Rick Warren - Setting Personal Goals by Faith Part One

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

of Pastor Rick Warren. Today we begin 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

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six hundred five thousand and four. That's Pastor Rick dot

or the word Daily to eight hundred six hundred five

thousand and four. Right now, here's Pastor Rick Warren with

part one of a message called setting Personal Goals by Faith.

Romans twelve to two. Do not conform to the pattern

of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of

your mind. Okay, let's read it again. Do not conform

to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by

the renewing of your mind. God wants you to be

a non conformist. He wants you to be a non conformist.

Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but

be transformed. You'll be either be conformed or you're going

to be transformed. You see, God created you to be unique.

God created you to be special. God created you to

be like nobody else. You have a unique voice print, thumbprint, handprint, heartbeat.

God doesn't make clones. Man does. But God doesn't make clones.

And God says, I want you to be unique, not

conformed to anybody else's idea of what you should be.

But the problem is we all start off as originals,

but we end up as copies of other people, and

we get conformed, and we get pressured and we get

pushed into a into a mold. Now, during the next

seven weeks, we're going to look at seven key areas

of your life and the changes that you need to make,

want to make, and can make because of God's power

in your life. We're going to look at your spiritual health.

We're going to look at your physical health, mental health,

emotional health. We're going to talk about transforming the way

you think, transforming the way you feel. We're going to

talk about financial health, transforming the way you look and

use look at and use money, relationships, relational health, vocational health,

your career, and where you're going for the rest of

your life. Now, let me explain to you where we're going.

We're going to look at seven key areas of your life,

but we also have seven key features that are going

to help you grow. What I want to do today

is explain to you why you must set goals for

your life and God says it. It's very clear in

the Word of God why you must do it and

the changes that will make in your life and the

power that it will do. So this is all about

the future. A lot of times we talk about problems

and pressures in your life. This series is about your potential.

This series is about your possibilities. This series is about

your future making the best of the rest of your life.

So I'm very excited about it. Now, I want to

begin by giving you the six reasons why you need

to learn how to set goals in your life. Number one,

the Bible says six things about goal setting. Number one,

the Bible says that goal setting is a spiritual responsibility.

Goal setting is a spiritual responsibility. Did you know that

God sets goals? God has goals for the universe. God

has goals for planet Earth. God has goals for history,

God has goals for eternity, and God certainly has goals

for your life. The Bible tells us that Jesus set goals.

In fact, he often announced publicly what his next goal was.

I'm going to do this now, I'm going to do

this now, and I'm going to do this now. He

publicly would announce in advance what his goal was for

the next phase of his ministry. Every person who walked

with God in the Bible, you can find examples of

being goal directed. But let me just give you one example.

The apostle Paul Philippians, chapter three. It says this, I

know that I'm not yet what God wants me to be.

Hang on, anybody agree with that. I know that I'm

not yet what God wants me to be. I haven't

reached that goal, but I keep moving toward it to

make it mine because Christ made me and saved me

for this. Now I know that I haven't reached my goal.

But there is one thing I always do forgetting the

past and straining toward what is ahead. I keep my

eyes focused on the goal, so that I may one

day win the prize that God has called me to

receive through Christ in the life above. Now all of

you who are spiritually mature should think this same way too.

I want you to circle three things. That goal, my goal,

and the goal. Paul was goal oriented. He says, I

haven't reach that goal. I haven't yet reached my goal.

And my focus, my eyes are focused on the goal.

Why is it important for you to set a goal?

Because it's a spiritual responsibility. You're gonna go through life

either by design or by default. You're either gonna set

goals and you're gonna decide what's important for your life,

or other people are gonna decide it for you. If

you don't have goals for your life, you are abdicating

control of your life to somebody else and other things.

If you don't have goals for your life, you're not living.

You're just reacting. You're just existing. If you don't have

clear goals for your life, you're just coasting through life.

You are drifting through life, and whenever you're coasting, you're

always going downhill. If you don't have goals for your life,

you have already decided to let other people run your

life because you don't know what's important. So you're gonna

let them decide, and you react to circin cumstances, and

you go through your whole life wasting your life because

you have it clarified what's important.

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

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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

December thirty first, so please contact us today. Go to

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five thousand and four.

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Once again, here's Rick.

If you don't have goals for your life, you have

already decided to let other people run your life because

you don't know what's important, so you're gonna let them decide,

and you react to circumstances, and you go through your

whole life wasting your life because you haven't clarified what's important.

You're allowing others direct your life. The Bible says to

be spiritually mature. He says, all of you are spiritually mature,

should think the same way. I set my goal, I

strive to my goal, I move toward my goal. I

keep my eyes focused on the goal. That's what Paul said,

probably the greatest Christian who ever lived, next to Jesus himself.

Number two, goals are statements of faith. Goals are statements

of faith. A lot of people, well, goal, isn't that

like a business thing? Isn't that like a secular thing?

Isn't that a like something athletes do. No no, no no.

This is a spiritual habit that you need to develop.

And goals are statements of faith. In other words, if

you're a believer in Jesus Christ, when you set a goal,

what you're saying is I believe that's faith. I believe

that God wants me to accomplish such and such by

such and such a time. That's a statement of faith.

A goal is a statement of this is what I

believe God is going to do in my life. Goals

don't just aren't just a statement of faith. They stretch

your faith. And the bigger your goal, the more your

faith will be stretched, and that pleases God. The Bible says,

without faith, it is impossible to please God. So if

you don't have any goal, you don't need any faith.

And if you don't need any faith, the Bible says

it's impossible to please God. In fact, in Romans fourteen,

it says, whatsoever is not a faith is sin. So

if I'm going through life without having to need any faith,

if I don't have any goals, I don't need to

take any risks. And if I don't take any risks,

I don't need any faith, and if I don't have

any faith, I am being unfaithful. You see how important

it is for you to have a goal in every

area of your life. Now here's a goal stretching verse Ephesians,

chapter three, Verse twenty. God can do anything far more

than you could ever imagine. I don't know. I can

imagine some big things, far more than you could ever

imagine or guess or dare to request in your wildest dreams.

I don't know about you, but I can imagine some

pre big things. I'm a pretty big dreamer. Nobody has

ever accused me of being a small thinker. I've always

had big dreams. And yet God says Rick, you think

of the greatest thing, of the greatest dream I could

do in your life, And guess what I can top that?

I can beat that. I am. I can do anything

far more than you would ever imagine or guests or

dare to request in your wildest dream. Let the size

of your God determine the size of your goal. You

let the size of God determine the size of my goal.

Many years ago, when Saddleback decided to buy this land,

it's one hundred and twenty acres to buy one hundred

and twenty acres in Orange County would seem like nonsense

to most people. And when we as a church decided

to buy this one hundred and twenty acres because we

weren't we were just not a very big church at

the time. And I remember the word God on the

comunity is this little group of people called Saddleback was

buying one hundred and twenty acres, And the question was

going through the community, who do they think they are?

And I thought, that's the wrong question. The question is

not who do we think we are? The question is

who do we think God is? Who do we think

God is? Big? God? Big goal, tiny God, tiny goal,

No God, no goal. Let the size of God determine

the size of your goal. I guess what I want

to say to you as your pastor, as somebody who

loves you and I want the best for your life

and I want you to succeed in life, is during

the next fifty days, I dare you to dream great dreams.

I dare you stop your puny, little thinking, stop being

in a little bitty box. Well I'm too young, or

i'm too old, or I'm not pretty enough, or I'm

not handsome enough. Or I'm a woman, or I'm a

guy or whatever. Stop all your arguments and start dreaming

what God could do in your life if you would

just trust him to me Hell would be if God

were to show me all I could have accomplished in

my life, if I just believed him a little bit more,

that would be hell. We limit God by our unbelief. Now,

there are two common mistakes we make in goal setting.

We set them too low, and we try to accomplish

them too quickly. As your pastor, I am urging you

in the next it's fifty days, and each week we're

going to set a goal in each of the seven areas.

You'll set one for your area. I challenge you to

dream big dreams for God, and I challenge you to

think bigger than you ever thought before, so that you

have to trust God. See. I live my life in

such a way that I am bound to fail unless

God bails me out. I can't tell you how many

times I've painted myself into a corner when everybody goes,

who does he think he is? I mean, look at

what he's trying to do. Like one time we said, hey,

let's be the first church in two thousand years to

go to every nation nobody had ever done that. We

did it. Why because we set a goal and God

helped us. And I have spent my life dreaming great dreams.

And it's amazing what God can do in your life

if you will do that. Now here's the cool thing.

Dreaming doesn't cost anything, doesn't cost you any money, doesn't

cost you a penny. You can dream great dreams. What

do I dream about in my relationships? What do I

dream about in my career? What do I dream about

in my finances? What do I dream could happen in

my relationship with God? How would I want to look?

How healthy would I want to be? On all these days?

Dream great dreams. You see, we overestimate what we can

do in a year, and we underestimate what you can

do in ten. Instead, yet is thinking puny, little tiny

goals and trying accomplishing them instantly. My challenge is get

a big goal for your life and then spend the

rest of your life going after it. I did when

I was twenty five years old and I moved here.

It started this church with no member, no money, nobody,

and I set a forty year goal for this church.

When I was twenty five that seemed like an eternity.

Goals are statements of faith. By the way, the difference

between a goal and a dream is you put a

deadline on it. Now, if you don't have a date

a deadline on your goal, it's not a goal. It's

just a dream. A dream is good, but you need both. Now,

here's what the Bible says Matthew nine nine. According to

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

your faith, it will be done to you. God says,

you get to choose how much I bless your life,

how much I transform your life. Great faith will be

great transformation. Nothing happens in your life till you start dreaming.

God says, you get to choose, according to your life,

your faith, it will be done. So I'm going to

encourage you that when we start setting one goal a

week over the next seven weeks, don't miss any of

these that you you ask the question, will this require

me to have faith? Is it such a big dream

that I'm bound to fail unless God helps me? I'm

really going out on a limb. Don't ever be afraid

to go out on a limb. That's where the fruit is.

The fruit is not at the trunk. You don't get

the fruit by playing it safe. It's out on the limb,

and never be afraid to rock the boat of Jesus

as your captain. I'm sharing your life experience tonight because

I'm looking out on the next generation of saddleback right here,

and I'm going I want you to know God like

I do, and I want you to trust Him like

I do. And I want you to be used by

God in ways that you've never ever imagined. I never

imagined all of this, but God did. Goals are statements

of faith. Number three goals focus my energy. Well, 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.

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

Rick is going to tell you about our 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.

Here's Rick, Hi, friends, what did 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 Jesus if they've never heard about him, and

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

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 give before the end of this year. Said, there

are 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 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.

But 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 that God's going to 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 and four or

go to Pastorrick dot com. That's eight hundred six hundred

five thousand and 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