Rick Warren - Setting Personal Goals by Faith Part Two

This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible teaching ministry

of Pastor Rick Warren. Today we continue in a series

called Transformed. In these lessons, Rick uncovers key principles found

in God's.

Word that will completely.

Transform our lives from the inside out in every area

including spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, relational, financial, and vocational. Now,

before we get started, we want to let you know

that a very generous friend has given one hundred thousand

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this month, every dollar you give to help Daily Hope

share the hope of Jesus around the world will be

matched up to one hundred thousand dollars. You can find

out more by going to Pastorick dot com or by

texting the word Daily to eight hundred six hundred five

thousand and four. That's Pastor Rick, or the word Daily

to eight hundred six hundred five thousand and four. Right now,

here's Pastor Rick Warren with part two of a message

called setting Personal Goals by Faith.

Number three goals focus my energy. Another one of the

reasons why you need to set goals in every air

of your life is they focus your energy. They keep

you from wasting time, money, reputation, energy. They keep you focused.

Selection is the name of the game. Focus is the

key to an effective life. It's not these fifty things

I dabble in. It's this one thing I do. And

the more you focus your life, the more powerful, the

more effective your life is gonna be. If you spread

it out and diffuse your life over a whole bunch

of different things, you'll make no impact at all. But

if you focus your life, it's gonna be powerful. It's

gonna be strong, and it will change the world. Light

diffused has no power at all, but when you focus light,

it has enormous power. The sun doesn't set things on

fire just because it's diffused.

But I remember when I was a kid.

If you take a magnifying glass, you can set grass

on fire, or you can burn little bugs. I'm sure

all you girls did that right. And you focus the light,

it can actually start a fire. If you focus light

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

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

I want you to live a laser life. A focused

life goals focused by energy. Now the world is full

of distractions. Everybody agree with that. Everybody agree that there

are a lot of things to distract you. You can

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

can invest your life. And the greatest use of life

is to invest it in that which is going to

outlast it. Now, you don't have time to do everything.

You figure that one out already. You don't have time

to do everything. Here's the good news. God doesn't expect

you to do everything. Not everything's worth doing. And there

are only a few things that are really worth doing.

And the key to being effective in life as a

woman of God, as a man of God, is to

do what matters most and forget everything else. Goals focus

my life. Paul says this in One Corinthians nine twenty six.

I do not run without a goal. I fight like

a boxer who is hitting something, not just the air.

He said.

I'm not playing around here. I'm not playing air guitar.

I'm not just pretending I'm boxing.

He goes.

When I box, I fight to win. When I run

a race, I run to win. He said, I'm not

just messing around here with my life. It's too important.

I'm gonna do something with my life. I'm gonna win.

I want my life to bring honor and glory to God.

I don't run without a goal. Some of you are

running without a goal. As a result, you're just running

in circles and you're caught up in the rat race.

You don't want to run the rat race, because then

even if you win the rat race, you're still a rat.

Number four goals don't their statements of faith. Goals focus

my energy. Number four goals keep me going. They give

me hope to keep moving. They give me hope to endure.

They give me hope to persist. You've heard me say

this many times. When you're going through hell, what do

you do? You keep going. You don't want to make

a home in hell. You don't want to stay there

and camp out overnight. When you're going through hell. You

just keep on going. And the way you do that

is you have a goal beyond. The Bible says Jesus

endured the cross because he looked forward to the goal

and the glory that was set before him.

He looked beyond the pain to the payoff. You need

to do this too.

The Bible says that God wants to make you have hope.

You see if you don't have a goal in your life,

any goals in your life, you don't really have any

reason to get out of.

Bed in the morning.

That maybe you got to eat, but really, what's why

even why even why why even get out of bed?

Why even live? If you don't have any goal for

your life. Job says this in Job chapter six, verse eleven.

I do not have the strength to endure. You ever

felt like that? I just I don't know if I'm

going to make it. I don't have a strength endure

why next sentence, I do not have a goal that

encourages me to carry on. You got to have a

goal to keep you going. You know, they did a

study once of the Holocaust survivors. And in World War two,

you know, the Nazis killed six million Jews and many

others besides yous, many Christians, Muslims, others other that they

just didn't lie. And they studied those who survived the Holocaust,

survived those terrible tragedies, and they discovered only one thing

in common with all these people.

Every one of.

Them had something to look forward to. Every one of

them had something waiting for them. Every one of them

had something that they wanted to live for, they.

Had a goal.

Those who didn't have anything to live for, those who

didn't have anything to look forward to, those who didn't

have any goal out there, they lost hope and they

simply gave up the will to live, and then they died.

The second year of this church, when I was twenty

six years old and pastoring.

It was what I call my dark year.

And I was depressed the entire year and I could

barely put one foot in front of the others.

And I later.

Went to a doctor and got some nutritional advice and

I went out, but it took a full year before

I actually felt better. I was just always tired, and

it was always depressed, and I was just always fearful.

And you know, at that time, I wasn't thinking, God

build a great church. I was thinking, can I just

get through today? And I look back now and I'm

grateful that I didn't give up that year, But I'm

also more grateful that God didn't give up on me.

And what kept me going full of through a full

one year of depression.

I had a goal.

I had made a commitment to pastor this church for

forty years, and so I held on to that even

though every bone in my body wanted to give up.

Do you want to know how often I felt like

giving up as pastor of Saddle Backed Church? How'm often

I felt like resigning? Just every Monday morning I get

PMS post message syndrome. And after you've preached five or

six or seven times and you're all emotionally spent, you

get up the next day and you think, Man, somebody

could have done a better job than that. God, I'm

not that smart. You got to find somebody who can. Really,

this church is too big for me. Get somebody else.

Get somebody's brilliant to do this. But you just keep

on keeping on white because you have a goal. You see,

when you have a long term goal, long term goals

keep you from being discouraged with short term setbacks. Everybody

has setbacks, everybody blows it, everybody makes mistakes, everybody has failure.

In fact, failure is the only way you succeed.

You cannot succeed in life without failing. Why.

That's why you learn what works and what doesn't work.

So never called a failure, call it an education. Some

of us are highly educated. We're good at failing. Now,

if there's any piece of as your friend, I could

say this to you. It's this learn to fail fast, okay,

because you're going to fail.

You're going to fail. So everybody fails. I fail all

the time.

You know what The key to Saddleback's growth, in our

strength and our success is we fail fast and then

we learn from it.

Thank you so much for listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope.

We've got some incredible news to share with you. A

very generous friend has given a one hundred thousand dollars

matching grant to this ministry all this month. Every dollar

you give to help Daily Hope share the certain hope

of Jesus around the world will be matched up to

one hundred thousand dollars, So twenty five dollars becomes fifty dollars,

fifty becomes one hundred and five hundred becomes a thousand.

Whatever you give will be doubled by the matching grant

up to one hundred thousand dollars, but only till midnight

to sm thirty first, So please contact us today. Go

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hundred five thousand and four if.

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Com once again, here's Rick.

You know what the key to Saddleback's growth, in our

strength and our success is we fail fast and then

we learn from it.

We don't waste our failures.

We try something that doesn't work, we try something that

doesn't work, We try something else that don't work.

We try something else that don't work.

We do ninety nine things that don't work. Then number

one hundred works, and then we teach a seminar to

other pastors and partik like we knew what we were doing,

but we're not that smart.

It's just trial and error.

Goals keep me going, and long term goals keep me

from being discouraged about short term setbacks. Now, a goal

doesn't have to be big to motivate you. For instance,

if you had to go to the hospital and have

surgery for some reason, your first goal would simply be

after surgery, can I sit up in bed? Not a

very big goal, but an important one, And the second

goal would can I hang my feet over the side

of the bed and sit up? And then the next

goal would can I get enough strength to stand up

after surgery? And then a very important goal, can I

have enough strength to go to the bathroom by myself?

Big goal?

Then next us do I have enough strength to walk

around this wing of the hospital. All of those are

very small goals, but they're all important goals because when

to get from here to success isn't one big leap,

it's many small steps, many small steps. So goal that

have to be big for it to be important. It's

getting you on the way. Like my goal today is

to get out of bed and to eat healthy. I

have a healthy breakfast. Fine, that's a good goal. As

job said, I have to have a goal to encourage

me to carry on. Now, you may have come this

weekend and you're a little discouraged. Maybe you're feeling a

little down. Maybe you're feeling you got the blues. You're down,

down down, Dobie Doo down down, and everybody hates me,

nobody loves me. I'm never gonna get married. I'm gonna

go eat worms play the song for you here. If

you're discouraged this weekend, you need to set some new goals.

And that's what we're gonna to do.

In the next fifty days, you need to set some

new goals in these different areas. Goal setting is a

spiritual responsibility. It's a statement of faith. It focuses my energy,

It keeps me going. Number five, the Bible says, goals

build my character.

Goals build my character.

Drifting doesn't build your character, but goals build your character.

And if you set a goal and you get a vision.

Without a vision, the Bible says that people perish. If

you get a vision, you get a goal, then God

says I.

Can work in you. Now, listen very carefully what I'm

about to say.

The greatest benefit to your life over the goals you're

going to set in the next fifty days. The biggest

benefit to your life is not going to be the

accomplishments and achievements you acquire because of those goals, but

what happens inside you.

While you're moving toward the goal.

See, God is more interested in your character than he

is in your accomplishments. You're not taking your success to heaven,

You're not taking your career to heaven, but you are

taking your character.

So God is.

More interested in who you are and what you become

than he is in what you do and accomplish, and

what you succeed at, God's interested in you.

So here's the idea.

While I'm working on the goal, God is working on me.

Does that make sense?

And that's what God wants to do in your life.

Goals help build your character and that's what's going to

last eternity. That's why Paul says in Philippians chapter three,

verse twelve, I keep striving toward the goal circle. The

word striving, that means it takes energy, it takes effort,

it takes intention, it takes purpose in order to reach

your goal. And God says that while you're doing that,

while you're working on the goal, God is building character

in you. You will never become the man God intends

you to be unless you intend to become that man.

You will never be the woman God intends for you

to be unless you intend to be that person. Ten

years from today, some of you you're not going to

be in church. You're going to be a long way

away from God. You're going to go through a failed marriage,

You're gonna have all kinds of problems in your life.

Why because you never intended to be a man of God.

You never intended to be a woman of God. It

was just kind of a casual Christianity.

Yeah maybe this, Yeah, maybe that. And you never intended.

You'll never become what God intends without you being intentional

goals build my character. Then number six, good goals will

be rewarded. Good goals will be rewarded. And if you

have good goals, then there's going to be two reasons

that you're rewarded. You're going to be rewarded on earth

by people, and you're going to be rewarded by God

in heaven. When you have a good goal, it brings respect.

When you have a good goal, it brings honor when

you give your life to a good goal. It builds

a legacy on earth. The Bible says in Proverbs eleven

twenty seven, let's read this verse aloud together.

Okay, read it with me.

If your goals are good, you will be respected. Circle

that you will be respected. You want to be respected,

then you need to set some goals that are good.

The entire nation will celebrate Martin Luther King Day. Why

why do we take a holiday for one guy? Because

he was a man who set good goals and he

didn't live for himself. He lived to fight injustice and

to fight prejudice, and to fight racism, and to fight

for truth. He set good goals for his life, and

so he is honored with a holiday. One of the

greatest honors I've ever been given in my entire life

was the honor of preaching in Martin Luther King's home

church on the fortieth anniversary of his death.

This is Pastor Rick's daily Hope. In just a moment,

Rick is going to tell you about a recent one

hundred thousand dollars matching grant from a very generous listener.

But first he's going to share with us how God

has been using your financial gifts to help us share

Christ with people around the world world.

Here's Rick, Hi, friends, would it surprise you to know

that there are entire groups of people who have never

heard about Jesus still in our world today. I'm talking

about the small tribes of less than a one hundred

thousand people in many, many distant places who have never

heard the name of Jesus Christ. That means there's not

a single Christian among them. There is no church, they

have no Bible, there is no believer. Can you imagine that?

Would you help me reach these unreached, unengaged people. You know,

one of the reasons I started Daily Hope was to

find partners who would help us take the hope of

the good news of the Gospel to the whole world,

to the final frontier these unreached, unengaged tribes. Jesus wants

us to witness to all nations and to all people.

He never made a person he did in love. He

never made a person he didn't want saved. And Jesus

died so that all may be saved. But people can't

follow you, Jesus. If they've never heard about him, and

they've never heard of God's grace, how can they receive it?

So I'm asking you to help me in this finishing

the task project. Thank you for your support.

You know.

Daily Hope is now reaching over thirty four million people

each month through Daily Hope audio teachings and our email devotionals.

But we're only able to do this because of your

partnership with Daily Hope. We're working together to help us

fulfill the great commission. Imagine when you get to heaven,

somebody comes up to you and says, I just want

to thank you. I'm here because you cared enough for

someone like me. You prayed and you gave, and you shared,

and you sacrificed, and I'm in heaven because of you.

Will that be worth it?

Even as we rejoice in the success, we need to

remember that there's still billions of people who need to

know Jesus and we got to keep going. So I'm

asking you prayerfully to consider giving the biggest gift you've

ever given, or that you can can give before the

end of this year. As I said, there is still

about three thousand unreached people groups that have either few

or no believers in them. We've been able to reach

about six hundred of those tribes, making sure there's a

Christian living among them who speaks their language and can

help them understand the Bible. But that's just the first step.

The truth is an unreached people group isn't considered reached

until it has a healthy church, a body of Christ

that's able to plant new churches within that group. So

to help that happen, we're working on translating spiritual growth

tools into about two hundred new languages for people who

have virtually no Christian resources available. Think of all the

Christian books you could buy at Christmas this year. Think

of all the books you could pass on at birthdays.

These are so available in English, but we need to

translate them in all the other languages. These translations are

strategic that we've selected once to share the gospel and

to help disciple new believers where it is most needed

right now.

Now.

These resources are also going to help young pastors grow

and train others to build the church in their nations

and in their groups. Now, we've made a lot of

good progress, but we've got a lot of work ahead

of us in this task. And it is a monumental vision.

I can't do this by myself. I need your help.

It's a timely vision, it's a global vision, but every

vision listen requires provision. Honestly, we wouldn't be able to

do any of this vision without you, and that's why

I cannot fully express how much I appreciate your financial

support of Daily Hope. You know I don't take a

salary in this. This is all a ministry of love

and all of these funds are going to help reach

more people.

Now, let me give you some exciting news.

A generous friend of Daily Hope has offered a one

hundred thousand dollars matching grant, so that any gift you

give by December thirty first this year will be doubled

up to one hundred thousand dollars. That means every dollar

you give the Daily Hope between now and the end

of the year will be doubled. Would you please prayerfully

consider how you can give today, how you can reach

more people for Jesus in the coming year.

And please, while you're at.

It, pray that I will faithfully teach God's word in

a way that will penetrate hearts. Pray for our Daily

Hope team as they coordinate our outreach, and most of all,

pray for the people we're trying to reach that their

hearts will be prepared to hear the message of the

good News of Christ, and that they will come to

know the grace of God and grow and mature in

their Christian faith. You have a part of the most

important task in history.

Now.

My prayer for you is a God's gonna bless you

throughout this coming year, and that He will bless you

so much that you can be a blessing to others.

You know, we're blessed to be a blessing, and my

prayers that He will draw you closer and closer to Him.

God bless you.

Remember, as Rick just shared, whatever you give today will

be doubled by the matching grant up to one hundred

thousand dollars, but only till midnight, December thirty first. Anything

not matched will be lost, So please contact us today

call eight hundred six hundred five thousand four or go

to Pastorick dot com that's eight hundred six hundred five

thousand four or pastorick dot com. Be sure to join

us again next time as we look into God's word

for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor

Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support