Rick Warren - How to Invest Your Life—Part One

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

Pastor Rick Warren. Today we continue in the series Essentials

for Living. In these lessons, Pastor Rick shares the power

you need to live on, the principles you need to

live by, and the purpose you need to live for

so that you're truly living and not just existing. First,

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eight hundred six hundred five thousand and four while you

listen to today's broadcast. Right now, here's Pastor Rick Warren with

part one of a message called how to Invent Asked

your Life.

The Internet is making millionaires of a lot of people

very fast. If you had invested in a company called

hot jobs dot com just three months ago, in three months,

you would have made a two hundred and seventeen percent

return on your investment in three months. I bet you

don't make that in your past book account, do you?

If you had invested just three months ago in a

company called net to Phone, you would have seen your

investment grow by two hundred and forty seven percent in

one quarter. If three months ago you had invested in

a company called red Hat Incorporated, which is the Linux

software operating system, your investment would have grown an astounding

in just three months five hundred and eighty five percent.

And if you had invested just three months ago in

a company called Internet Capital Group, your return on investment

would have been an astounding six hundred and thirty two percent.

Some of you saying I got the wrong broker, But

today I don't want to talk to you about financial investments.

I want to talk to you about something far more

important than that, and that's your life. You can do

three things with your life. You can waste your life,

and of course there are many ways to do that.

You can spend your life, and advertisers will give you

many ways to do that. Or you can invest your life.

And to invest your life means to use it in

a way that outlasts it, to make a difference for eternity,

to leave a legacy. Now, the Bible is very clear

that you were created to make a contribution. You were

not put on this earth just to be a consumer.

You were put on this earth to be a contributor.

And that contribution that you make with your life, with

your talents, with your abilities, the Bible calls your ministry.

We often think ministers is what pastors do, but ministry

is for every person. When you take your talents, your abilities,

and whatever you're good at and you use it to

help other people unselfishly. God says that contribution of your

life is called your ministry. Now, Jesus says that one

day we're going to give an account for how we

lived our lives and how we invested our lives. And

in the story that Pastor Tom read in Matthew twenty five,

you might open that passage again because we're going to

look at it today. He tells us a story on

how to prepare for the final exam of life when

God evaluates how well you invested your life. And today

I went from this story to draw seven principles of

life investment, and so write these down. The first principle

is the principle of ownership, and it's called it says this,

everything I have really belongs to God. That's the first principle.

Everything I have really belongs to God. God made it all,

and God owns it all. It was here before you

got here, it's going to be here after you leave

this earth. Now, a lot of times we think that

we own our things, but you really don't own anything.

God owns it all.

You just get to borrow it for sixty years, seventy years, eighty,

maybe ninety years, and then you return it. You brought

nothing into this world when you were born. You're taking

nothing out of this world.

When you leave it.

So everything you have, cars, loans, ambitions, homes, everything you've

got is really just on loan to you for the

time that you were alive. Now, the Bible tells us

that God made human beings to manage his resources on earth.

You want to know why human beings are here. We're

here to manage the environment, to manage the earth. And

the nice thing about it is while we are managing it,

we get to use it, we get to benefit from it.

But we must never forget that we don't own it.

Let's say you had a beach house and one day

you came and said, Rick, I'm going on vacation for

three months. I'd like to let you use my beach

house as a beautiful view of the ocean, and I'd

like somebody to kind of take care of it while

I'm gone. And I said great, And they say, while

I'm gone, Rick, I would like for you to do

three things. I'd like for you to water the plants.

I'd like for you to feed the puppy, and i'd

like for you to pick up the mail. Just kind

of manage the house while I'm gone. But you can

use it while I'm gone. I say great. So you

go away for three months, you come back later three

months time, and you're ready to move back in and

I'm not ready to move out, and they say, well,

we're ready to I said, oh no, I happen to

like my bed now.

Notice I said my.

Bed, and I happened to park the car in my garage,

and I like the view from my living room window.

Now that it would be quite presumptuous for me to

act like an owner when you had just loaned it

to me. But we do this all the time with

everything we've got. We act like it's my career, it's

my family. It's my assets, it's my home, it's my car,

and on and on, when really it all belongs to God.

It's just on loan to you while you are alive. Now,

Jesus made this principle in verse fourteen of Matthew twenty five.

He tells the story and he says again, it will

be like a man going on a journey, this master

who called his servants and entrusted his property to them

while he was gone, and noticed the word his property

circle the word his because it's not the servants, it's

the masters. Now listen, if you learn to accept this fact,

this truth of life, that really everything you have belongs

to God, not you, you're going to worry a whole

lot less. Your worry will rapidly be reduced. Why because

you don't worry about things that aren't yours.

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

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

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the hope of Jesus with people everywhere and right now.

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zero four, Or you can visit Pastorick dot com and

we'll send you Going Deeper with God a personal renewal

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hundred five zero zero four or pastorick dot com. Be

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station when you give a gift to help meet the

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great resource and have your gift matched by twenty five

thousand dollars matching grant, So contact us today.

Now let's get back to today's lesson here on Pastor

Rick's Daily Hope.

When you get a ding in your car, you worry

about it.

Do you worry about the ding in your neighbor's car? No,

When somebody else is having problems and their clothes don't fit,

you don't worry about that.

You just worry about your clothes that don't fit. Okay.

And so if you realize, hey, this is all God's anyway,

he gave it to me, he can take it back.

In fact, he could replace it just like that. Then

you worry a whole lot less because you're not trying

to preserve what you've got. Principal number two is the

principle of allocation, and that is that God has given

me some unique talents. God has given me some unique talents.

In fact, the word talent from the English language comes

from this Bible story.

Now, in the Bible, a talent was an amount of money.

Specifically, it was about one thousand dollars, and this master

has doles out multiple talents to different people sizeable and

in those days. Today a talent simply means the natural

abilities and gifts that God has given to me. Now,

some of you have musical talents, some of you have

mathematical talents, some of you have mechanical talents, some of

you have business talents, some of you have leadership talents.

Some of you are good with working with animals. Some

of you are good at writing, or you're good at speaking,

or you're good at cooking or In fact, scientists have

discovered they're anywhere between six and eight hundred different talents.

You probably have at least two hundred different talents, but

the problem is you don't recognize them because they're just

they come natural to you, but they are not natural

to others. Some of you people can naturally organize things.

That's a talent. Some of you don't have that talent. Okay,

you're very unorganized. Some of you know how to make

things neat real quickly, and others take you all day

to make a room neat. You don't have that talent,

so you don't realize many times the talents that you have. Now,

in verse fifteen, it says to one he this represents

God gave five talents of money to another, two talents

into another, one talent, each according to his ability. Now

I want you to notice two things. First, the amount

differs with each individual. Somebody gets one talent, somebody gets

two talents, somebody gets five. We have been taught all

of our lives that all men are created equal. That

is not true. We are created equal in our value

to God and in our worth as human beings, but

we are not equal in our talents, and we are

certainly not equal in our opportunities and freedoms. You were

given some privileges, some abilities, are some freedoms, and some

opportunities that the rest of the world simply does not have.

And most of the world would die to have the

opportunity you have. So you got a leg up on civilization.

You didn't ask for that, You didn't deserve it. You

certainly didn't earn it. It was simply a gift of God.

It was an ability that God gave you. But he

gets something. But our talents differ. Some of you are

one talent people, some of you are five, some of ten,

twenty and whatever. But I want you to notice everybody

gets something. There are no no talent people. He said, well,

I don't have any talents. Oh yes, you do, you

just haven't uncovered them yet. Now in Romans twelve to six,

it says we have different gifts according to the grace

given to circle.

The word grace.

A talent is something you don't deserve, So you can't

brag about it because you didn't earn it. You didn't

work for it. You might develop it, but it was

simply a gift of God's grace. Tom's going to talk

about the next one.

The third principle, the principle of accountability, is that God

expects me to use my talents. He gave him to me,

gave him to us for a purpose. He wants us

to make the most of the abilities that He's given

into our lives.

Have you thought about it this way? It says if

God looked.

At your life, looked at my life and decided, I'm

going to make an investment in them, just like you

would look for a fineinancial investment and think, you know what,

here's something that's worth investing my heart earned money in.

He looked at you and said you are a person

that it's worth investing in. But when you make an investment,

then what do you do? You sit back and excitedly

watch for the return on that investment. And God does

the same thing in our lives. He invests in our

lives and then watches for what happens. This verse isn't

in your outline, but you might write down the reference.

Romans fourteen twelve. Romans fourteen twelve says each of us

will give an account of himself to God.

Listen.

Every day we get to choose how we're going to

live our lives. Every one of us we get to

make that choice. But there will come a day in

all of our lives where we explain to God the

choices we've made about how we live our lives. Jesus

reminded us in this story. See that verse in your

outline in verse nineteen. After a long time, the master

of those sermons returned and settled the accounts. Someday we're

going to be audited by God, an audit of how

you how you lived your life. Now, if you think

you're nervous about an audit with it the irs, how

about an audit.

With the God.

I mean, that is a scary kind of audit to

think about. And yet the job of our church, the

job of any church, is to get you ready for

that final exam of life that Rick talked about earlier. Now,

when you have a final exam, isn't it nice to

know the question in advance. I want to give you

the question in advance. Once you've settled the question of

your relationship with Christ, which is the most important question

in life, that you've trusted Him with your life, then

the final exam question you might write it in with me,

is God will ask me what did you do with

what you were given? And our goal is to prepare

you to answer that question so that you can stand

before God and say I used my talents, I used

them in a way that helped others, I used them

in a way that.

Made an impact on the world.

That's principle number four, one of the reasons we don't

use our talents. As the principle of utilization in the

back of your outline, it is wrong for me to

bury what God gave me, to take what God has

given and not use it for him. You notice in

this story, the first person doubled his talents what he

was given. The second person doubled their talents, but the

third man buried his talents. He just took them and

hid them. He was cautious. He was conservative. He said,

I'm going to play it safe. He was the nothing ventured,

nothing gain kind of a person.

He just sat on it.

And the master's reaction we read it earlier, he said,

you wicked, lazy servant. Do you think he was a

little upset with him. He looks at this servant and

he says, you are wicked. You should have at least

put it in the bank and we could have gotten

the interest. Most of us when we heard the word wicked,

we think, I think.

Murder or rape or abuse.

But look at what God calls wicked in this story.

He says it is wicked to not use the talent

that you were given to make a difference in this world,

to never make a contribution, to to bury it, to

put it out of sight and pretend it's not there.

There's a couple of insights in this part of the passage.

First of all, you can't please God by playing it safe.

To use your talent, you have to risk without faith,

it's impossible to please.

God, the Bible says.

And to take my talent and do nothing with it,

afraid to risk it in any way is inexcusable. And

then the second insight is God would rather have you

try to serve it, make an attempt at least, and

fail and fall flat on your face and do nothing

at all. He calls this servant wicked, not because he

lost the money, but because he was afraid to do

anything at all with the money. Some of you, you

look at your life and you have no joy in

life day to day.

There's no spark, there's not.

That enthusiasm that you would really like to have. There

Why one of the reasons that happened to our lives.

As we start to play it safe, we start to

sit on the sidelines of life. He becomes spectators afraid

to contribute, not using our talents the way that God intended,

living for ourselves, not involved in service to others. And

the truth of the matter is, we're bored with life.

It's time to get back into the game. It's time

to move into ministry. Why is it that sometimes we

find ourselves sitting on the sidelines.

That's the fifth principle, and.

That principle is the principle of motivation. And it goes

like this, It is fear that keeps me from using

my talent. Fear that keeps me from using my talent.

In verse twenty five, the man who buried his talent said,

I was afraid, and I went out and hid your

talent in the ground. Circle the word afraid, and circle

the word hid, and draw a line between them, because

they always go together. What keeps you from developing your

football potential?

Fear?

What keeps you from becoming all God wants you to be? Fear,

What keeps you from from building your life a legacy

that would last fraternity?

Fear.

Now, there are three kinds of fears that will keep

you from developing your talents.

You need to write these down.

The first one is self doubt, self doubt is a

fear that keeps most people locked into prison and keeps

them from developing their potential. They say, well, I could

never do that. I'm just not qualified. You have all

these doubts about your talents, and honestly, what it is.

It's the fear of failure.

I'm afraid that if I try to use my talent,

I'll fail and then I'll be embarrassed. You remember when

you were in school and the teacher would ask a

question and you would want to raise your hand, but

you were afraid to raise your hand because it might

be the wrong thing.

How many can remember that?

See some of you're afraid right now to raise your hand,

so afraid I might call on you something. Let me

tell you something. I have learned this from experience. Fear

is not fatal. I mean, failure is not fatal. It

is never fatal. In fact, act, the fear of failure

is far worse than fear itself. Fear of failure limits you.

Failure is actually a good thing. It is a good

thing because failure is how you learn what doesn't work.

The only way you're ever going to become a success

in life is through failure. By failing you find out

what doesn't work. I have failed thousands and thousands of times,

and so have you. And that's how you learn, that's

how you grow. It is an education. I tell my

staff all the time, I want every staff member at

Saddleback Church making at least one major failure a week,

because if you're not failing, you're not trying anything new.

And if you're not trying anything new, you're not growing. Now,

I don't want to make in the same failure every week.

That is a no no. That means they're not learning,

they're not growing. But the only way you grow is

through failure. So I am right now, as your pastor,

telling you this week, I want.

You to go out and fail, all right.

Fail as a parent, fail as a partner, fail as

a professional. Why Because the next week you'll be a

better parent, you'll be a better partner, you'll be a

better professional. It's by learning through the failure. So don't

let self doubt keep you. I'd rather attempt to do

something great and fail than attempt to do nothing and succeed.

Number two is self consciousness. That's the second fear, and

the self consciousness comes up when let's say you're good

at dancing, but you become self conscious about it, or

you're good at singing, but you become self conscious about it.

And really behind that fear is worrying what will other

people think? Now, if you worry about what other people

think in life, you may as well go ahead and

dig your grave right now, get in it and cover up,

because you're already dead. Because you're going to learn real

soon in life that you can't please everybody.

Is that true? And so you can't worry about what

other people think.

The Bible says in Proverbs twenty nine to twenty five,

the fear of man is a snare.

It is a trap.

It's what keeps you from developing because you worry what

will other people think. The moment you put out your shingle,

somebody's going to throw rocks at it. The moment you

attempt anything in life, somebody's going to criticize it. Every

time we've done anything great here at this church, there

have always been critics.

Always.

When we decided to buy this land, there were people saying,

who do you think you are church buying? You know,

one hundred and twenty acres, and there were critics of that.

And then when we decided to build a tent and

put up a tendency. Why are you spending money on

a tent? And people were critical of that. And then

when we decided to build this building and said we

should stay in the tent, we shouldn't, you know, we

shouldn't move into this building. And you know, now we're

building the Ministry Center. Actually heard some of the other

days saying why are we putting up all these beautiful trees.

You know what, if you worry about what other people think,

nothing will ever get done in your life. You just

have to do what God tells you to do, and

that's all you're accountable for. You are not accountable to

please everybody else.

This is pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Rick will be back

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