Rick Warren - How To Get Ready for A Miracle—Part One

Hello, everybody, Welcome to Daily Hope with Pastor Rick Warren.

So we're continuing with this series called Daring Faith The

Key to Miracles. And in this series you're learning how

to have a bold, unshakable faith that gives you courage

to impact the world around you. And I know we

all want that. I'm excited to hear what Rick shares

today with a message called how to get Ready for

a Miracle.

Let me show you three verses from the Bible. First,

God wants you to grow in faith, the Bible says

and Colossians too. Let your roots grow down deep into

Him and draw up a nourishment from Him, so that

you will grow in faith. Circle that grow in faith,

strong and vigorous. God wants you to grow in your faith.

It wants you to be a spiritual baby. And then

God says, I want you to sew in faith. I

want you to learn to become generous. You cannot become

like God without becoming generous. You can'tnot become like Christ

without becoming generous, the Bible says and tewod Corinthians nine.

Remember this, whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly. And

whoever sows generously, will also reap generously. This is the

law of you reap what you sow, and it's true

in every life. If you sow criticism, you're going to

reap criticism. If you sow love, you'll reap love. If

you sow kindness, you will reap kindness. But you always

reap more than you sow. When you plant one corn

kernel in the ground, you don't get one colonel back,

you get a whole stalk. You always get more back,

either positively or negative, of what you put out in life.

And the Bible says, if you sew generously, you will

reap generously. So grow in faith, so in faith, and

then God wants you to go in faith. I could

have used many examples, but here's an example of Abraham.

Hebrews eleven eight says it was by faith that Abraham

obeyed God's call to go. You know this story how

he left er to go to the promised land God's

called the goat to another place that God had promised

to give him. He left his own country without knowing

where he was to go. Would you do that? Abraham

was up in years, he was at retirement, saved, it

is time to hang it up and settle down. And

God said, no, get it down, dust it off. You're

unready for the greatest journey of your life. And God says,

when you live by faith, it involves going off into

places you hadn't any idea you were planning to go to.

In fact, you weren't planning. So we're going to look

at faith in the areas of your growing, in ularias

of your giving, and in the areas of your lifestyle.

Now why are we doing this Because everything that God

does in your life he does because of his mercy

and grace and your faith. He does it by grace

through faith. I could give you one hundred different verses.

Let me just give you a few. Hebrews eleven six

says this, without faith, it is impossible to please God. Well,

that's enough to study it for ten weeks, right there.

Romans fourteen twenty three says this, anything that is not

done in faith is sin. That's another reason to study

faith for ten weeks. Matthew nine twenty nine Jesus said,

according to your faith, it will be done to you.

I love that verse because Jesus says you get to

choose how much God blesses your life, a lot of faith,

a lot of blessing. Little faith, little blessing, no faith,

no blessing. According to your faith, it will be done

to you. Now, let me explain to you what you

can expect in the next ten weeks. Four things you

ought to expect. Write these down en daring faith. Number one.

The first thing is you can expect to see some miracles.

I guarantee it. You count on it. Because when people

trust God, when people take risks, when people dream great dreams,

when people go for it in faith, God moves. God

is not impressed with my complaining. God is not impressed

with my griping. God is not impressed with my criticizing

all the things I don't like about my life. It

doesn't move God to act at all when I complain,

when I whine, when I'm moan. But God moves according

to faith. And when he looks down and he sees

a child of God, a son of God, a daughter

of God, believing and trusting him. All throughout Scripture we

see this over and no going. God moves. Every time

you see God did a miracle in the Bible's and

moved out of heaven, moved on earth because somebody believed,

and because a lot of people are going to be

taking risks and steps of faith during daring faith, you're

going to see some flat out miracles. I guarantee it.

It's going to happen. Some of you will get promoted,

It just happens. Some of you will get engaged me God,

me me me me me me, me, me me God,

me mey me God. Some of you will get engaged.

Some of you will have unexpected income come in. Some

of you will have windfalls, some of you will have

physical healing. I have seen this seven times. When people

start to believe God and trust Him in ways they've

never done before, they see some really neat stuff happen

in their lives. So you can expect to see miracles.

Number two. The second thing you can expect is you

can expect to grow spiritually. As I said, you're probably

going to grow more in the next ten weeks or

eight weeks now than you will in all of the

rest of the year because we're going to be focusing

on your spiritual growth. Number three. The third thing you

can expect. I hate to tell you this, but it's

part of the deal. You can expect to be hassled

by Satan, You're going to have some difficulties in the

next ten weeks. Satan's going to try to distract you

to keep you from growing. Do you think Satan wants

you to learn how to live by faith? No? Do

you think he wants you to learn how to be generous? No?

Do you think he wants you to learn how to

go in ways and places that you've never gone before

with your life? Absolutely not. So He's going to throw

everything at you. And I've again seen this seven different times.

And you may have unexpected illnesses and your car make breakdown,

and some of you may get fired during this, and

some of you may go through a real crisis of

grief and lose a loved one, and some of you,

in fact, this is a high probability you may have

a fight with your husband or wife. Okay, that's a

high probability. Conflict is Satan's favorite way to get you distracted.

So when you get in a fight, just stop and go.

Rick told us this would happened. Okay. Put me right

in the center of your fight, okay, and I'll be

right there smiling and it'll calm me down. Okay. So

I'm sorry to tell you this but you're going to

have Satan's going to try to distract you and get

you off task and get you to forget this. The

fourth thing you can expect is you can expect to

experience joy. It's because when people learn to trust God

in deeper ways, it makes them happy. When people learn

how to set great dreams, dream great dreams, and set

big goals and take risks and live by faith and

make the sacrifice and invest their lives, you just get

happy when people give, they get happy. Now, I want

to spend the rest of my time, the last few minutes,

just talking to you about how do you prepare for

a miracle. And we're going to look at the most

famous miracle of Jesus Christ. It's the Jesus feeding the

five thousand. How he took one little boy's lunch and

was able to feed the five thousand and really this

story is all about how God turns a little into

a lot. You need to know these principles because many

times for the rest of your life, you're going to

need God to turn a little into a lot in

your life. You got a little energy, you need a

lot of energy. You got a little bit of talent,

you need God to turn it into a lot of talent.

You got a little opportunity, you need God to turn

it into a big opportunity. You got a little connections, relationships,

you need God to turn it into some big relationships,

some big connections. You got a little bit of money,

You need God to turn it into a lot of money.

Many times in your life, God is going to need

to turn a little into a lot. I got a

little bit of help, but I really need great help.

How does God turn a little into a lot. That's

what this story and that's what this miracle is all about. Now,

Jesus never did miracles just to show off, Like, hey,

look at this miracle. I learned this one at the

Magic Castle's really cool. You can impress your friends with

it and so use it at your next cocktail party.

Do this little miracle. Jesus never did a miracle to

show off. Every miracle is to teach a spiritual truth.

And the spiritual truth of Jesus or the Feeding of

the five Thousand is to show us how to prepare

for a miracle where God turns a little into a

lot in your life. Very important as we start daring faith. Now,

this miracle is so important. It's the only miracle of

Jesus told four times in the New Testament. It's in

the Book of Matthew, It's in the Book of Mark,

in the Book of Luke, and it's in the Book

of John. All four authors were so impressed with this miracle,

and you couldn't deny it. I mean, there were five

thousand people who saw it that it makes all four. Now,

anytime God tells you something four times, he's saying, you

really should pay attention to this one. You should really

pay attention to this one. Now here's the story. Jesus

goes out into the Judean desert and he's out there

and he's teaching, and about five thousand people follow him

out into the Judean desert and he's teaching all day.

And at the end of the day, five thousand people

are hungry, and they're twenty five miles from the nearest

McDonald's or actually in israeli b be McDavid's, and there's

no fast food nearby, and everybody's hungry, and the disciples

come to Jesus going, hey, Lord, it's late in the

day and everybody's hungry. And Jesus says, you feed him.

I love this line. We'll get to it a minute.

You feed him, Lord, that's impossible physically, practically, you know,

humanly impossible for us twelve to feed these guys. What

is going on here? Jesus is performing a miracle to

teach us the four steps to preparing for a miracle.

And I told you that during daring faith you're going

to see some miracles in this church. They're just going

to happen. And I literally have not hundreds, but thousands

and thousands of letters of people who have miracles in

previous campaigns. So what is Jesus telling us to do.

He's telling us the four keys to getting ready for

a miracle. Write these down. Here's the first step. Step

number one to a miracle in your life is admit

I have an unsolvable problem. I must admit that I

have an unsolvable problem. Now, let me be a real blunt.

If you don't have an unsolvable problem, you don't need

a miracle. That's kind of obvious, right, it's not unsolvedle,

you don't need a miracle. If you have a solvable problem,

solve it. Just solve it. I mean, people going to me, Rick,

I've really gotten overweight. I need a miracle. Stop eating.

It's not like a miracle. You don't need a miracle.

You need a diet. And a lot of times we

want miracles when God says no, no, you're just overspending.

The reason you're in so much Betty, you're overspending. You

need a plan. You don't need a miracle, you need

you need a spending plan. But the first step is

to admit I have an unsolvable problem. Now in Mark

chapter six, here's the story when Jesus solved a large crowd.

He had compassion on them, so he began to teach them,

teaching them. By this time it was late in the day,

so his disciples came and said, this is a remote place.

Send the people away so they can go and buy

something to eat. But Jesus answered, you give them something

to eat. And they said, Lord, that would take eight

months of a man's wages unless they go all economics

on Jesus. Here Now in that verse, in that passage,

I just read, we have the three typical responses when

we have an unsolvable problem in our life. You do this,

everybody does this. I do it. We procrastinate, We passed

the buck, and we worry. All three of those things

are in that passage right there. First, we procrastinate when

we have a problem we can't solve, we just keep

putting it off. We know we need to solve it,

but we don't know how to solve it, so we

just keep putting it off. We delay, We pretend it

doesn't exist. We look the other way. The phrase in

this passage says, by this time it was late in

the day they were procrastinating. They had all day to

figure out food service for five thousand people. Let's call

up dominoes or something. They had all data figure it out,

but they'd done nothing. Now, procrastination only makes a problem

worse in your life. If you got cancer, you deal

with it now, not tomorrow, not next week. You deal

with it now. Procrastination has never solved any problem. It

only makes it worse. I wonder what problem you have

been procrastinating over. I wonder what problem you know is

there and you're pretending isn't a problem. What problem are

you pretending isn't in your marriage? What problem are you

pretending isn't in your body? What problem are you pretending

isn't in your finances? We procrastinate, and then we pass

the buck. And what we do is we blame other

people say, well, it's not really my problem, it's your problem,

it's their fault. And we blame others. And you've heard

me say many times you spell blame, be blame. Every

time you blame, you are being lame. And so the

disciples say, send the people away. What are they doing?

They're passing off responsibility to say, Hey, we didn't invite

these guys out here. We didn't ask them to come eat.

We didn't ask them, we didn't promise some food. We

didn't even invite them to come here. Jesus teach, I said,

just send them away, out of sight, out of mind.

We didn't ask them to come. Let them find their

own food. We passed the buck on our problem. And

the third thing we do is we worry and we fret,

and we stew, and we get anxious and we get

stressed out, and we say, Lord, it would take eight

months wages to pay for these guys. And then disciples

anxiety goes into overdrive. And you know, I can just

imagine Peter doing this cost analysis. Imagine the expense five

thousand people. You know, how are we ever going to

import the food, How are we going to keep it hot?

How are we going to distribute it? How are we

going to do the cleanup? Who's going to get the

health permits? What about liability insurance? And their minds are

just going in overdrive, and we worry, worry, worry, And

notice I love what Jesus says. He looks at these

twelve guys and he says, you feed him, you feed him,

And they go, whah me. Peter's going, are you kidding? Lord?

He said that? Why we can't do that? Now, here's

the point. They're procrastinating, they're passing the buck, and they're worrying.

What's the problem with this picture. They're standing next to Jesus,

the guy who could easily turn stones to bread if

he wanted to, who could easily feed everybody instantly if

he wanted to. They're standing in the presence of the

Son of God, and they're going, what's going on here?

And Jesus says, you feed him? And they say, Lord,

that's practically financially and humanly impossible. Question, has God ever

asked you to do something impossible? He loves to do that.

God loves to ask you to do something possible possible,

And you go, Lord, I don't have the time, I

don't have the money, I don't have the energy, I

don't have the education. I just you got the wrong guy, Lord, Moses,

I want you to do this, not me, you know,

you know, Jeremiah, why me? You know you know you

gotta say, like Isaiah, use me here? Am I send me?

And God says, I want you to do the impossible?

Why does he ask that? Why does God ask you

to do the impossible? He wants to stretch your faith.

Every time when God asks you to do something you

think is physically and financially impossible, he wants to stretch

your faith. And this is the first principle of a miracle.

I have to admit that the problem I'm facing right

now is unsolvable. Okay, principal number two, here's the second

step to a miracle. Give God what little I already have.

I give God what little I already have. And now

Jesus says to the disciples, I want you to do

a little reconnaissance. Go out and see if anybody's got

any lunches. He says, how many loaves do you have?

Jesus asked, go and see. He sends them out on

a little reconnaissance to five thousand people. And when they

found out, they said, five small loaves of bread and

two fish, one little boy has a sack lunch wit

a minute. Out of five thousand people, only one guy

brought a lunch. I'm thinking a lot of rich people

are hiding the picnic basket under their robe because they

don't want to share it with anybody else. In five

thousand people, it is highly doubtful to me that only

one boy brought a lunch. His mom has packed them,

you know, three or four or five little barley rolls

and a couple of you know, dried fish. Okay, he's

the only one, but he becomes the hero the story

because he's willing to offer up what he's got and

he gives God what little he had. Now, why did

Jesus do this? Why did Jesus said, find out how

many lunches are out there, find out how many loaves

of bread are among this crowd? Why did he didn't

need anything to do a miracle. He just goes bread

for everybody. Manifals a million different ways. You get another.

Why did he do this? The second principle of the

miracle is this. God always starts with what I have.

God always starts with what I have. It may not

be much, but I give it to God. I said, God,

I don't have much time, but here's my time. God.

My finances aren't much, but here's what I've got. God.

My talent isn't much, but here's my talent. God. My

sex life isn't much. But there's a little nervous laughter

on that one. Okay, But I give you. I give

you everything in my life. I give you my reputation.

I give you my heart, my soul, my past, my present,

my future. It didn't much, but I'm going to give

you my five loaves and two fish. Now that's interesting

that when God always starts with what I have. John

chapter six, verse six tells us a little detail this story.

It said, Jesus asked this, how many loads do we

have out there? Only to test them? For you already

hadn't mind what He's going to do. He wasn't sweating it.

When God asked you to do the impossible. He's not

sweating it. He already has in mind what he knows

to He's seen the need long before they did, and

he had a plan. I want you to write this down,

this important truth. God always has the answer before I

even know the problem in your life. God always knows

the answer before you even know what the problem is.

He saw the long. It's not late in the day

for Jesus. He saw it long before he knew it

was coming. He's already has a plan for it. God

already knows the solution to your problem before you even

recognize it's a problem. So why are you worrying? That's

one of the principles of a miracle. I admit I

have an unsolvable problem, and then I give God what

little I have. Number three, The third thing I do

is I put it all in the hands of Jesus.

I put it all in the hands of Jesus. And

in John's account of this miracle, it tells us this

little detail that the disciple Andrew finds this one little

boy who'd brought a sack lunch, and his mom had

packed him. It wasn't much had packed him, you know,

five little barley loaves or muffins, and maybe a couple

of sardines or something. I don't know, but he's got

fish and little loaves of bread. It's not much. Now,

I imagine that a lot of other people probably bought

bigger lunches. But this boy becomes a hero because he

gives God whatever he's got. It isn't much, but he says,

I'm giving it to you. And the Bible says in

verse forty one, Jesus took the five loaves and the

two fish, and he blessed the food, and he broke

the loaves. And as he kept breaking them, he kept

giving them to the disciples to set before the people.

And here's the third principle. God will use whatever I

give him. God will use whatever I give him. It

may not be much, but if I give him what

little time, energy, effort, whatever I've got, I give it

to God, he will use it. Now. I don't have

time to get into this, but we could do in

detailed study looking at the other verses of how this

little boy gave. He gave willingly, cheerfully, and immediately. Which

are the keys to a miracle? He gives willingly? Matthew

tells us that he volunteered. Let me ask you this,

would you share your lunch? You're in five thousand people,

crowd of five thousand. Everybody's hungry and you're the only

one who's gonna say, hey, I got something to eat?

Would you do that? Took a great faith. He did

it willingly, did it cheerfully, didn't grumble, he didn't complain,

didn't worry, and he did it immediately. And as soon

as he saw there was need, he said, Jesus, take

my lunch. And he gives his lunch no hesitation. Now

because of that, we come to the fourth key to

a miracle. Write this, dim expect God to multiply it.

I give God whatever I have, I put it in

the hands of Jesus, and then I expect God to

multiply it. Now, notice what happens in Mark chapter six,

verse forty two and forty four. It says, everybody eight,

that's all five thousand. They all had enough. And it

said afterwards, they collected twelve basketfuls of leftovers. I love this.

They're going home with doggie bags. Jesus doesn't even just

fill satisfied, right, he makes a spiritual lesson. Obviously, the

twelve is a symbol of the twelve tribes and his fulfillment.

But he said, the twelve basketful and they're going home. Now,

I love this Imagine this kid goes home and he

walks home, walks in with twelve baskets full of loaves

and fishes, and his mom says, Jacob, where'd you get

all that food? He goes, Mom, I gave it to

I gave me a lunch of Jesus and he multiplied it.

Go to your room and you stay there until your

father gets home, and you stay there till you're ready

to tell me the truth. Really, mom, I gave Jesus

my lunch and he he multiplied. You just stay there,

wait till your father gets home. I mean, would you

believe that story? I mean, it's it's mind boggling. That's

why they call it a miracle. Now here's the fourth principle.

You might write it down. Whatever I give, I always

get back more. Whatever I give out, I always get

back more. This little boy's lunch not only blessed five

thousand other people, but he ends up being richer himself.

I could give you a lot of testimonies on that one.

How God blesses you as you try to bless others

that you cannot outgive God, and he ends up with

more than he started with. Now here's the point for

the big lesson. God likes to do miracles through people,

not independently. He likes to work through the ordinariness of people.

And what we wait for God to do for us,

God is waiting to do through us during Daring Faith

this ten week series. God wants to turn you into

miracle machine. He didn't want to just do a miracle

for you. He wants to do a miracle through you

like He did through this little boy who gave him

wasn't much, but is all he got, how he had

and he gives it to Jesus and God takes it,

breaks it, blesses it, and multiplies it. God wants to

do that in so many worries in your life.

What a great message today from Pastor Rick. There's something

I always can use in my own life after listening

to this show and now this really is one of

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