Rick Warren - How Do I Know What’s True — Part Two

You know, we really live in a world that's full

of competing beliefs and values and choices, and what you

believe shapes how you live and ultimately who you become.

But the good news is God hasn't left us to

figure it all out alone.

No.

In fact, today, on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, we're going

to continue our series Reframing Your Worldview, where Rick Warren

unpacks powerful truths from God's Word to help you see

life clearly and live it with confidence and purpose. So

let's jump right in for part two of a message

called how do I Know What's True?

Here's Rick immorality, immaturity, here's another one.

Unreality.

Unreality is when people stop believing in truth, they'll believe anything.

They'll believe things that are unreal.

They become very and they put their faith in all

kinds of things except God. I know people who are

more committed to trusting crystals to get well than God.

And it's just a rock. It's a rock.

But when you give up the idea that there is

absolute truth, then you start believing anything. I know people

who will believe in tarot cards before God, or tea

leaves before God, or astrology, before God or palm reading

before God.

It's like, I'll believe.

Anything except God. And we fall into this world of

unreality and we, you know, we accept things that aren't true.

And today there's this blurring of truth and we find.

It in the media.

We find it in what we call docu dramas, and

what that is is fiction disguised as nonfiction docu drama.

And we have people who write, you know, biographies and

then just make up stuff. You know, we all know

that happened. Just there was this big flap over James

Fry who wrote a book A Million Little Pieces, became

the number one best seller in America for about three weeks,

and it was this biography of all these things that supposedly.

Happened to him.

And then they found out that he just made it

all up. It wasn't true, and everybody got upset that

this guy would would write.

Truth, write fiction and claim that it was true.

Well, I'm going, well, why isn't anybody upset about da

Vinci Code?

Because in the Da Vinci.

Code, the very first thing on the first page he says, now,

this is a novel, but it's based on all these

true facts, and every one of them has been trueven false.

I saw a big two hour documentary on the Discovery Channel,

and when nobody's upset about that the da Vinci Code. Why,

Because it's okay to lie about Jesus, It's okay to

lie about the Catholic Church. It's okay to lie about

Mary Mangalene because that's politically acceptable. I don't know if

you've noticed this or not, but even the reality shows

are getting more unreal.

Have you figured that one out?

I mean, but it's amazing to us how much we

worship on reality when we let go of truth. Now,

I don't want to put down actors. I mean, I've

got friends who are actors in Hollywood. It's a it's

a good profession, and you need people who are actors

to do you know, fantasy and to do drama. And

I mean, it's a good profession. But they're certainly not

heroes their entire life. They make a living faking it.

Think about this. They're not actually making the world a

better place like school teachers or you know, uh, you know, parents,

paramedics or or doctors, are you know, police or soldiers?

Why are we making heroes out of people whose whole

goal in life is to create illusions.

I'm not saying that's not.

A valid profession it is. I'm just saying they're certainly

not heroes. People jump on goofy beliefs.

On the bandwagon.

The Bible says this in Second Thessalonians two twelve. Since

they refuse to trust truth, they're banished to their chosen

world of lies and illusion. We believe illusions and lies

all the time. We believe the illusion that having more

will make me more happy, or having more will make

me more secure, or having more will make me more valuable.

But those are all illusions. They're just not true.

And when you give up the truth, you tend to

start buying into illusions. Now, let's get personal in your

own life. Here's a question to ask yourself. Where am

I faking it? Where am I faking it? Where am

I pretending to be something that I not really am?

You need to know that because when you're in those

areas that you're faking it, you're not exactly what you

appear to be.

That's called truth decay.

And it's gonna rot your heart, just like tooth decay

rots your teeth. When you're not being truthful on reality, immorality, immaturity.

Here's a fourth area of truth decay illegality, illegality. What

I mean by that, I'm saying, if there's no standard

or right or wrong, then everything can be considered legal,

because all law is built on an idea that there

are things that are right and there are things that

are wrong. If there is no right or wrong, if

there is no truth, there are no laws. And if

there's nothing legal, nothing illegal, then you can go around

and talk to you know, arguing about what the.

Meaning of is is.

And it doesn't matter if you murdered somebody because you

can get off on a technicality. When murderers go free

because of technicalities in a culture that's called truth decay,

doesn't matter what the truth is. What matters is the technicality.

That's truth decay.

See nobody at INRON or TYCHO or MCI or any

of those mammoth organizations that that you know collapsed after

the bubble. None of them started out by saying, let's

figure out a way to rip off five hundred billion

dollars of investors' money. Nobody woke up one morning and

said it, Inron, let's just think up the big lie

that'll steal a ton of money, waste it, and then

we'll go bankrupt.

No, how did it start.

All of those scandals inron tychon, et cetera started when

they started cheating at the edges in little ways. They

started telling what we call white lies, as if lies

have color. A lie is a lie, is a lie

is a lie is a lie, and it's false and

it's never going to be true no matter how you

color it.

A lie is a lie.

And when truth goes out the window and there's no

standard of right or wrong, then you go after anything anything,

It becomes legal. I don't know if you saw about

this guy, Nathan, who was just sentenced in Maryland to

seven and a half years in prison for defrauding and

stealing money out of the state pension plan.

And they caught him and put him.

In prison for seven and a half years this week

thanks to Here's who he had to thank for his

next seven and a half years in prison.

His three former mistresses. They were getting even.

And I wrote this down, this quote from the US prosecutor.

He said this, when we look for white collar criminals,

we know that if their life is a lie, then

it's not confined just to their personal life. If they're

lying to their wives, there's a huge but they're also

lying to their colleagues, their board of directors, and the auditors.

You see, some of you.

Are falling for what I call the Titanic myth. The

Titanic myth was that if we compartmentalized.

The stuff, we can't sink.

Until the Titanic came along. Ships had one giant hull,

and if it got breached, the whole hall would fill

up with the water.

And the thing would sink.

And so the Titanic was called unsinkable because they compartmentalized

the hall. This has never been done before, and so

the theory was, we can take on a little bit

water in our ship and still not sink because we'll

compartmentalize the hall, and therefore some of it could be

breached and it can actually fill up with the water,

but it won't.

Sink the whole ship. And they were wrong.

If you were compartmentalizing your life, you're in for a

disaster eventually of Titanic proportions. And if you say, well,

I got this little thing fling going on over here,

but I got it compartmentalized, or I got this little

thing over here at work. That's I know it's wrong,

but I got it compartmentalized. And it's not that a

sink my ship or my family or my reputation. And

I got this thing over here, but it's compartmentalized. As

your pastor who loves you and cares for you as

a friend, get out of that as quickly as possible.

Please, I'm telling you, for your own.

Good, get out of it as quickly as possible. Why

Because when you compartmentalize your life, there's a word for that.

It's called a lack of integrity. The word integrity comes

from the word integer. Remember from math class. That means one.

It's one digit and integer, it's oneness. And integrity means

your entire life is integrated, not compartmentalized. You cannot have

integrity if you're life it is compartmentalized. Well, this is

my sex life, this is my family life, this is

my work life, this is my church life, here's my

pornography life.

And here no, no, if.

You got it all, you got it all compartmentalized. You

do you lack integrity? Integrity is what you see is

what you get your authentic it's one big stew and

you act towards your kids the way you act towards

your your friends, and you don't act different at parties,

and you don't act different at church.

You are the same youth.

You're not wearing a mask, you're not a hypocrite, you're

not a fake or a phony. You're the same with everybody.

That's integrity. And when truth happens to decay in my

life and I start trying to close it off with well,

that'll we'll just make that a little segment over there,

and that may get take on water. But it's okay.

You're in trouble. The Bible says in Proverbs twenty nine

to eighteen, when there is ignorance of God, crime runs wild.

It's interesting to me that in nineteen eighty they outlawed

putting the Ten Commandments in school rooms, which were standards

of moral truth accepted by Jews, Muslims, Christians, and even

people who aren't Christians are religious innoight. But they took

the Ten Commandments out of classrooms, off the wall, and

since that time, violence against teachers, violence in schools, Columbine, Oregon, Kentucky,

all those things have happened since then. Of course, there's

no connection at all between that. When truth is given

a sideline and there are no absolutes, than anything becomes possible.

And it says there. Look, it says truth decay. When

there is ignorance of God, crime runs wild. Truth decay

has not stopped. Eventually, anarchy happens. And friends, I've been

in plenty of countries around the world that I could

give you examples of that one. Well, let's get it

back to you personally. Ask yourself this question, write it down.

Am I cheating in the edges? Am I cheating on

the edges?

None?

In the big areas of life? But just you're telling

the little quote white lies. You're not being fully.

Up up to snuff.

That's illegality. Here's a fifth one, idolatry. Idolatry is a

symptom in a culture of truth decay.

What do you mean by that? We idolize the wrong things.

And when I don't know right from wrong, when I

don't know the truth, then my priorities and my values

and the things I worship get all out of whack,

They get really messed up. And I idolize things like wealth,

or I idolize success, or I idolize physical beauty, or I

idolize athletic ability, or I idolize intelligence, or I idolize popularity,

or I idolize cars and homes, I idolize the way

your house is redecorated, or I idolize any number of different

things which may not be wrong in themselves, but they

don't deserve worship, They don't deserve to be top, to

be number one goal in your life.

And today, because.

Truth the kay is taking place in our culture, we're

actually flip flopping values and wrong things are now becoming

right and right things are becoming wrong, and good is

bad and bad is good, and black is white and

white is black, and it's all messed up. We're just

seeing this reversal. I mean, today, we turn criminals into

celebrities and then we give them multimillion dollar book contracts

and make a millionaires.

And the worst crime you do, the more money you

can make off of it.

That's out a whack, you know. We you know, we

kill unborn human beings. Forty four million Americans aren't here

that would have been here because of abortion. So we

kill unborn humans while protecting parasites and insects. What's the

logic of that one or TV constantly mocks and ridicules

marriage constantly mocks and ridicules it.

So how is this working.

It's all reversed and people are willing to worship anything

except God. The Bible says this in Romans one twenty five.

Instead of believing what they knew was the truth about God,

they deliberately chose to believe wise, they worshiped the things.

That's called materialism. They worshiped the things God made, but

not the Creator himself. Here's the question for you personally,

what have I been idolizing? What have I been idolizing?

What has become a little bit too important for me?

It's not wrong, but it's just all of a sudden,

it's up there at the top of my life, like

that's the number one goal of life. And I've been

idolizing the wrong thing. I've been worshiping the wrong thing.

One more and I'll just cover this quickly. Injustice is

a sign of truth decay, because when there's no standard

of right and wrong, no truth and no falsehood, you

can get away with anything. And the Bible says in

Isaiah fifty nine, our courts supposed people who are righteous.

Justice is nowhere to be found. Truth falls dead in

the streets, and fairness has been outlawed. Now, if that's

the damage of truth decay in our society, in our businesses,

in our families, in our lives, what's the solution we

have to reverse the tide? And how do we reverse

the tide? Not through politics, not through legislation.

But by being people of the truth.

The Bible calls it being salt and light, being people

who stand for truth in a relati modern.

Anything goes society.

Now that brings up the question, then, how do I

know what the truth is?

Is there a way to know the truth? Absolutely?

Yes, there are at least five ways that you can

know the difference between what's true and what's untrue, what's

real and what's unreal. And we're gonna talk about that,

but it starts with an attitude of openness. An openness

it says, I want the truth more than anything else.

I want the truth even if it's uncomfortable. Remember that phrase,

you can't handle the truth. I want the truth even

if it's uncomfortable.

That is an openness. I'm amazed, you.

Know, I've been this last year speaking in a lot

of different secular type groups a lot of intelligent people,

smart people, And I'm amazed at how many people think

they are open.

Minded, but really aren't. They really aren't.

What actually happens is if you're intelligent, the more intelligent

you are, the more you tend to be secretly proud

of your intelligence, and you go, I'm smart, I'm really smart.

I'm really, really, really smart. And that's called arrogance.

And when you get arrogant about your smartness, your intelligence,

you actually start closing your mind down. And I meet

people all the time who are They think they're open minded,

you start talking about God, they freeze up. They are

closed to even the possibility of it. They're closed to

that possibility, not even open to it. Jesus said this,

look up here on the screen John seven point seventeen.

He said, if anyone chooses to do God's will, he

will find out whether or.

Not my teaching comes from God.

He said, Okay, you want to know if I'm telling

the truth or not. He said, you must have an

attitude of openness. And you say, God, if there is

a God, I want to know you. It's not closing

myself to that possibility, saying if there is a God,

I want to know you, Jesus. If he's telling the truth,

I want to know the truth. It may be difficult

for me to hear, but if it's true, I want

to know it. I am opening myself up. That's the

required attitude, because you can't share truth with a closed mind.

I remember I did this about thirty five years ago.

I got down on my knees. I was up in

the mountains at a camp, nobody in the room, and

I prayed a simple prayer like this. I said, God,

if there is a God, I'm open. If you exist,

if you're real, I want to know you're real. And

Jesus Christ, if you can change my life, you can

give me a better life. If there is a purpose

my life, I want to know it. And so God,

if you're real, I want you to make yourself real

to me.

You know what happened? Nothing?

Nothing, I mean, no no bright light shone down, no

angels came in the room. And I didn't hear the

Hallelujah chorus. You know my hair didn't turn white like

Charles you know Heston's or you know you know, nothing happened.

I didn't get a quiver in my liver. No goosebumps.

I didn't get emotional, I didn't cry nothing.

It was just okay. That was the turning point in

my life.

Why Because finally I was open to the possibility and

I was no longer biasing myself against God, and I said, God,

I want to know the truth, even if it's inconvenient.

And that was the turning point in my life because

it had nothing to do with emotions. It was a simple, logical,

rational decision. If there is a God, I don't want

to miss out on it, and if he has a

plan for my life, I certainly don't want to miss that.

You know, people are being transformed by these messages. In fact,

here's Rick with a letter from one of our listeners.

You know, no matter how bad things seem, you can

always trust that God is active in your life, working

things out for the good. While you are waiting, God

is working. God always has your best interest at heart.

He's a good God. Today, I want to give you

the example from a note that I got from a

young man named Tyler, who has seen how God is

always there even when circumstances seem to be their worst.

Tyler wrote me said, you know, Rick, I haven't had

a close relationship with Christ. But then several events occurred

in my life all at once. First my girlfriend broke

up with me, and that was the biggest heartache that

I could imagine for both of us. Then my friends

left for college the same week, and third, my dad

left for California to start.

A new job, leaving me in.

All of this hit me at once, and I was

a complete mess. But with guidance from others and realizing

this was a scheduled appointment from God himself, I found

Christ through your Daily Hope podcast and through prayer and

in going to church I finally found the joy in

my life again.

And I'm a changed person.

Every day now, I listen to you, Rick, and I

read my daily devotional, and I look at life with

a whole new perspective. You know, before I was living

for me, I wasn't living for God. But this journey

has been so amazing. God is so good and the

best part is that I can wake up every day

knowing that He loves me and will listen to me,

and that Jesus Christ will take my worries from me.

I'm so thankful, Rick, that God woke me up and

changed me into a better and healthier person that I

am today, and I'm thankful for my savior, Jesus Christ.

So God bless you you well.

Thanks Tyler, Thanks for writing that encouraging letter. You have

experienced firsthand how much God cares for you, even in

the smallest details of your life, and through this what

was a very difficult season, he led you to Jesus,

the greatest gift you could ever receive.

So did you know that the.

Bible says in Luke fifteen, right now, all of Heaven

is rejoicing because you're a part of God's family. The

Bible says they have a party in heaven every time

one person steps across the line. And what that means

that you and I are now brothers. Did you know

that we're brothers in Christ and your church family are

your brothers and sisters here to walk alongside you. So, Tyler,

welcome to the Family of God. And as you grow

in your faith, staying connected with a strong church community

is so so important. I want you to surround yourself

with people who will encourage you in the Lord, who

will pray for you, who will help you they strong

in your journey with Jesus. And just watch and see

how God moves in your life as you faithfully follow

Him into your future. By the way, you also mentioned

that you listen to the Daily Hope podcast. For anybody

who hasn't checked that out yet, it is completely free.

It's completely available on all major platforms. It's on Apple Podcasts,

it's on Spotify, it's on wherever you get your podcasts.

You can also listen anytime by just going to a

Pastorrick dot com on the internet. Now, friends, we're able

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of your generosity listeners just like you, So let me

just stay here. Thanks, Thanks a lot, Thanks for being

a part of this community. Thanks for your contributions to

care for other people so that they could get the

word of God and build the hope that they need.

And they can keep seeking God and He will guide them.

God bless hey.

Be sure to join us next time when we look

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

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