Rick Warren - Radical Faith—Part One

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

teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Well, we hope you've had

a meaningful Thanksgiving surrounded by the people that you love.

And today we are picking up right where we left

off in our powerful series radicalis developing spiritual roots. So

let's join Rick right now for the first part of

a message called Radical Faith.

Last week, as we began a new series, I said,

what the world needs is more radical Christians, not fanatical.

We got plenty of fanatics. We don't need any more fanatics,

but we need radical believers, not casual, but radical in

the true sense of the meaning of the word radical.

And I explained to you last week that that word

radical is misused by most people today. Most people think

it means extreme, over the top, on the edge, excessive, fringe, fanatical.

But the word radical actually means from the roots. That's

what it means, from the roots. It's from the Latin

word radicalous, and that's what we're calling the series Radicalius,

a fourteenth century English word that literally means from the roots.

It's from the word radics that we get the word radish.

And what is a ratish? It is a big root.

And when we talk about eradicating something that means to

eliminate it, you pull it up by its roots. You

eradicate it. When we talk about radical surgery, you cut

it out at the root. You cut out the disease.

You don't leave, you don't put a bandied over. You

cut it out at the source, so there's no root left.

And I explained to you last week that in every

field the word radical means rooted or from the roots.

In botany, the word radical means the leaves closest to

the root are the radical leaves. In math, the radical

in math is always the root of the equation, and

the radical sign in math is the square root sign

or the cube roots sign. It's always about the root number.

In chemistry, a free radical to a radical is two

atoms together, and free radical is one with an unpaired electron.

It's the smallest thing you can get to. In linguistics,

the radical are the consonants usually three, that create the

sound of a word. And in grammar, the radical is

the root of the word without the prefixes of the suffixes.

It always means from the root. And when I say

what we need today, are radical believers. We need people

who have spiritual roots. Most people have no depth in

their lives. They have no roots in their lives, and

so they're blown away like tumbleweeds whenever the rogue winds come,

and they dry up when the heat's on, and they

wither when they go through the times of drought. Now,

I want to go back to theme verse. It's on

the screen Colossians two seven. Let's read it aloud together.

Keep your roots deep in Him, build your lives on Him,

and become stronger in your faith as you were taught.

He says, I want you to have spiritual roots. This week,

I want us to talk about the root of radical faith. Now,

what is faith? Faith is kind of like a diamond,

and it has many facets to it, many faces to it.

If you want to understand what it really means to

have faith, you go to a chapter in the Bible

called Hebrews eleven. Hebrews eleven is the faith chapter in

the Bible, just like One Corinthians thirteen is the love

chapter in the Bible. Hebrews eleven is the faith chapter.

And in that chapter we have God's Hall of Fame,

we have God's top ten guys, we have the guys

that God says, these are the people to model if

you want to live a life of faith. And he

talks about Joe, talks about Abraham, and he talks about Moses,

when he talks about Noah, and he lists all of

the people that you've heard about through the Bible that

are the heroes of the faith. It's God's Hall of

fame list. And we're gonna look at seven of those

people today because they model seven facets of radical faith.

Let's get right into it now. The Bible says in

Hebrews eleven, verse six, without faith, it is impossible to

please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe

he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

I cannot overemphasize the importance of faith in your life.

The Bible says, without faith, it is impossible to please God.

The Bible says, whatever is not a faith is sin.

The Bible says, according to your faith, that will be

done unto you. The Bible says the just shall live

by faith. God wants you to learn to trust him,

that's the reas, and he puts you on this planet

to learn to love him. And to learn to trust him.

And so living by faith is not some little side issue.

You can't please God. Let me say that again. You

cannot please God except through faith. Not by working hard,

not by trying hard, not by being your best, not

by being perfect. None of those ways work anyway. The

only way you bring pleasure to God is by loving

him and trusting him. So what does it mean to

have radical faith? I hope you're taking notes this week?

Number one? Faith, the Bible says in verse one of

Hebrews eleven, Faith is believing when I don't see it.

Faith is believing. Radical faith is believing when I don't

see it. What I mean by that, well, the Bible

says in verse one Hebrews eleven. Faith is being sure

of what we hope for and certain of what we

do not see. Faith is visualized the future in the present.

Faith is seeing in advance. Now. This principle is found

all through the world, regardless of whether a person is

a Christian believer or not. Before we say, well, I'll

believe it when I see it. You've heard that people

say that I'll believe it when I see it. But

God says, there's some things you have to believe in

order to see it. Now, anybody who is a professional

understands this. Architects know that they have to believe it

that the building can exist before it's built, and they've

got to see it in their mind and believe it

in their mind's eye before it gets on paper, before

it becomes a building. Nothing just happens. It starts by

believing that it could look like this before you see

it happen. Any athlete knows that in order to win

the race, you've got to see it in your mind.

You've got to believe it's possible before it happens. Nobody

goes to the Olympics thinking I'm not going to win.

They go with the attitude of I believe I could

win this. You have to believe it in order to

see it. And they see themselves mentally crossing the finish

line before they ever run the race, and they go

over and over and over in their minds, rehearsing and

rehearsing that vision, that image. Any artist has to see

the painting in their mind and believe it's possible before

they put the paint to the canvas, or before they

do the sculpture, they've seen it in their mind, and

they've believed it in their mind before they saw it

as a reality. A scientist has to think it's possible

to do this, like go to the moon, and they

have to believe it before it becomes reality. Some things

you have to believe before you see it. Or In

von Braun, who is the father of the American Space program, said,

no great achievement has ever been achieved in history without faith.

It's believing before you see it. You have to believe

it's impossible long before it happens, and faith trust God

to make the vision the dream become reality. That's radical

faith believing before I see it. Number two, faith is

obeying when I don't understand it. Faith is obeying when

I don't understand it. And God gives us two examples

of this in his Hall of Fame, Noah and Abraham.

Noah in Hebrews eleven seven, it says this it was

by faith that Noah built an ark to save his

family from the flood. He obeyed God, who warned him

about something that had never happened before. Now can you

imagine this circumstance. What if God came to you one

day and said, by the way I think I'm going

to destroy the whole world, and I'm going to do

it with the flood, But i want you to build

a big ship and I'm going to save your family.

Would you believe that? Highly unlikely? He said, I want

you to build an ark. Now, it says there he

did this to warn him about something that never happened before.

Why there had never been a flood? Why? The Bible says,

up to this time it had never rained. That's why,

by the way, when they saw the rainbow, they'd never

seen a rain before. Why it had never rained before.

It says that there was a condensation that came up

from the ground before the flood, something like dew on

the on the ground where it can the condensation. We

don't even know how it actually happens, but we do

know that people lived much longer before the flood than

after that. Before the flood, people lived two hundred, three hundred,

four hundred years a long time. And after the flood

something changed in the climate in the atmosphere, and people

didn't live as long. They lived about as long as

we do. So something changed. So God comes to Noah

and says, Noah, I want you to build an arc

what's an arc? It's a big ship. Now Noah lives

in a rack at this time, he's nowhere near an ocean.

And so how he says, I want you to build

an arc in the middle of the desert, right, And

what's gonna happen. It's gonna flood. What's a flood? Well,

lots of rain? What's rain? So would you believe this?

How would you like to be? Noah's three sons, ham,

Shem and Jacob, And they're always having explained their weirdo dad,

what's your dad doing in the front yard there? He's

been working on that thing for a long time. He's

building an arc to save the world. And he's only

going to save our family and not you. Right. It

was probably very, very embarrassing, But Noah did it. It

said he obeyed God even when he didn't understand it.

I'm glad he did. We're all here as a result.

And then there was a guy named Abraham who obeyed

when he didn't understand it. The Bible says in verse

eight it was faith that made Abraham obey when God

called him to go out to a country that God

had promised to him, and he left his own country

without knowing where he was going. Abraham was another guy

who lived in what's now modern day Iraq. He lived

in a city called Er. Now, how'd you like to be?

Where are you're from? I'm from Er, And God said Abraham,

I'm going to make you the father of a great nation.

It's going to be the nation of Israel. And I'm

going to give you your own country. But you're seventy

five years old. And what I want you to do

is I want you to go on the greatest adventure

of your life, follow me to a new country. Now,

Abraham doesn't get any of the details. God says, I

want you to pack up everything at seventy five years

of age and leave. Just when you're ready to settle down,

I want you to get it in gear, just when

you're ready for social security, get ready for social insecurity.

Just when you're ready to hang it up on the wall,

you take it down and dust it off, because now

you're going for the biggest ride of your life at

age seventy five. And no, and Moses starts, I mean,

Abraham starts asking where are we going? Lord? Well, you've

never heard of this place, and how long is it

going to take? To get there. Well, don't worry about it.

How will I know when I'm there? I'll tell you

would if God told you right at retirement, you're getting

ready for the biggest journey of your life. And I

want you to move to someplace you've never been before,

and I'm going to start over and build a great

nation through you. Would you believe that Abraham became the

father of faith because and the father of a nation

because he obeyed when he didn't understand it. Now, obedience

always involves taking risks. See, some people want to obey

God when there's a guarantee. God, I'll do this if

you'll guarantee it'll work out. God says, no, no, no, this

is a risk here, you know God, I'll start this

new business. I'll move to this new location, all in

roll in school. I'll go after my dream. If you'll

guarantee it. God's I'm going to guarantee it. He wants

you to live by faith. Nineteen seventy five, when I'm

twenty five years old, living in Fort Worth, Texas, and

I get an idea in my mind, and God says,

I want you to move to southern California, to a

place called the saddle Back Valley and start church. Now,

there were plenty of reasons for me to doubt that.

First place, I had never been a pastor. Second, I

had never been to the Saddleback Valley. I didn't what

to look like. Third, I had no money, fourth, no members, fifth,

no building, no support, and a lots of reasons to

doubt what God had told me to do. I'm glad

I opaid him. Sometimes God asks us to do the

impossible just to stretch our faith, and sometimes God asked

you to do something that doesn't make sense at all

for the same reason to stretch your faith. You see

in the Bible, in just the New Testament alone, there

are one thousand and fifty commands where God says, I

want you to do this, and I don't want you

to do this, and I want you to do this,

and I don't want you to do this. And these

one thousand and fifty commands. Many of them are inconvenient,

Any of those commands are unreasonable. Many of those commands

actually seem impossible. But they are all there for your benefit.

Because God only acts in your life for good. He

only acts in your life because he loves you. He

knows what will make you happy more than you will.

And when you follow his commands, you get all these

blessings in your life. And when you ignore them, you

do it to your own detriment. You just hurt yourself.

You get broken hearts, you get broken minds, you get

broken bodies, you get regrets, you get shame, you get guilt,

you get resentment, all these other things worry because you

don't do it God's way. God says, the plans I

have for you, they're good plans, plans for future, plans

for hope. So every time God tells you in the

Bible to do something, even when it's inconvenient or irrational

from your point of view, or illogical or impossible, and

you say, Okay, I'm gonna do it, because because you

say so, Lord, because you say so, I'm going to

do it, you always always get blessed. And whenever God

asks you to do something, it's a test. It's a

test of your faith. What am I gonna trust God

or my gut? That's the test? Am I gonna trust

God or my gut? Am I going to test what

I feel is the right thing to do? Or am

I gonna do what God says is the right thing

to do. It's always a test of your faith. Faith

is believing when I don't see it, and faith is

obeying when I don't understand it when it doesn't make

sense to me. You see, the Bible says, there's a

way that seems right to man, but the ends there

are the ways of death. In other words, a lot

of things that look like the right thing to do,

seem like the right thing to do, would be easier

to do, would be more convenient to do, might even

be more popular to do. But God says it seems right,

but it's gonna end in a dead end. It's a

dead end, and you're just gonna hit the wall and

you're gonna hurt yourself. Don't do it. In fact, I

usually figure out what would I naturally do in the

circumstance and do the opposite, because my natural inclination is

to do what's best for me to do. It's selfish

to do what self centered, to do, what's easy, to do,

what's convenient. So God comes along and says things like,

whenever anybody hurts you, you forgive them what I don't

want to forgive him. I want to hurt him back.

In fact, I want to hurt them more than they

hurt me. My natural inclination is to not forgive people

who hurt me. My natural inclination is to slug him back,

get it right back. But God says, no, No, that's

the way that seems right. But it ends in a

dead end. It ends in death. You're gonna only hurt yourself.

You don't understand how much resentment's going to hurt you

more than it hurts them. So when God tells you

to do something like forgive your enemies, that rarely feels right,

and it doesn't just you know, go with your system.

But it is right. It's the right thing to do.

And God says, if you do it, you'll be blessed,

and he blesses you for obeying. Now, as a kid,

how many of you had parents who asked you or

told you to do something that when they told you

to do it, you thought that is sheer nonsense. Can

I see your hands? The rest of you were raised

by wolves. I say, okay, because every parent has done that.

And they're like, do it why? Because I say so?

Oh great, that's not a reason. Because I say so.

What they're saying is trust me. I know better. Than you,

And how many of you, looking back, can actually admit

now that some of the things your parents told you

to do, which seemed like nonsense, were actually in that

moment quite wise? Can I see your hands? Yeah? Now,

if our parents, who were imperfect and were sinful and

we make mistakes, can often know the right thing that

we don't know to do, how much more does a

perfect loving God know what you need? And he says

do it? And he said, why Lord, why should I

do it? Because I say so? This is a test.

Will you trust me? You see, if you learn to

do whatever God tells you to do, even when it

seems absurd I can't do that, you will grow a

great faith and you will build a great life. You'll

have a radical faith that believes when you don't see

it and obeys when you don't understand it. On the

other hand, if you don't do that, if you say, God,

I don't understand it, so I'm not gonna do it.

I only do what I understand. You know what, You're

gonna miss most of the blessings that God plan for

your life. Your life will be so limited, so stunted,

so shortened, so inferior, so limited, compared to the kind

of life that God wants to do in your life.

God wants to bless you far more than you realize,

but you've got to get blessable and how do you

do that by trusting Him? Wow?

What a great message from Pastor Rick today, and I

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