Rick Warren - Knowing What Matters Most - Part One

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Daily Hope.

This is the place.

Where Rick Warren brings you uplifting messages from God's Word

every day to help you grow deeper in faith and

live a life with purpose. Today we're continuing in a

powerful series called Toolbox for Life. In this series, Rick

teaches us four essential skills that you need to succeed

wherever God has placed you, whether it's at home, at work,

at school, or in your community. These are tools that

every follower of Jesus absolutely needs. So let's jump right

in for part one of a message called knowing what

Matters Most?

Now, what would you think if I were to announce

this weekend this I've just read an incredible self help book,

and this book tells me that I can be anything

that I want to be. If I just really desire

it and work really hard, I can become anything I

want to be. So this weekend, I'm leaving Saddleback Church

to go become a ballerina on Broadway. How would you

react to that? And if I said God told me

that I'm going to be a ballerina on Broadway, you

would say, Rick, what have you been smoking? Because it

would be ludicrous for me to announce that I was

going to become a ballerina on Broadway because I really

really wanted to be it, and I was going to

work really hard. It would be ludicrous for three reasons.

Number one, I'm not shaped be a ballerina. Why are

you laughing? I'm not big enough, I'm not shaped. I'm

not gifted to be a ballerina. I really am not

one of these people with good balance. I don't have

good balance. I never have all my life, and it

takes incredible physical balance to be a ballerina. I'm not gifted,

I'm not talented. And the third thing is I've never

learned the skills. So clearly this would be disastrous. Now,

we do this all the time in other areas. I

talk to people, says who say, I like to eat bagels,

so I'm going to start a bagel shop. Just because

you like pie, or because you can even bake a

pie doesn't mean you should start a pie business. Those

are two different animals. Just because you like, you admire,

or you desire a certain career doesn't mean you should

acquire that career. One of the keys to succeeding in

life is you have to be skilled. Desire is not enough,

dedication is not enough, prayer is not enough, working hard,

all these things are part of it. But you've got

to have the right skills and you could be the

most sincere person in the world. And if you don't

have the right life skills, you're gonna fail at life.

And if you don't have the right work skills, you're

gonna fail at work. If you don't have the right

ministry skills, you'll fail in ministry. The Bible says skill,

not dedication. Skill will bring success. Now, the good news

is skills can be learned. And today we're gonna look

at the second essential skill, and it is this knowing

how to recognize what's important and what's not important. I

can't tell you how important this skill is and how

few people have it. To look at a situation that's important,

that's not that matters, that doesn't matter, that's valuable, that's

not valuable, this is crucial, that's not crucial. Leaders know

what's important and they focus on that and they forget

everything else. Successful people know what matters and don't worry

about what doesn't matter. Paul says, this one thing I

do not these forty things I dabble in. He is focused,

He's laser focused. And you have to learn this skill

in life to be successful at work and at home

and in life, the skill of knowing what matters most. Now,

have you noticed that you don't have time to do everything? Yeah,

of course you have. You have noticed this in life.

The good news is this, God doesn't expect you to

do everything, and there are only a few things in

life worth doing. In the first place. God hasn't called

you to do everything in life. He's called you to

do what He's called you to do. What you're gifted,

what you're shaped. We're going to talk about that in

future and what's important in life. Knowing what matters most

is extremely important. Look at this first on the screen.

One Corinthian six twelve says this, everything is permissible, but

not everything is beneficial. What does that mean? You're free

to do anything with your life. God isn't going to

force you to do anything with your life. It's all permitted.

You can waste your life, you can invest your life,

you can spend your life. Everything's permissible, but not everything

is beneficial. Some things in life are not necessarily wrong,

they're not necessary, and oftentimes we give first class allegiance

to second class causes, and those causes betray us. I

talked to one time to a guy who said, I

climbed the ladder of success, and when I got to

the top, it was leaning against the wrong way. Not

everything is worth doing, and so you can save yourself

a lot of time, a lot of energy if you

learn the skill of knowing what's important and what's not important,

knowing what's valuable, what it's not valuable, what matters, and

what doesn't matter. Selection is a key to success in

life because you don't have time for everything, and selection,

just like these other skills, is a skill that you

can learn. The better you get at selection and prioritizing

what matters in your life and what doesn't matter, the

more effective you're going to be as a person, as

a partner, as a parent, as a leader in life.

You know, I thought, since we were talking about prioritization,

I would show you a screenshot of the four folders

on the top of my computer desktop. Can we put

that picture up? This is my desktop and there are

actually four folders on my desktop. Number one is things

God wants me to do. Number two is things people

I love need me to do, Third is things I

want to do? And four is things everybody else wants

me to do? Which of those four do you think

has the most number four? Which is the least important

number four? And that's when people say, can you write

an endorsement for this book? Can you do this for me?

They're not even people I know a lot of times,

but they want me to do something. You have to

know what does God want me to do? What are

the people I love need me to do? What do

I want to do? There's a legitimate part for that,

and then what does everybody else want me to do?

And God has not called you to fulfill everybody else's

will for their life? Does that make sense? So what

I want us to do this weekend is talk about

how do you discover what matters and what doesn't matter,

what's valuable and what's not valuable, what is important and

what's not important? You see, every time you make it decision,

what we're talking about here is clarifying your values. Every

single time you make a decision, you are basing it

on unspoken values. You have a grid in your mind.

You've never even thought about this, most likely, but you

have a set of values in your mind, and every

time you make a decision, I'm going to do this

and not do that. I'm going to buy this and

not buy that. I'm going to spend my time and

effort and energy on this and not on that. You

were showing your hidden values. The problem is most people

have never figured out what they are, where they came from,

and whether they're valid or not. So really, the secret

of success is clarifying your values. This is a skill.

You need to learn what is valuable to me and

what is not valuable. Every time you make a decision,

you reveal your values. My question is, do you know

where your values came from? Are they how they work

it out? Is your life working out with those values?

Do you know where you pick them up? Are they

working for you? Your value in life determine your stress,

determine your success, and determine your salvation. Now you may

not realize this, but your values could be causing stress

in your life. Unclear values cause confusion. They cause confusion

in your life. Conflicting values in your life cause tension.

Unclear cause confusion. Conflicting values cause tension. False values create deception,

and the wrong values create dysfunction. So it's extremely important.

What I'm talking to you about this weekend is very

vital to the rest of your life. Lasting success, and

as your pastor, I want you to succeed in life.

Lasting success is built on values that last, and a

lot of the values that our world hasn't aren't lasting values.

So what I want to do this weekend is give

you four questions. I want you to write these questions

down to evaluate your values. When we talk about evalue eight,

you are valuing your values. Values you evaluate means to

judge your own values. So let me give you four

questions that are going to determine your values and your destiny.

Number one, here's the first question you want to ask

yourself in knowing what matters most? First question, who is

going to be my authority? That's the fundamental question of life.

Who is going to be my authority? In other words,

where am I going to get my values? Now, there

are a lot of different sources on which you can

determine what values you're going to live by. Some of

your values you pick up from your parents, some of

them you pick up from peers. Some of your values

you picked up at school. Some of your values you

picked up from books and magazines and movies and television shows. Today,

the number one source of values today in the generations

growing up. You know what it is? The media. The

media are determining the values of the next generation in

the world today. That's the thing. Now you have to decide,

you have to choose what's going to be the source

of my values, because a poor source will give you

poor values. The source determines the quality. Does this make

sense where you get your I mean I could go

down to, you know, a street corner in LA and

learn my values from a drug pusher. They're not going

to be very reliable values, but I could learn them.

The source would determine the quality of my values. So

the first then, if you want to succeed in life,

you want to know what's important is you got to

decide where you're going to get your values. And you

have three options. Here are the three options. The first

option in determining values is me myself. So write that

down myself. You can just get your values from yourself

and you can actually say, you know what, I'm going

to depend on my gut to always know the right

thing to do. And some people do this, They get

all their values from within. I'm just going to depend

on my gut to always know the right thing to do. Question,

how's that working out for you? Are you hitting any

dead ends? Are or are all your plans coming out

exactly the way you plan them to be? Are all

your dreams coming true because you're depending on you for

your values? Have all your plans succeeded? The Bible says

in Jeremiah eleven seventeen, verse nine, the human mind this

is a God's word translation, the human mind is the

most deceitful of all things. It is in no one

can understand how deceitful it really is. Now, let's you

circle the word deceitful because I want to give you

the definition of that word. It says, the human mind

is the most deceitful of all things. Nobody can understand

how deceitful it is. What does deceitful mean? Well, let

me give you definition. The word deceitful means to mislead

in the wrong direction. That's Webster's definition. It means to

mislead in the wrong direction. Does your mind ever do that?

Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby, Yes, it does. Your

mind often leads you in the wrong direction. I don't

know if you follow all these recent brain studies, but

I read these technical reports or read articles magazines, read

scientific journals on it, and in the last five years

there have been enormous breakthroughs in understanding the brain. I

think part of it was because Matthew struggled with mental illness.

I've just always been interested in the brain. But in

the last five years, study after study after study after

study has proven that your perceptions are wrong more than

their right. In life. Every single brain study is proving

this that your brain lies to you. You get it

wrong more often than you get it right. The way

you perceive yourself, the way you perceive others, the way

you perceive your relationships, the way you perceive your problems,

the way you perceive the world. Study after study shows

our brain isn't that good at getting it accurate. That

just because you tell yourself something about a problem, about

a person, about a relationship, about money, about anything, doesn't

mean it's true, doesn't mean it's correct. You lie to

yourself all the time. In fact, you like to yourself

more than you like anybody else. Now this is not

new news, because thousands of years ago that God said

the human mind is the most deceitful of all things.

It misleads us in the wrong direction. You say, but

I saw it, I heard it. Well, you could have

misheard it, and you could have mis seen it. Both

your eyes and your ears lie. Any attorney can prove

this by using multiple witnesses. You can have an accident

take place, and you can have people on four different

corners and they all see the accident, and they're going

to tell you four different stories which one was right.

We see what we think we see, We perceive what

we think we perceive. We hear the stuff I'm telling

you right now, what I'm saying, you're not actually even

hearing it the way I'm saying it. You're hearing it

the way you receive it. And so it's not highly

reliable to base your values on yourself because you don't

always see reality as it really is. Growing up, you

were told things about you and you believed them. They

weren't true, but you believed them. And you've told other

people and people told you things that were about you

that really weren't true, but you believed it, And so

your perceptions are not always reality. You might say, I

know what's causing my problem. Well, the fact is you

probably don't. You need an authority bigger than yourself, because

we all misjudge. We misjudge events, we misjudge pain, we

misjudge people, we misjudge motives. In fact, you might want

to write this down. My perceptions say more about me

than others. My perceptions say more about me than others,

because I have this grid in my mind and I

see things the way I see it, which doesn't necessarily

mean it's the truth. So if I build my life,

but I'm the final authority of what's right and what's wrong,

what's true and false, what's good and bad, what's valuable

and being valuable, I'm on sinking sands. I got to

have a source of authority outside myself. That's not enough

because we all misjudge. The Bible says this, look here

on the screen Proverb sixteen twenty five. There is a

way that seems right to humans, but in the end

it leads to death. A lot of plans that you've

had were dead ends. A lot of plans I've had

were dead ends. It seemed the right thing. So you

can't just depend on your own gut. Your perceptions can

lead to dead ends. What you need is the truth.

That's why the Bible says trust in the Lord with

all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding,

on your own perception, on how you think it's it

is seen. So the first possible source, it's not very reliable,

is all'll be the source of all my values, and

I'll determine what reality is. The second source you write

this one down as possible source is the world. And

most of the time we get our values from the world.

In other words, what does everybody else think is valuable?

What does everybody else consider important? And if they consider important,

it must be important to me. They consider it valuable,

must be valuable to me. Now, first, John chapter two

fifteen and sixteen says this, don't love what the world

offers and values. Do not love what the world offers

and values. Those who love the world don't have the

Father's love in them. For what the world values, and

it lists three things physical gratification. We see that greed, materialism,

and prideful self centered lifestyles. What the world values does

not come from the Father. Now, this verse shows us

three of the world's values. You might write these down

here if you're going to base your values on what

the world says, what culture says, what pop culture says.

Here's what you're gonna get. The first thing the world

values is this looking good, looking good. The world values appearance.

The world values appearance. It's why billions are spent on

beauty aids and surgeries and clothes. But the truth is,

most of us aren't part of the beautiful people. We're

not as attractive as the superstars. We're just kind of

average looking, and so the world doesn't value you or

me like it values the beautiful people. You're probably not

going to get your picture in People magazine, or us

are on the cover of some beauty magazine, and the

world says, because you're not that beautiful, you don't matter.

You aren't as valuable as the prom queen, as a cheerleader,

as the sexy starlet or the incredible hunk Rick Warren.

So the world values appearance beauty, and the Bible says, no, no,

that's not the important value. The second thing that the

world values is not just looking good, but feeling good,

feeling good, and of course that's pleasure, and that's sex.

I don't have to convince you that sex dominates our society.

Everybody agree with that. I mean, it is used to

sell spark plugs and dishwashing soap and everything else. And

you know, people taking a shower and they're shampooing, it's

like they're having some kind of experience and you go whoo,

you know. And sex is used literally to sell everything.

Why because it's the second big value. I just want

to have fun. And if you say what my number

one goal in life is happiness, you've bought into the

world's value system, which says that happiness feeling good is

more important than doing things right or correct or anything else.

You know, it's not by accident. In our culture today,

our largest industry is entertainment. It's entertainment because we want

to feel good. So the world system is looking good, appearance,

feeling good, pleasure, and sex. And the third value of

the world is having the goods. In other words, materialism, money, wealth, riches, prosperity.

We are conspicuous about our consumption. People like to show

it off. They want to show off their cars, show

off their clothes, their homes, the jewelry, their front lawn,

except in southern California, where we're ashamed of having a lawn.

And we want to base our self worth on our

net worth, and we think that our value is connected

to our valuables. It isn't, but that's what the world

teachess money, sex, power or passion, possession, position, sex, salary status.

This is what the world values. This is what every

advertisement promotes. Now here's the problem. Since you're constantly bombarded

by the media with these three values about appearance. You

got to look good, you got to feel good, and

you got to have the goods. Even Christians get seduced

by those values, and all of a sudden, we think

that's the whole purpose of life, to look good, to

feel good, and have the goods. And that is not

at all what God puts you on this planet for. Now,

there's a third possible soul for your values, and of

course that's God, particularly God's word. And God's word is

a far more objective, truthful, not you know, give and

sway to your perceptions or the world's opinions. God's word

Jesus said it like this, and John eight, if you

continue in my word, you will know the truth, and

the truth will make you free. Now what does God

say about these values? Well, I just thought i'd quickly

give these verses to you. What does God say about

appearance and beauty? For Samuel six sixteen seven, The Lord

does not look at the things man looks at. Man

looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at what.

God doesn't care about your appearance. He doesn't care about

your parents. God, it's not about appearance, he says. It's

not about making pleasure your highest value Hebrews eleven twenty five.

The pleasures of sin only last for a short time.

They ain't going to last. Yeah, it's fun that you

have your kicks, but they'll be the kickbacks. And God says,

it's not about wealth, it's not about materialism Luke twelve fifteen.

Jesus says real life is not measured by how much

we own. In other words, the greatest things in life

aren't things. So the first question I need to ask

is who's gonna be my authority myself? That's pretty shaky

the world. That's just the opinion of other people. Or

is it gonna be God's word? Now? The second question

you want to ask is this, what's going to last

the longest? What's going to last the longest? This is

an important question. To ask, if you're trying to decide

what you're gonna build your values on, what's going to

be important and if you want to know what matters

most of what doesn't matter, you need to invest your

life in something that's going to last the longest. Now,

let me be on us with you. We rarely, we

rarely evaluate our values or question our perceptions until we

hit a crisis. And when we hit a crisis, and

when we're in deep, deep, deep, deep pain, then we

just start going, is this really what life's all about?

Living for appearance, feeling good, having the goods, looking good? No, no, no,

it's got to be more than that. When you're in pain,

you start to saying, well, maybe my perceptions aren't correct

and maybe my values aren't right. See what happens is

we typically cruise through life like this, never stopping to

ask the tough questions about our life until we hit

the pain. We don't change when we see the light.

We change when we feel the heat. And when we

hit the crisis, then we start saying, is this a

dead end I'm walking down? Is where is this headed?

Am I seeing things correctly? Am I deceiving myself? When

things are going great. We don't even ask those questions,

But when you get fired from your job, or you

go through a divorce, or a loved one dies, or

you have a health crisis, all of a sudden, these

values questions become real. Am I really seeing things correctly?

Am I listening to what the world says? Or am

I listening to what God says?

Such a great message from Pastor Rick today, and I

hope you were just as encouraged as I was. You know,

the truth is, desire and determination alone aren't enough to

succeed in life. So many people already work so hard,

but real success isn't just about working harder. It's about

working smart. It's about working God's way. Did you know

that the Bible is packed with practical instruction to help

you do just that. Yeah, That's why Pastor Rick Warren

created the Toolbox for Life Bible Study. Through this powerful study,

you'll discover and develop four essential real life success building

skills straight from God's word. These are skills that will

equip you to make a difference as you lead with

confidence and clarity in your home, at work, at school,

and in your community. The Toolbox for Life Bible Study

has four video sessions taught by Rick and includes a

companion workbook. It's perfect for personal growth or small group study,

so be sure to request your copy of the Toolbox

for Life Study Kit today. When you give a gift

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