Rick Warren - Integrating God’s Word Into My Life—Part One

This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the audio broadcast ministry

of Pastor Rick Warren. Today we continue with a series

called forty Days in the Word. In these messages Pastor

Rickshaw's practical Bible study tools that will reignite your passion

for God's Word and revolutionize your life as you grow

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five right now. Here's Pastor Rick Warren would part one

of a message called integrating God's Word into My Life?

How do you integrate God's Word into every area of

your life? The first verse on your outline today is

out of Psalm one nineteen, verse twenty. The contemporary English

version says this what I want most of all, What

I want most of all, in other words, the number

one priority in my life, what I want most of

all and at all times. That means it's integrated. It's

not just at church time, but at all times. Is

I want to honor your loss. David is saying here,

you know, I want to be a man of the Word.

Whether I'm at work, or I'm at home, or I'm

at a ducks game, or I'm playing with my kids,

or I'm on a golf course, I want to be

a man of the Word. I want my life to

be leaded and guided and directed by the Word of God. Now,

what I want to do this weekend is show you

how to do that. And how you do that is

in six very simple steps. The steps are actually in

the six Bible verses we've been memorizing for the last

six weeks. Every one of those memory verses were intentionally

chosen because they give a key to keeping on in

the Word of God. And if you'll not just memorize

these six verses we've been having one a week on,

but you'll actually begin to build your wife around them,

then you will become a woman of the Word. You

will become a man of the Word because these things

teach us how to take the Bible and build on it,

feed on it, live by it, grow through it, act

on it, and trust in it. Let's look at these

six verses. The first thing I'm going to do if

I'm going to become a man of the Word or

a woman of the Word, is I must build on it.

I must build on it. In other words, I make

the Bible the foundation for my life. Whatever is the

foundation will determine how big the structure can be on

top of it. And so I'm going to build my

life on the Bible. Now, this is what Jesus talks

about in Matthew chapter seven, at the end of his

very famous sermon on Amount. He says this, everyone who

hears these words of mine and puts them into practice

is like a wise man who built his house on

the rock Matthew seven twenty four. It's one of our

memory verses. He's saying, you can build your life on sand,

you can build your life on a rock. Now, if

you build your life on the rock of truth, truth

never changes. Opinion changes, but truth doesn't change. If it's true,

it's been true it's true a thousand years ago, it

to be true a thousand years from today. An opinion

does change. But if you build on the rock of

God's word, they say, then you're going to build on

the stability of something that never changes. And when the

rogue winds of life come, when the storms of life,

when the trials and the troubles and temptations and all

those tough times inevitably come into your life, you're not

blown away. You're not blown over. You don't crumble like

most people do, because you are solid. You're built on

a rock foundation. On the other hand, if you build

on the shifting sands of just opinion or whatever happens

to be popular, whatever, then you're gonna be shifting sands.

The foundation will crumble, the structure will crumble. I need

to say first off, say God, I'm gonna build my

life on this book. I don't always understand it. Shoot,

I don't even always like it. I don't even like

what God says sometimes. But God, even if I don't

like what you say, I'm going to build my life

on what you say because I know you're not gonna

lie to me.

It's the truth.

Now, most people build their lives on shifty foundations and

their lives fall apart. Give you four common foundations you

don't want to build your life on. Number one is

popular culture. Some people build their life on popular culture

because they think, well, you know, I just do whatever

everybody else is doing. If it's popular, I do it.

If it's not, I don't do it. The problem with

that is whatever's popular today is going to be unpopular tomorrow.

Whatever is in style today will be out of style tomorrow.

Whatever is cool today will not be cool tomorrow, and

so it's constantly changing.

The foundation.

God says this in Exodus twenty three, verse two, up

here on the screen. So don't follow the crowd and

doing wrong, because crowds off and wrong, And so he says,

don't build yourself on a shifting sands of popular culture.

Second thing you don't want to build on is tradition.

A lot of people build their lives on tradition. In

other words, I do it because I've always done it.

You're listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Rick will be

back in just a moment with the rest of today's lesson.

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Pastor Rick is always reminding us about the importance of

getting God's word into our hearts, because only God's word

can truly transform your life. As you spend time focusing

on his word, you'll be better equipped to make wise decisions,

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Now back to more from God's Word with Pastor Rick Warren.

God says this in Exodus twenty three, verse two up

here on the screen. So don't follow the crowd and

doing wrong, because crowd's off and wrong. And so he says,

don't build yourself on a shifting sands of popular culture.

Second thing you don't want to build on is tradition.

A lot of people build their lives on tradition. In

other words, I do it because I've always done it,

And that's a circular reasoning idea. Or my parents have

always done it. Are my grandparents are done it? We've

always done it that way. Now, tradition isn't bad. In fact,

something becomes a tradition because it works. But no tradition

lasts forever. Truth lasts forever, but no tradition lasts forever.

Traditions eventually wear out, become obsolate, lead, and they're not valid.

And even Jesus says this in Mark chapter seven, on

the screen verse eight, he says to a group of

religious leaders, you have let go of the commands of

God and are holding on to the traditions of men.

I know a lot of churches like that. They're holding

non to traditions that aren't really in the Bible. It's

just something they've always done traditional. And he says, you're

actually put in tradition before truth, and that's going to

get you in trouble. A third thing you don't want

to build your life on is simply reason. Now we

all need reason. Reason is reasonable. In fact, God gives

us the ability to reason. But sometimes what you think

is reasonable is not actually right. And he said, well,

I've always thought, well, it really doesn't matter what you've

always thought. What matter is what's the right.

Thing to do in this circumstance.

When I rely on my own intellect, when I do

what I've always thought, what seems reasonable to me often

ends up being a mistake. Reason is a good thing,

but it's not infallible. Proverbs sixteen twenty five says this

here on the screen, there's a way that seems right

to man, it seems like the right thing, but in

the end, it's a dead end. It's it's a dead end.

It leads to death. How many times have you made

a decision you thought was reasonable. I need to marry

this person, I need to get into this business, I

need to accept this job offer, I need to make

this investment. And what seemed like the right thing was

an absolute disaster. Because your reason isn't always infallible. You

make mistakes, and we're not always when we think we're

being logical, we're not always as logical as we think

we are. Now, the most important one to avoid is

the fourth one, which is emotion. And some people build

their lives simply on emotion. They build their lives on

their feelings. If it feels right, I do it. If

it feels wrong, I don't do it. In other words,

I do what I feel like doing. Do what you

feel I feel like doing it, so and it feels

right to it must be right. There's a problem with that.

Feelings lie. They lie to you all the time, your feelings.

You lie to yourself more than you lie to anybody else.

And your feelings sometimes tell you things are going great

when they aren't, and sometimes your feelings tell you things

are going falling apart when they're actually better than you

think they are. Feelings lie to you all the time.

They're highly unreliable, and if you live by your feelings,

you will spend your life manipulated by your moods. Most

of what gets accomplished in the world today is done

by people who don't feel like doing it when they

did it. If you only do what you feel like doing,

you'll stay in bed most days of the week a

lot of times. To get anything done, you've got to

do what you don't feel like doing. And if you

build your life simply on emotions, I feel like doing it,

then you do it. There's a word for that immaturity.

Maturity and wisdom is when you act according to your values,

according to your convictions, and according to what's right, rather

than what I feel like doing. The Bible tells us

in Judges chapter twenty one. Now this is like five

thousand years ago. It says at that time there was

no king in Israel, and people did whatever they felt

like doing. Now, to show you how these are unreasonable

and unreliable emotion and reason and tradition and popular culture,

I thought i'd show you a difference between how Hollywood

views marriage and how God views marriage. This is Hollywood's

formula for relationships. You want to be happy, he says.

Number one, what you do is you find the right person.

Okay.

Then number two you fall in love. Then number three

you fix all your hopes and dreams on that one

person for all your future fulfillment. And then number four,

if failure occurs, repeat steps one, two, and three. Okay,

just repeat it over and over and over, and you

know ten dozen times doesn't really matter. Okay. Now let

me give you God's prescription for relationships. Number one, instead

of finding the right person, become the right person. You

focus on building character in your life, the kind of

person that you know is worthy of marriage. Okay, become

the right person. Then number two, instead of falling in love,

walk in love. You see, love is a choice. It's

one hundred percent under control. You say I fell out

of love. Well, you chose to fall out of love,

because you choose to fall in and you choose to

fall out. Love is a choice. It's not an emotion.

Love creates emotion, oh baby, oh baby, some really good ones.

But love is not an emotion. Love is a choice.

It's making your problem my problem. It's choosing your need

over my need. It's being others centered rather than me centered.

So third step is fix your hope on God and

honor him through your relationship. And then number four. If

failure occurs, repeats steps one, two, and three, And that's

the difference. Now you want to build your life on

the word of God. Say, you know, I don't always

agree with it, I don't always like it. It's not

always convenient, it's not always politically correct. But if God

said it, it's got to be true. So God, I'm

going to build my life on the Bible. It is

my final authority. This is my final authority for life.

Now I've asked pastor Buddy to come and share the

next couple of points.

Okay, the second way to integrate the Word of God

into your life is defeed on it.

Feed yourself on the Word of God.

The Bible tells us that the Word of God is

spiritual food. In fact, it uses several pictures. The Bible

describes itself as the water, the milk, the bread, and

the meat of the spiritual life. So it has everything

that you're going to need for sustenance. But you have

to be feeding yourself. You have to be eating something

because just like you need physical food for physical strength,

well you've got to have spiritual.

Food for spiritual strength.

We need to be feeding ourselves so that we have

strength to accomplish the tasks ahead of us. The Bible

says that we are all building, and the Bible also

says that we're all in spiritual warfare, and you're not

going to have much success in building your life or

in winning the spiritual battles that you face if you're

starving yourself to death.

So we need to be feeding ourselves on the Word

of God.

Now, one of the things that I have found is,

unlike regular food, when I eat.

When I feed on the Word.

The more I eat, the hungrier I get, the more

I taste to see how good the Lord is.

The more of the sweetness of the honey.

Of the Word, the milk of the Word, the hungrier

that I get for it. Colossians three sixteen. The Bible says,

let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. Let

it dwell in you, Let it move into you, Let

it inhabit you. Take up residence in a rich, a profound,

and a life changing and a life giving way.

That's what that verse is saying.

So how do we feed ourselves on the word of

God to allow that to happen, so that God's Word

is dwelling in us and building us up. Well, let

me give you some things to write down. These are

actually some reviewpoints from what Pastor Rick talked about just

a few weeks ago. The first way that you can

take the word of God in is I can receive

it with my ears.

Write that down.

I can receive it with my ears. That means I

have to be hearing the word of God. Bible says

faith comes through hearing the word of God. The second

way to feed on the word of God is I

read it with my eyes, so I hear it with

my ears. But now I read it with my eyes.

Why do you think God gave you this book not

just so you can put it on a shelf. Having

a Bible in your house is not going to bless

your life. You've got to have the Bible in your heart.

You've got to take it in by reading the Word

of God. So there's a third way that we can

feed on the Word of God, and that is that

I research it.

I research it with my hands and with my mouth.

Now what does that mean.

It's talking about studying the Word of God. Remember the

difference between reading devotionally and studying the Bible is that

when you study the Bible, you've got a pencil in

your hand. You've got to be writing things down, writing

down your thoughts, journaling what God is saying to you.

A fourth way to feed yourself on the Word is

I can reflect on it with my mind.

I reflect on it with my mind. I don't just

read it.

Maybe talk about it, and then go on as though

nothing had happened. But I spend time meditating on the

Word of God. That's what forty days and the Word

has been all about giving us different ways to meditate,

to reflect on the Word of God, to think about.

It, to chew on it.

And then a fifth way I can feed myself is

I remember it with my heart. I remember it with

my heart. There's a difference between remembering with your mind

and with your heart. This is talking about memorizing scripture.

But now, why does God want us to do this? Well,

that brings us to the next point. Not only are

we to feed on it, I want you to write

this down. We integrate the Word into our lives when

we live by it. You've got to live by the

word of God. It is the word of God that

sets the standard by which you judge everything else of

value in your life. It's the standard by which you

make decisions for the things that you are facing in life.

You've got to build your life on something. You've got

to base those decisions on something. And it comes when

we allow the Word of God to become the standard.

By which we live.

The Bible says in Psalm one blessed is the one

the man, the woman who doesn't walk in the counsel

of the ungodly, but who meditates on the Word of God.

What does that mean.

It means, if you want your life to be blessed,

you don't build your life on the counsel of the world,

on the way the world thinks, but you meditate, you

build your life on the way that God thinks, the

counsel of the ungodly. That's the step that we hear

all the time on television, in movies, in the print media.

It's the talk that goes on around the world around us.

It's the values of the world, and the Bible says,

if you want your life to be blessed, you don't

build your life. You don't live your life by that

kind of counsel, but live your life, build your life,

feed your life on the word of God, because it's

the word of God that will give you hope when

you're in crisis. It's the word of God that will

give you comfort when you are in despair. It's the

word of God that will give you strength when you

are weak. It's a word of God that will give

you wisdom when you're confused. It's the word of God

that will give you guidance when you're looking for direction.

And it's the word of God that will give you

strength to resist, to fight against temptation. Look at this

next verse in your outline, Psalm one, nineteen eleven. The

Bible says, I've hidden your word in my heart so

that I might not sin against you. He says, this

is the reason I've hidden your word. That's what memorizing

the Bible is about. It's about hiding it, taking it

into my heart. He says, I've hidden your word in

my heart. Not so that I can just be a

goodie two shoes little Christian, but so that I will

not sin against you. Remember in Matthew chapter four, when

Jesus was tempted, there were three times the devil came

and tempted him, and all three times Jesus only used

one weapon to defend himself.

He said, yeah, but it's written.

And the devil would tempt him again, and he would say, yeah,

but it's written.

It is written.

It was the only weapon he used to defend himself.

If you want to be like Christ, you've got to

defend yourself the way he did.

When you let the word of.

Christ dwell in you richly, you absorb the nature of Christ,

the flavor and the aroma of Christ. But something else

happens to you. You take on a whole new identity,

and you begin to become the man or woman of

God that he has always wanted you to become. You

begin to become the man or woman of God that

you have always wanted to be. When you let the

Word of Christ dwell in you richly, not only do

you know what the Word of God says, you begin

to become more and more like the author. Now, Pastor

Rick is going to come and share with us the

fourth way to integrate the Word of God into our lives.

To become a woman of the Word or to become

a man of the Word. You got a first, make

the Bible your foundation and you build on it. Then

you got to make the Bible your food and you

eat it. And then the third metaphor is you make

it your lifestyle in which you're going to live by.

You make it your your standard and which you live by.

The fourth thing you do is you make it the

seed that you grow through.

This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. If you've missed any

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