Rick Warren - How Jesus Handled Stress—Part Two

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. And now here's part two

of a message called How Jesus Handled Stress.

Now notice, Jesus knew his calling and he knew exactly

what it's called to do. He says in John eight fourteen,

I know where I came from, and I know where

I'm going. In other words, he lived a purpose driven life.

If you were to look up the word drive in

a dictionary, you would find that the word drive means

to guide or to control, or to direct. If you

drive a nail into wood, you guide control direct and

nail into wood. If you drive a car, you guide

control directed down the street. If you drive a golf ball,

hopefully you guide control directed down the fairway. Everybody's life

is driven by something. Some lives are driven by fear.

Some lives are driven by guilt. They can't let go

of the shame and the hurt and the regret. Some

lives are driven by regret and they hold on to

their anger and it kills them. Some are driven by

money and I want to Some are driven by fame.

Some are driven by sex. Some lives are driven by

the approval of other people. God says, that's not what

I want your life driven by. I want your life

driven by your calling, by your purpose. I want you

to know who you are, who you're trying to please,

and what a what you on earth to do. Look

at your shape and do that and you will be

guided either in life by pressure or by purpose. And

if you don't know your purpose, then you're going to

be susceptible to pressure, and you're going to be stressed

out because God loves you and everybody else has a

wonderful plan for your life and they want to get

you all over in a corner. Now, the direction of

your life again is your choice. And by clarifying your calling,

you avoid the tyranny of the urgent. Have you learned

that not everything important in life is urgent, and not

everything that's urgent in life is important. When Dwight Eisenhower

ran and for president and became President of the United States,

he used to have two baskets in baskets on his

desk in the oval office. One of them said urgent

and the other said important. And they said, well, what

do you do with the important? He said, I do them.

He said what do you do with the urgent? He said,

ignore them. Just because something's urgent doesn't mean you should

do it. You just need to do the life. There's

not enough time in life to do everything that's urgent.

You have just enough time to do God's will. You

have just enough time to do your calling. And if

you're feeling like I don't have enough time, it means

you're doing something in your life that God didn't call

you to do. Hmm, think about that one. Until you

clarify your calling, you're gonna be double minded. You're gonna

go back and forth between all kinds of things. In fact,

the Bible says this in James one to eight. A

person who has doubts about what they're supposed to be

doing in life is thinking about two different things at

the same time and can't make up his mind about anything.

You're gonna be double minded. You're gonna be wishy washy,

You're gonna be pushed around. And so Paul tells us

in Ephesians four one, I urge you to live a

life worthy of the calling you have received. So what

do you do? It means you each day ask yourself

while you're starting to do stuff, is this what I'm

called to do? Is what I'm doing right now moving

me toward my purpose? And if it is, you do it.

If it's not moving your towards your purpose, don't do it.

Dan Rather, when he was head of CBS News, used

to have a little sign on his desk that said,

is what I'm doing right now, contributing to the evening broadcast.

That's purpose driven. That's focus, and that leads me to

the fourth key in Jesus's life. The fourth antidote to

stress is the principle of concentration, and that means just

focus on what matters most. Focus on what matters most.

Know who you are, identification, know who you're living for.

That's motivation, and know your calling, that's your vocation. And

once you know those three, focus, focus on what matters most.

Don't get distracted by trivia. Now, let me tell you

something little secret I've learned as a pastor. If Satan

can't get you to be bad, he'll just get you

to be busy. He doesn't care whether it's bad things

or good things, as long as you're not doing the

right thing, as long as you're not doing your calling,

your purpose, what God has called you to do. And

He was very happy for you to fill your life

up with good things that keep you from the better

things or the best things, so you can waste your

life on good things. They're not bad, they're good. It's

not a matter of right or wrong, good and evil.

It's a matter of better and best. If Satan can't

do you do bad, you're busy, he'll wear you out

with good things. And there's plenty of good things in

life to wear you out. Everybody agree with that. Yeah,

there's plenty of things to wear you out around it now.

Jesus is a master of concentration. He knew how to focus,

and he focused his life like a laser. And that's

the key to a successful life. Focus. Know what God

has called you do, and then focus on it and

don't do anything else. That's what we talk about being

purpose driven. You see light diffused has no power at all.

Light focused. Light focused has enormous power. You can take

the focus of the sun. It didn't do any problem

to grass. But if you focus it with a magnifying glass,

you can burn grass. You can also burn little bugs,

which I love to do when I was a kid.

You know, just how cool is that burn army men

and all kinds of things. Never mind, If you focus

light even more, it becomes a laser. And a laser

can cut through steel, and a laser can kill a cancer,

and a laser can do all the other things in life.

If you want your life to matter, focus it. Paul says,

this one thing I do, that's focus. He doesn't say

these forty things I dabble in. And what we do

in life is we dabble in this and that, and

this and that and a little bit of everything, and

you know, master of nothing. The Bible says this about

Jesus in Luke chapter nine. As the time drew near

for Jesus return to Heaven, he moved steadily onward toward Jerusalem.

That's where the cross is going to happen, with an

iron will. In other words, he was persistent, he was determined.

He was focused. He was concentrated, he knew what mattered most. Now,

let me tell you why. This is some point. You

have enormous spiritual potential that is locked. You're living a

fraction of your spiritual potential right now, just a fraction

of it. It's like you being a twelve cylinder car

and you're running on two cylinders. You have far more

spiritual potential than you have ever imagined. You go me,

I'm not a spiritual person. Yeah, that's why, because you

don't see it. You have enormous spiritual power and potential

in your life, but there's a barrier that's keeping it

from coming out. What is it? You haven't really decided

yet what matters most in life. You're still just going

around treating everything like it's all equally important. It's not.

There are some things that are gonna last for eternity.

There's some things that are gonna last for ten years.

There's some things that are gonna ask for ten minutes,

and there's some things that aren't gonna be worth while

ten seconds from now. And when you give equal importance

to something that's going to last ten minutes and ten

years and ten trillion years, that's a poor choice. That

is a very poor choice. A lot of times people say, well,

I just don't have time to do the important things.

I don't have time to fulfill my calling, to do

my vocation. I don't have time to fulfill my ministry. Yeah,

well that's an old excuse. People gave that excuse to

Jesus years ago. Jesus said, hey, come follow me. And

one guy said, I gotta go sell some land. And

another guy said I gotta go close the deal. And

another guy said, I gotta go get married. Guy said

I got to go. I gotta go bury my dad.

Jesus said this there on your outline, Luke nine sixty two.

Anybody who lets himself be distracted from the work that's

the vocation, the calling that I planned for him, is

not fit for the Kingdom of God. He said, don't

get distracted. Know who you are, know what you're living for,

know your calling. Focus on what matters most. Look at

the verse on the back of your outline one Corinthians

ten twenty three. I love this and amplified because it

gainst the full meaning of the Greek. Let's read it aloud.

We are free to do anything, but not all things

are helpful or profitable, or wholesome or constructive to your

character and spiritual life. I love this, he says here.

Not everything he said. Everything's possible. Everything he said, you know,

you're free to do anything you want. See, God's given

you a free will. You can totally waste your life

if you want to, and God won't stop you. You

can waste your life, you can you can spend your life,

or you can invest your life. And the greatest use

of your life is to invest it in that which

will outlast it. Living for here and now is a terrible,

stupid mistake. It's short term thinking. You need to invest

your life in something that's going to outlast your life,

because you're going to spend more time on the other

side of death than on this side. Now, he says here,

we are free to do anything. God will give you

the freem to do anything you want. But he said,

not everything is helpful or profitable, or wholesome or constructive

to your character and spiritual life. In other words, some

things aren't necessarily wrong. They're just not necessary. They're not

necessarily bad, they're not necessary. There's a lot of things

you can do with your life that's not necessarily evil,

It's just not necessary. He says, you need to concentrate

your life because if you don't, stress is going to

stress you out all the time. And if you want

out an effective life, selection is the name of the game.

Know what matters most. Principal number five. The principal number

five is the principle of meditation, that is, listen to God.

This is one of the key sources of stress reduction.

Learning to listen to God. Don't just talk to him,

listen to God. He said, Wait a minute, Wait a minute.

I never hear God speak. God never talks to me.

How can I listen to him? I'll tell you why

you never. God never talks to you because you don't

be quiet long enough. Here's your prayer, God, I need

these five things. God. I want these five things. God.

I need help in these five areas. God, I'm thankful

for these five things. Over and now ten four? Good buddy,

Salanara and God? Was oh time out? You never listen

to me. Isn't this thing supposed to be a conversation? Yes?

Why don't I hear from God? Because you're not quiet?

You won't sit still long enough for God to speak

back to you. Now let me just make this real clear.

Here's how this works. I have never ever heard God

speak audibly to me like a voice out of heaven,

like you know, you know, some deep dark voice. But

God doesn't need to do that. I don't need God

to do that. He can put impressions right into my mind.

The same God who invented radio waves, which means there's

sound floating through this room right now. In fact, those

sound waves are going through your body right now. You

don't know it, but they're going through your body right now.

You're just not tuned in. But if we had a

radio and tuned it in, you'd pull sound out. You'd

receive the sound the messages that are going through the

air right now. And the same God who created television,

where there are actually pictures floating through this air right now,

and they're floating through your body. Television waves are going

all through this thing right now. We don't see him,

but if we had a receiver and tuned it in,

you'd see the color picture and their cell phone things.

If God created all of that kind of stuff, He

doesn't need to speak to me audibly. He can put

an idea directly into my mind. He made my brain,

and as a human being, he gave me a brain.

He can put thoughts in my mind. Now, when you

get a thought from God, that's called inspiration. When you

get a thought from the devil, that's called temptation. When

you get a thought from yourself, that's called stupidity. Just

kidding you, yeah, yeah, jazz kidding Okay. Now, Granted, when

you first start in this and you're trying to listen

to God, sometimes you can't figure out is it me,

the devil or God or the bad pizza eight last night?

And but you can get good at this, you really can.

I talk to God all the time. God talks to

me all the time. And I know now because I've

been walking the Lord long enough when it's me thinking

my own thoughts. And I know now when it's the

devil trying to just tempt me, and I know when

it's the bad pizza from the night before. But you

can get good at this now. If you get an

idea and it is a bad idea, it isn't from God.

If you get an idea and it's an evil idea,

it's from the devil. If you get an idea that

contradicts what's in this book what God has already said

in his truth. It's not from God. God will never

contradict his truth. But here's what you need to do.

You need to be quiet for an extended period of time. Now,

God speaks in many different ways. Sometimes God speaks through

reading the Bible, and so you want to read the

Bible on a regular basis, on a daily basis, and

sometimes the verse pops out. You go, wow, that's exactly

what I needed to work with that person today. And

I go, whoa man, I needed that. And sometimes it

speaks to the Bible. Sometimes God speaks to a Christian

and they give you a word of insight that go, oh, man,

that really helps. But sometimes God speaks directly through impressions

into your mind. And here's what I would challenge you

to do tomorrow or even this afternoon. Get off by yourself,

like sunrise or sunset. Sit in the back of your

yard by yourself, nice quiet place, get a glass a

cold iced tea, and sit there and say God, is

there anything you want to say to me? And then

just sit there for a long time, not like, man,

how long has it been? Wow? Ninety seconds? I thought

that was like two hours. Man, you see. Most of

you have never sat still in total silence for fifteen minutes,

much less thirty minutes or an hour. You, in your

entire life have never sat still just for fifteen minutes

ago God, anything you want to say to me. And

that's why God does never talk to you, because you're

not listening, You're not tuned in, You're on some other channel.

You're always busy, listen to the radio or iPod or TV.

You're talking. The channels are busy and the lines are

all busy. So what you do? One of the things

I like this, I like to ask God a question.

I say God, what do you want me to do

about this? And I'll just sit there and listen and

be quiet. Sometimes it comes, and sometimes it comes a

day later. I can't tell you the number of times

that when I've gone to bed at night, I would say, Lord,

I've really got this problem. I need a solution to

this problem, and I don't know what you want me

to do here, and I'll ask God that question. Is

I go to bed and when I wake up in

the morning, when I get out of bed, I can't

tell you the number of times the answer has been there,

or I get in the shower and I get the

answer there. Somebody's got to invent a waterproof note taking

thing for the shower so you can write down. Oh,

I don't want to forget that, because a lot of

times you get an idea from God and if you

don't write it down, you forget it. You know, everybody

agree with this, You know what I'm talking about, And

you go, oh, man, I forgot it. What was that

I was in the shower? You try to recreate the moment. Ah.

So God speaks to the person who wants to listen,

listen to God. Don't just talk to him, listen to God.

Prayer is an enormous stress reliever. And in your life,

you're either gonna worry or you're gonna worship. And if

you worry, then you're not gonna worship. But if you worship,

then you won't worry. Now you already know how to

do meditation. How many of you know how to worry?

Raise your end? If you know how to worry, okay,

then you already know how to meditate. People think meditation

means like put your mind in neutral, get in a

load of his position, and contemplate the lent in your navel. No,

that is not meditation. Meditation literally means to think seriously

about something over and over and over. When you take

a bad idea and you meditate over it over and

over over on a bad idea, there's a word for that, worry.

When you take a good idea, you take a versus

scripture and you think on it over and over and over,

there's a word for that meditation. Worry is just negative meditation.

If you know how to worry, you already know how

to meditate. You just keep going over and over and

over in your mind. Now, listen to God. Prayer is cathartic.

It you unload your burdens. It's a decompression chamber. And

if you study the life of Jesus, you discover how

many times Jesus took time to go pray, to get alone.

In fact, look at some of these verses. Mark chapter one,

verse thirty five. Here's another secret of stress relief. Very

early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus

got up, left the house and went off to a

solitary place where he prayed. What's he doing, He's having

a quiet time. Now. All of the characteristics say get alone,

get by yourself. When you're rested now today, Why don't

we hear God? Because for us, the verse would read

along about mid morning, in the middle of the day,

at the traffic light stop light, we gave God five

seconds to speak to us. No, you go to a

solitary place where he prayed. Just get by yourself and

be quiet. Look at the next verse. News about Jesus

spread even more, and crowds came to hear him and

to be healed. In other words, he had no privacy.

Crowds were around him all the time, but Jesus often

slipped away to be alone so he could pray circle

the word often. It was his habit. You need to

have a quiet time. I'm every day to reflect, to renew,

to recharge. It was his often habit. He did it regularly. Now,

if Jesus felt the need to pray and be with God,

how much more do we you know? Personally, I have

discovered that the larger saddleback church becomes, the more I

crave solitude. Why because I'm with people all the time.

I'm always with people, and the person the pastor, who

is available all the time isn't worth much. When he's available,

I've got to be off with God alone, so God

gives me something to help you. When I am with you,

and Jesus did this, he would retreat to privacy for

quiet times with God, and then he'd come back and

he administer, and he'd retreat. You need times in your

life where you get alone on a regular daily basis

and spend some time with God to get recharged, renewed,

and restored. Pascal, the famous philosopher, once said, most of

man's problems come from his inability to sit still. We

all have spiritual add attention deficit disorder, and we don't

spend time focusing on God. The Bible says, be still

and know that I am God.

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

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