Rick Warren - Succeeding in Your Mission—Part One

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.

Let's get right into part one of a message called

Succeeding in your Mission.

God did not create you just to live for yourself.

He wants you to care about the hurting people in

your life. He wants you to make a difference with

your life. He puts you on this planet to make

a contribution. You were planned for God's pleasure. You were

formed for God's family. You were created to be like Christ.

You were shaped to serve God, and you were made

for a mission. So like to Blues, brothers, we're.

On a mission for God.

Now. Jesus before the Cross was talking to the Father

in prayer, and he says this, in the same way

that you gave me a mission in the world, I

give them a mission in the world. One of the

greatest tragedies in life is for you to go through

your whole life and never fulfill your life mission. And

you stand before God one day and he says, well,

did you fulfill the mission? I put you on earth

for it? And go, oh, Lord, I didn't even know

you had a mission for me. And he's gonna go,

uh oh, wrong answer. You don't want to be embarrassed.

At that moment, Jesus said, as God gave me a

mission in the world, I give you a mission in

the world. And after the Resurrection he gets more specific

and he says this here on the screen Acts one

to eight. You will be my witnesses, not my attorneys,

my witnesses in Jerusale. That's your own hometown in Judea.

That's like Orange County in Samaria. That's the cross culture

in our own area, and to the ends of the earth.

So it's personal, it's local, and it's global. Now Here

at Saddleback Church, we take this very seriously, and that's

why about five years ago or six years ago, we

launched a thing called the Peace Plan to basically do

what God has called us to do in our personal lives,

in our local situation in the national and actually globally

because God has said go to all nations. And now

in the last four or five years, we've had over

eight thousand of members of Saddleback Church who've gone overseas,

paid their own way to go to some country overseas

and go on mission for Jesus Christ. In fact, if

you have gone overseas on a global peace mission, I

want you to just stand up so we can applaud

you and express our gratitude for you. Presentatives of our church,

thank you. Now, not only do we send out people globally,

but we do it locally, and even thousands of more

have done it here locally in southern California. What does

it mean to be on mission with God? And how

do I succeed in the mission that God has given me? Well, Fortunately,

Jesus gave us a model, and in Luke chapter ten

he gives us an example where he sends out his

peace teams.

And in Luke's.

Chapter ten, he sent out thirty one teams of two

people each into different cities. It was local peace, its

all in walking distance there in the nation of Israel.

And before he sent them out, he gave them nine instructions.

Those instructions still work today. They're things that you need

to do that I need to do in my personal life,

whether I'm trying to reach my family for the Lord,

or reach my best friends for the Lord, or relatives

co workers for the Lord, whether I'm doing something in

local peace here in Orange County or LA or in

southern California, or whether I'm going on a global peace

trip this weekend. I want us to look at jesus

instructions to his team, These nine principles for succeeding at

your life mission. They are the basis for our peace teams.

When we send out teams, this is what we want

them to do, whether it's local or global. And as

I said, these principles will work anywhere. They'll work in

your office, they'll work at school, they'll work in your

personal life. How do you succeed in your mission? Let's

get right into it. Number one. The first principle that

Jesus gave to his peace teams as he was sending

them out in Luke chapter ten is the principle of cooperation.

And the principal of cooperation is this, get a partner.

Get a partner. God never intends for you to do

your life mission by yourself. In fact, you can't fulfill

it by yourself because it's all about relationships, learning to

love God and learning to love your neighbors yourself. God says,

I want you to do this in tandem with other people.

And in Luke ten, verse one, it says the Lord

appointed seventy two others, that's beside the twelve disciples, and

send them out two by two ahead of him to

every town and place he was about to go. He said,

just well, grab a friend, get a coworker. God never

meant for you to fulfill your life mission by yourself.

Why. Two reasons.

One, you're much more effective when you go with another person.

You're much more effected when you team up. The Bible

says this two are better than one because they get

more done by working together. You can encourage each other,

you can pray for each other when one's tired and

discourage the other one lifts the other person up. There's

so many benefits to working together. And that's why when

we send these teams out. We never send out individuals. Never,

we only send them out in groups. Why it's biblical.

Jesus said, we're to cooperate with each other. Not only

that you'd be more confident, You're more assured, You're more

bold when somebody is there with you. And so you

have somebody else to back you up and support you,

to share ideas with and be creative and to tell

your story to. Now. I don't know if you've ever

thought about having a partner for your life mission, but

you need one. And it could be your spouse, it

could be a friend, it could be somebody in your

small group. But you need to have a partner. Here's

a little secret. It can be anybody. Sometimes God sovereignly

puts the most unusual partners together. I'll never forget. When

I was twenty years old, I went and attended a

major Christian event in Soul, Korea, and there were one

million Christians at this event. It was a huge, huge event,

and I remember they asked for volunteers. Would anybody like

to go share their faith in the city of Soul.

I thought, why not?

I don't know a single Korean word, why not? And

so I volunteered. And they said, well, now it's biblical

to pair you up with people, and so they gave

me a partner. Now, I was a six foot two,

long hair I mean, really long hair, skinny American. And

my partner was a four foot two Filipino Catholic nun

in full black garb. It's like, you know, the hippie

and the saint kind of a thing, you know. And

so she doesn't speak a word of English. I don't

speak any Tagallo, and neither of us speak Korean. This

is going to be an interesting witnessing assignment. So they

gave us this little book called the Four Spiritual Laws.

You've heard of this booklet, and it was in dual language.

On one side it was in Korean, and on one

side it was in English, so you could read the

English side and show where the Korean was. So we're

going out. We're downtown Soul, Korea, this huge city, and

this nun and I walk into this business and into

this department store, and I'm looking around for somebody to

just talk to. And I found a young girl in

her twenties who happened to be quite good looking. So

I always noticed them when I was single. And I

got and she was in the jewid department. I walked

over to it. Now I don't know any Korean at all,

and I hold up this little track and it says,

do you know the four spiritual laws? And it's got

it in Korean. So I run my finger along the

line of the Korean, hoping that that's what that said.

And I look at and I go. She goes, Okay,

so she doesn't know the force virtual laws. So I

open it up and I say, look, I'll read this side.

You read this side. So I read this and.

Read that, and I get the bottle page. I wait

a little bit and I look up and I go,

she goes. So I turned the page. Okay, I do

the second page, law number two, God loves you and

has a wonderful plan for your life. Okay, I finish

that page. I nod, She nods. So I flipped the

page again. This little track. Now I haven't said a

word to her, because I don't know any Korean. My

wonderful accompliced none is praying for me at this moment,

standing right there looking up. Okay. I get to the

next page, and there's these two little pictures on which

one represents a life without Christ and what one represents

a life with Jesus. And there's a line in the

English that's which one represents your life. So I look

over here on this page. I thought, that's got to

be the same line. So I run my finger along it,

and she points to of the non Christian and so

then I say, on the next line, of which one

would you like to represent your life? And I run

my finger along the Korean and she points to the

one that has Jesus. This is working, okay, this is

really working. Okay. So I turned the page and it

says you can pray this prayer. So I point over

to the koreanside that point, and I go like this,

So I bow my head and I read the prayer

and I read this. She reads that prayer and I

look up in a minute and I finished the prayer

and I look up and tears are coming down her eyes,

and I.

Go, yep, she got it.

Okay. Now I led that girl to Christ. She's going

to be in heaven and I never said a word

to her. And who is my partner on that mission?

A Filipino nun.

Anybody can be your partner and you if you are

willing to be used by God, God will use you

to change people's life. You just have to be willing.

Now that's the first principle cooperation. Get a partner. You

might write down a name of somebody who might You

might think, could this person be a partner with me

in my mission in life? And you could write a

name down. Now, number two, the second principle is a

principle of expectation, and that is when you go on

your mission for God, you depend on God. You don't

depend on your talent, You don't depend on your own creativity,

you don't depend on money, you don't depend on connections.

You depend on God. Now, it's interesting that the very

first thing Jesus says to his peace teams that he's

sending out, he says in verse four, don't take a purse.

What does he mean by that? He actually says it

three times in three different passages of scripture, where he says,

don't take along any gold or silver or copper in

Matthew ten, and take no money in your pockets in

Mark six. What's he talking about? Well, first, let me

tell you what he's not saying. He's not saying leave

your credit card at home. That's not what he's saying

when you go on a peace trip or a peace

mission or a peace piece project. But Jesus is giving

a warning about money.

For two reasons.

First, depending on money makes me less dependent upon God.

Depending on money keeps me from depending on God. The

Bible tells us that the poor the poor are rich

in faith. And the fact is, as I've traveled around

the world, I found that the poor have a lot

more faith than the rich people do. Why because as

a rich person, you don't depend on God very much.

When you need something, you don't pray about it, you

just go out and buy it. You don't have to

depend on God because you can put it on your

credit card. But when you're poor and you have nothing,

you have to depend on God. And that's why the

poor are rich in faith. They have more faith than

the rich do. And God says here, he says, I

want you to depend on me. I want you to

trust me to provide on your journey. I'm not saying

don't take any money. He's just saying, don't think that

this is going to bail you out of all your issues.

But there's a deeper issue here, and that is this

money often harms ministry. I need to explain this to

you because as we send out people all over southern

California to serve those who are suffering, and as we

send people all around the world to serve those who

are suffering. When you see somebody who's hurting, you see

somebody whos suffering, you see the poor, you naturally you

want to give to them. You want to be generous,

and that's a good thing. But the truth is, and

every parent knows this, if you've got a kid, there's

a right way and a wrong way to give money,

you know what I'm talking about. You can give money

to someone in a way that will ruin them, or

you can give away somebody money in a way that

will empower them. You can give money in a way

that will make them dependent upon you with strings attached,

or you can give it in a way that actually.

Treats them with dignity.

And this is very important for you to understand because

Americans violate this principle all around the world, meaning to

do well, thinking that they're helping people when they give,

but that's not it. You cannot give people out of poverty.

In the last fifty years, Americans have put billions and

billions and trillions of dollars into Africa, trillions of dollars

in foreign aid and Africa. The standard living in Africa

is actually worse than it was fifty years ago. It's

worse because you cannot subsidize people out of poverty, can't

even do it in America. There's only one way out

of poverty, jobs, job creation. You've got to help people

create wealth, not wealth redistribution, but wealth creation. And that's

where some of you entrepreneurs and business leaders need to

come into play, in using your gifts on mission for

God and learning how to create job creation. When you

give money to somebody in the wrong way, in the

wrong time, it can create jealousy in a village, it

can split a church. It can create dependency, It can

rob dignity of people, it makes them dependent, it makes

something all the great Americans have come to be our savior.

And all of these things can actually harm. And that's

why the Bible, the very first thing Jesus says when

he starts to send out his peace to you, says,

don't take money. Don't throw money at the problem. He said,

you need to understand this that you're going to It

can be as simple as giving street kids candy. I

have seen this all around the world, that well meaning

people take candy and then they give it to orphans.

Or give it to street kids and then get back

on the bus thinking they've done a good thing because

that kid smiling, And as soon as they get on

the bus, that kid is beat up by the bullies

and the candies.

Taken away from them.

When you give candy to a kid in a country,

you can guarantee it's going to be stolen from him

immediately and the kid you're guaranteeing, the kid's going to

get a black eye, get beaten up. And what you

think you're actually doing is good, you're actually harming the child.

There's a way that giving hurts. Or when a peace

team or any team would go into a village or

something and at the end they want to they see

a poor pastor and they want to take up an

offering to help that pastor. And maybe they've taken up

an offering US two hundred and fifty three hundred dollars

and they're really excited to give that. They don't realize

that in that economy that's equal to a year's wage,

like in Rwanda, where an income is sixty eight cents

a day, given somebody three hundred bucks, it'd be like

giving you eighty grand. It throws everything out of whack

and everything out of proportion. And that's why the Bible

tells us, you know, it says, don't take a purse,

don't take a long gold or silver, a copper, don't

take any money in your pockets. Why we tell our

peace teams when you go overseas, don't take a bunch

of American stuff, and don't go giving out money to people,

and don't come back and do a bunch of fundraisers,

because that's the old way of doing missions and it

doesn't work. He says, depend on God, and he says,

don't take a purse.

Hey, everyone, thank you so much for listening to Pastor

Rick's Daily Hope. I've got something really special to share

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