who's unliked at work, who

everybody makes fun of, who's put down and knocked around,

help me to provide love and acceptance.

And relief and release.

Father, I want to practice the Peace Plan in my family,

in my work as a lifestyle every day of my life.

And then pray this prayer. Jesus Christ, thank you for

doing these things with me. I need the good news

in my life. I need you to replace my spiritual

poverty with your spiritual blessing. I need you to heal

my brokenness and my broken heart. I need you to

give me freedom from the things that tie me down

and trap me. I need you to give me insight

when I'm blind and I don't see the truth.

And I need you to release me.

And help me recover from the things when I feel

put down and kicked around. I want to be your

instrument of peace in the world.

Today. In your name, I pray Amen.

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

the website, whether you listen on a radio station, or

whether you listen to a podcast, you're a part of

the Daily Hope family, and I need your help. We

could not do this without your support. We're one hundred

percent listener funded. Would you continue to pray for this

broadcast and would you continue to support us.

And let write to me, let me hear from you.

I absolutely love reading the stories that are sent to me.

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

and God will bless it, and God will bless you

and we'll get to heaven and we'll thank God for

all the people going to be in heaven because you cared.

Hey, if you'd like to support Pastor Rick's Daily Hope,

just go to Pastorrick dot com. That's Pastor Rick dot com,

or you can text the word hope to seven oh

three oh nine.

That's the word.

Hope to seven oh three oh nine. And really, from

the bottom of our hearts, we thank you so much

for your support, your gift to Daily Hope. It helps

us share the hope of Christ with people everywhere. Hey,

be sure to join us next time when we look

into God's word for our daily hope. This program is

sponsored by Pastoris's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.