Rick Warren - Transformed Mind

Hi, everybody. I'm so glad you're a part of this

small group study of God's plan and God's promises for

seven key areas of your life. Now, in the next

seven sessions, we're going to be looking at God's promises

for your spiritual health, your physical health, your mental health,

your emotional health, your relational health, your financial health, and

your vocational health. I call these the seven key areas

of life. Now. God cares about every area of your life,

and he wants to bless you in every air of

your life. He wants you to be healthy in body

and in soul and in spirit. And He has given

us the steps and the principles in his Word that

we can take to live healthy, fulfilling lives, not just

for our happiness, but ultimately for God's happy happiness and

for his glory. You know, God's Word is filled with

his promises to bless every area of our lives. But

with all of God's promises, there's always a premise. Did

you hear that? With every promise, there's a premise. God says,

if you do this, that's the premise, then I will

do this. That's the promise. For instance, the Bible says

if we confess our sins, that's the premise. He will

forgive our sins. That's the promise. The Bible says, in

all your ways acknowledge him, that's the premise. And the

Bible says he will direct your path. That's the promise.

Every promise has a premise. Now, over the next seven sessions,

we're gonna look at God's promises for each of these

seven key areas of life, and we're going to discuss

the premises or the conditions or the steps that we

can take in order to live in God's blessing. Now,

in this session, we're gonna look at seven habits that

will improve your spiritual health. We're gonna start with your

spiritual health. God has promised that if you practice the

these seven habits and they're all out of scripture, he

will bless you with strong spiritual help. So let's just

start with the habit number one. If I want to

be spiritually healthy, Number one, I must love Jesus supremely.

I must love Jesus supremely. That's a habit. In Luke

chapter fourteen, Jesus says this, if you want to be

my followers, you must love me more than you love

your father and your mother, and your wife, and your children,

and your brothers and sisters. Yes, more than your own life.

Now that sounds pretty radical, but he says otherwise than that,

you cannot be my disciple. Now what's he saying here.

He's saying that you must love me Jesus, more than

anything else. Now I want you to write this down.

Spiritual health is measured by love. Spiritual health is measured

by love. Write that down. Spiritual health is measured by

how much you love. It's not measured by how much

you know. It's not measured by your Bible knowledge. It's

not measured by your skills. It's not measured by the

words that you say, or it's not measured by how

much you attend church. Your spiritual health is measured by

how much you love, how much you love God, and

how much you love others. That's what Jesus said. In fact,

in Mark twelve, Jesus says this the most important commandment

is this. You must love the Lord your God with

all your heart that's passionately, and all your soul that's wilfully,

and all your mind that's thoughtfully, and with all your

strength That means love him practically live like you love him. Now,

there's a word for this in the Bible, loving God.

It's called worship. Whatever you love the most in life

is what you worship. If you love your both the most,

you worship your boat. If you love your job the most,

you worship your job. If you love your body the most,

you worship yourself. If you worship whatever, whatever you give

your best love to is what you worship. God says this,

if you want to be spiritually healthy, you gotta love

Me the most, worship me supremely. That's the first habit

for spiritual health. Habit number two. You might write this down.

If I want to be spiritually healthy, I must meet

with Him. That's God daily. I must meet with Him daily.

It can just be five minutes a day or ten

minutes or fifteen minutes or whatever. But you make a

date with God. You get alone with God and you

just sit there and you be quiet, and you say, God,

is there anything you want to say to me? And

as you talk to God in prayer about the things

that are on your mind, then you let God talk

to you through his word. That's worship. And that's a

quiet time. Now, the Bible says this in Proverbs eight

thirty four, Blessed is the man who listens to me,

watching daily, circle the word daily, watching daily at my doors,

waiting at my doorway. What is God saying there? He's saying,

I want you to have a daily appointment, a day

habit of meeting with me. Now, think about this. Why

would God want you to spend time with him every

day if he didn't want to spend time with you

every day? Do you realize that the God of the

universe wants to spend time with you. This is important

to God. He always shows up for his appointment, do you.

If you study church history, you find that every great believer,

everybody who's ever been super blessed, super used of God,

has had this habit of meeting with God on a

daily basis. Again, it doesn't have to be long, but

it does have to be habitual. You need to check

in with God. Now, here's habit number three for spiritual help.

If I want to be spiritually healthy, I must study

and do his word. I just can't study it. I've

got to study and do his word. Now. There are

so many promises in the Bible where God says, if

you get this book, the Bible. You get this book

into your heart and into your mind. He says, I

will bless your business, I will bless your family, I

will bless your health, I will bless your finances. If

you get this book into you and in every area

of product, wherever you want God to bless, you need

to build it on the Bible. Someone says, this blessed

is the man whose delight is in the law of

the Lord. By the way, what is the law of

the Lord? It's this, It's the Bible. And on his

law he meditates day and night. And the Bible says,

if you do that, that's the problem. That's the premise.

Here's the premise. It says he is like a tree

planted by the streams of water, which yields its fruit

in season. In other words, you're going to be more productive.

You want to be more productive, you need to meditate

on the word of God. That's a habit whose leaf

does not wither. What does that mean. It means when

the heat's on, when you're under pressure, you don't dry

up because you've got deep roots. And the third part

of the promise says this and whatever he does prospers. Wow,

that's Psalm chapter one, verses one to three. Did you

hear the premise? And did you hear the promises? God

wants to prosper you in what you do. But here's

the premise. He says, you got to get into my word.

You got to study it, you got to meditate on it,

you got to think about it, and you got to

do it. That's the condition. That's the premise to the promise.

It's not enough just to study the Word. You have

to do what it says. Jesus said it like this

in John fifteen. You're my friends if you do what

I command. The Book of James says the same thing.

It tells us how to do this. It says this,

the man who looks intently into the perfect law that

gives freedom. What is the perfect law that gives read

it's the Bible, and continues to do this. In other words,

it's a habit. It's habitual. The man who looks in

the Word of God and continues to do this, not

forgetting what he's heard that's memorizing, but doing it, that's

acting on it, he will be blessed in what he does.

Now here's the fourth habit for spiritual health. It involves

not your time, it involves your money. Over and over.

In scripture, the Bible says this, if I want to

be spiritually healthy, I need to tithe my income. Now,

what in the world does that mean? Pithe my income.

It means that just like I give the first part

of my day back to God, I give the first

part of my money back to God. Ten percent of

what I give goes back to God. In other words,

if I make ten dollars, I give a dollar back

to God. Why in the world would I do that?

Why would God ask you to do that? Well, God

obviously doesn't need my money. Well, he wants what it represents.

He wants my heart. And the Bible says, where your

treasure is, your heart is. Now. I'll have more to

say about that in our session on financial health. But

the Bible says this in Malachi three, verse ten. It's

one of the great promises of the Bible. And if

you're going through financial difficult times right now, if you're

under stress about your money and your finances, if you

are barely making ends, meat, you need this promise. It's

one of the habits for spiritual health. Malachi three ten

says this bring the whole tithe into my storehouse, that

there may be food in my house. By the way,

what's the storehouse. It's wherever you worship. You don't give

your time to some charity, You don't give your tithe

to some you know foundation, You bring your tie to

the house of worship as an act of worship. He says,

Test me in this. I want you to circle that

test me. I call this the Pepsi challenge versus the Bible.

He says, here's the premise, and see, here's the promise.

If I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven,

he said, I dare you see if I won't open

the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing

that you will not have enough room for it. God says,

We're gonna play little game. You give to me and

I'm going to give to you, and we're going to

see who wins. Now, let me give you a personal

example of this. I played this game with God for

thirty five years and I've lost every year. When Cay

and I got married, we made a commitment as a couple.

We said, in this marriage, God gets paid first. We

may be in debt to other people, but we're not

going to be in debt to God. We're going to

put him first in our time and first in our tithe.

I may be laid on payments to somebody else, but

I'm not going to be laid on payments to God.

God says, you want my blessing and your finances, put

me first. So you know what we did thirty five

years ago, actually now it's thirty eight. We started tithing,

and at the end of that first year, we raised

our tithe from ten percent to eleven percent. The next

year we raised our our second year of marriage to

twelve percent. The third year of our marriage, we raised

our tithe to thirteen percent. Now we weren't doing this

to show off. In fact, I didn't tell anybody about

it for over thirty years. The Bible doesn't even teach it.

You have to increase it. I just thought, ye, tithing

blesses me. I want to be super blessed. So I'm

going to play this game and give more and more

every year. I'm going to see if I can outgive God.

I'm going to see if I can be more generous

every year of my life. So we kept raising our giving,

being more generous every year, every year, raising it more. Now,

I'll be honest with you, sometimes it was really tough.

Sometimes the cupboard seemed pretty bare, and I'd go, Lord,

I can't afford this. But then I thought, I can't

afford not to, because I wanted God's blessing on what

was going on in my life, even when I was

out of work, and there was times when I didn't

have any income. And what do you do when you

don't have an income. You don't tithe. You only tithe

on what you make. You don't tithe on what you

don't make. But every year, year after year after year,

we kept raising our giving fifteen percent to sixteen percent

to eighteen percent. And the years i'd get a bonus, okay,

and I would raise our giving two or three percent.

The years we were financially typed, maybe we just raised

it a quarter of a percent. But even in those

lean years, I wanted to be more generous each year

than I was the year before. Now we've been married

thirty eight years. Last year we raised our giving again

one percent, from ninety to ninety one percent of our income,

and so now we're more than reverse tigers. We give

away ninety one percent and live on nine percent. And

I don't even take a salary at Saddleback Church, and

yet I live a very comfortable life. Now, I'm not

telling you this to brag about myself. I'm telling you

to brag about God that you cannot outgive God. You know,

I wrote a book called Purpose Driven Life. It became

the best selling book in American history, more than any

other book except the Bible. Why do you think God

did that? Why do you think God chose me? It's

not because I'm a great writer that I know why

because God knew what I'd do with the money. He

knew I wouldn't spend it on myself, that we would

just give it away. After I wrote that book, I

could have bought an island and retired and had people

serve me little glasses of iced tea with an umbrellas

in the the rest of my life. But the Bible says,

it's not about you, It's all about God. And I

want to tell you, learning this habit, the habit of generosity,

is as important as learning the habit of daily time

with God and learning the habit of a quiet time

with God, learning the habit of studying the word of God.

These are all important because I give God my tithe,

my talent, my time. I give him every hour of

my life. Now let's move on. Habit number five for

spiritual health is this. It's a big one. If I

want to be spiritually healthy, I must learn to love

other believers. Remember when we started off, we said God

says life's all about love. Well, God doesn't want you

to just love him, He wants you to love other believers.

Jesus said it like this. If you're going to be

my disciple, you can't just love me. You have to

love everybody in my family. Here's what he said in

John thirteen. If you have love for one another he's

talking about other believers, then and everyone will know that

you are my disciples. He says. The mark of being

a disciple is not that you just love God. It's

that you love everybody else. It's not that you just

love me, but that you love each other. This is

the hallmark of being a follower of Jesus. It's like

people will know you're a Christian by your bumperstickers. People

will know you're Christian by your little lapel pin. People

will know you're a Christian by a t shirt. No,

God says, the proof that you are my disciple is

that you practice the habit of loving every other believer.

You love my family, you love the Church of God,

you love the Family of God, you love the children

of God. Have you ever heard anybody say this, Well,

you know, I love Jesus, I just don't like the Church.

Then they're not a disciple. Why Because with all of

its imperfections and all of its faults and all its

faux paus and all of its failures, Jesus says, the

church matters. It's the family of God. It's the bride

of Christ. Jesus died for the Church. The Church is

his family. So if you don't love the Church, let

me just say this, you're not gonna like heaven because

that's all who's going to be there. So you better

figure out how to learn other disciples. Now, the Bible

says this. If somebody says I love God and they

hate a Christian brother or sister, that person's a liar.

That's pretty clear. God says, I'm a liar. I'm a

liar if I say I love God and I don't

love other Christians. Because if we don't love people, that

we can see. The Bible says, how can we love

God whom we have not seen? That's a passage in

First John, chapter four, verse twenty. Now, to be a disciple,

you must love other people in the family of God.

I want you to write this down, okay. Spiritual growth

happens in community. Spiritual growth happens in a community, not

by myself, not by my loan me. You cannot be

a disciple by yourself. Did you hear that? You cannot

be a disciple in isolation. You cannot be a follower

of Christ without being in community, because it's all about love.

You'll never go to spiritual maturity without a church family.

You can get Bible knowledge, but you can't grow in

love if you're not around other people. And in John thirteen,

the Bible says, if you have love for one another,

then everybody will know you're my disciples. Now circle that

phrase one another, Circle that phrase one another. That phrase

is used fifty eight times in the Bible. The Bible

says we're to love one another. We're to help one another,

care for one another, where to serve one another. The

Bible says we're to encourage one another. We're to pray

for one another. We're to greet one another where to

support one another. The Bible says over and over again

that we are to care for each other. Now, we

were put on this planet to learn to love first,

to learn to love God supremely, and they learn to

love each other practically. Now, you have to have a

church family. You have to be in relationships with God's

people in order to learn how to love. You're not

going to learn it sitting in a cave up in

the mountains. Learning to love God and learning to love

your neighbor as yourself are the two great commandments in

the Bible. This is why being in a small group

like you're in right now is absolutely essential to your

spiritual health. You cannot grow without it. Why because you

can't love a crowd. Let me say that again. You

can't love a crowd. Now, you can worship with a crowd,

you know, one hundred people, two hundred people, a thousand

people or more. You can worship in the crowd, but

you can't love. You can't fellowship with a crowd. So

you need a small group, and you need to be

committed in love to a small group of other believers

where you can love and encourage and support, and they

can love and encourage and support you. Habit number six

for spiritual health. If I want to be spiritually healthy,

I need to learn to serve others unselfishly. Service is

an important part of your spiritual health and development because

God says, to grow, it's not all taken in. You've

got to be given back. You got to use those

muscles that God gives you. You got to develop your strength.

And God says, if you want to be the most

important person in the room, then you need to take

the last place in the room and be the servant

of everybody. The way to be great is by service.

You have to give your life away. Jesus said it

like this, one of the most important verses in the Bible.

For even I, the son of Man, came here not

to be served, but to serve others, and to give

my life as a ransom for many. Now I want

you to circle the words serve and give. I came

to serve and I came to give. In that verse,

Jesus gives us the two primary purposes of life after worship.

He says, I came to serve and to give. That

defines the Christian life. The more you learn to serve

and the more you learn to give, the more you're

gonna be Like Jesus. And you know what, the happier

you're gonna be, the more fulfilled you're gonna be, the

healthier you're gonna be, and the more blessed you're gonna be,

because when you do that, God says, I'm gonna pour

out blessing on you. Now, why is this so important?

Why is serving such an important habit in spiritual growth?

Because a lot of people go to church and they

get fed, and they get fed and they get fed,

but they do no service at all. Because serving is

like spiritual exercise. Sees, if all we do is feed,

all we do is listen. We come to church, we

hear great studies, We listen to preachers on the radio.

Turn on the radio, we listen. Then we go to

a Bible study and we study there. We're always taking in,

taking in, but we never actually do anything. It's like

eating and eating and eating and eating and eating, never

burning any calories. You're just gonna get bigger and bigger

and bigger, and you get spiritually fat. And some people

so spiritually fat you gotta roll them down the aisles

at church, and that's where we get the term holy rollers.

If you don't get spiritual exercise by serving others, there's

no way you're gonna develop spiritual muscle, and there's no

way you're gonna grow, and there's no way you're gonna

get the blessing of God in your life. That's habit

number six serving others. Now, finally, let me give you

a habit number seven for spiritual health. If I want

to be spiritually healthy, I must pass on the good news.

In other words, what I've been given, I've got to

give to other people. I've got to tell others the

good news about Jesus. I gotta tell others that there's

a purpose for their life, that they can be forgiven,

that their past can be forgiven, they can have a

purpose for living, they can have a home in heaven.

You know, when the apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, he said, this,

take the teacher that you heard from me, that I

proclaimed in the presence of many witnesses, And I want

you to entrust what you heard from me to reliable

people who will be able to teach others. Also, now,

I want you to notice there are four generations. In

that verse, Paul says, God gave me the good news,

and then Timothy, I pass it on to you that

second generation. He said, Now, Timothy, you're to pass it

on to other people. That's third generation who are reliable

enough to pass it on to fourth generation. See, the

fact is you're going to heaven because somebody told you,

and somebody told somebody who told you, and somebody told

somebody who told somebody who told you. Here's a question,

very important question. Is the chain going to break with you?

Is anybody going to be in heaven because of you?

Are you going to end the chain? Somebody told, somebody

who told somebody who told you? Have you told anybody?

This is the seventh spiritual habit? You see, Christianity is

always one generation away from just dying. If you don't

tell somebody, then who is going to tell them? You're

depending on somebody else. You are spiritually sterile if you

haven't told anybody about Jesus. Jesus says, to be a disciple,

to grow, you've got to pass on the good news. Matthew,

Chapter twenty eight. Jesus said it like this, Go and

make disciples of all the nations. Baptizing them in the

name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And teach

these new disciples to do the same thing I taught

you to do. To obey all the commands, to all

the commands I've given you. And be sure of this.

That was the premise. Here's the promise. I am with

you always, even to the end of the age. Matthew

twenty eight nineteen to twenty. Now, Jesus says, to be

truly his disciple, you got to be a disciple maker.

In other words, you've got to tell somebody else. You've

got to be willing to share your hope, share your faith,

share your story with others. So let me challenge you

with this. I want you to pray, Lord, help me

to bring one person to you this year. I dare

you to pray that prayer. God, help me to bring

one person, not two, not ten, not twenty, just one.

Help me to bring one person to you this year.

And you know what, if you start praying about your

friends who don't know the Lord, and you say, God,

I want to bring one friend to you this year,

God will make it so easy. The reason why it's

not easy is you're not praying about it. The Bible says,

asking it shall be given. There's the promise in the premise,

they'll come to Christ. If you're be willing to share

the good news. You just plant the seed and God

will make it grow. Now think about this. Can you

imagine what it would be like to get to heaven

one day and you have somebody walk up to you

and say, you know, I want to thank you. I

wouldn't be here if it weren't for you. You told

me about Jesus, and I am your friend forever. You see,

if you can reach one person for Jesus, then you

are doing what it takes to be a disciple. We're

commanded to pass it on. Now. These are the seven

habits for spiritual health. We're starting with your spirit. We're

gonna move on to the other six areas of your

life in these sessions ahead. But let me close by

saying this. If you really want to grow healthy spiritually,

you want to be spiritually strong. You don't want to

be a baby anymore. You're gonna have to choose to grow.

You're gonna have to make some choices. You're gonna have

to develop some habits. Spiritual growth is not automatic. It

is a choice. It's a daily choice, but it has

eternal rewards. And what do you call something that you

choose to do every day? You call it a habit.

Now you've got to say, I'm going to quit being

a half hearted, half baked, semi pro casual Christian. I'm

gonna get serious about this. I'm gonna grow up and

i want to be healthy in every area of my

life physically, spiritually, mentally, vocationally, financially. But it starts with

my spirit. Let me ask you this, do you intend

to be a godly man? Do you intend to be

a godly woman? Do you intend to be as spiritually

healthy as you can? Well, it isn't going to happen

unless you choose to develop these habits. You need to

say this. I'm going to choose to love Jesus supremely.

That's a habit. I'm going to choose to spend time

with Him daily. That's a habit. I'm going to read

the Word of God and I'm going to do his

word every day. I'm gonna pithe faithfully. I'm going to

love other believers and be committed to my church, and

be committed to my small group, and be committed to

community and I'm going to use whatever gifts and talents

and abilities God has given me to serve other people.

I'm not gonna live for me, I'm gonna live for others.

And finally, whatever I learned I'm gonna pass on to others.

I'm going to share the good news. These are the

seven habits for healthy spiritual growth. Now I want to

close this session by praying for you and then leading

you in a prayer. So would you bow your heads

right now? I'm going to lead you in prayer this minute,

but go ahead and vowy your head. Let me talk

to you for a second again. You cannot grow spiritually

healthy if you're not spiritually alive. There is no growth

without life. You can't grow in Christ if you don't

know Christ. So maybe that's the starting point for you

in this session. Maybe you've known about Jesus but you

don't know him. Maybe you've heard of him but you

don't have a relationship with him. The Bible says that

if I'm not alive in Christ, then I'm spiritually dead.

That's why Jesus said you must be born again. Have

you been born again? You said, well, I don't know.

If I have bet or not. Well, let's settle that

one right now. It's pretty easy. I'm gonna lead you

in a prayer right now. If you've never given your

life to Jesus Christ, if you've never opened up your heart,

you never invited him to come into your life, I'm

gonna lead you in a prayer that's going to be

the most important prayer you've ever prayed in your life.

It's going to change you from death to life, from

old to new, from guilt to forgiveness, from no purpose

to purpose, from hell to heaven, from darkness to light.

This will be the most important prayer you've ever prayed.

And as I pray these words, you can just pray

them in your heart. You don't pray mila loud. Just say,

as I say these words, say me to God, meet

me too. All right, Let's bow our heads. Jesus, I

ask you to come into my life. Just say that,

Dear Jesus, I ask you to come into my life.

I want you to forgive my sins, and I ask

you to give me a fresh start. I want to

be spiritually alive. To say that me to you Lord,

I want to be spiritually alived. I want to be

spiritually healthy, and so I ask you, Dear Lord, to

help me develop these habits. I want to learn to

love you supremely with all my heart and soul and

mind and strength. And I want to learn to love

other Christians in the family of God. And Dear God,

I want to continue in your teaching by learning and

studying your word so I can be set free from

the hang ups that hold me back, worry and fear,

and anxiety and guilt confusion. Say, Dear God, I want

to develop spiritual muscle by learning the habit of serving others.

I want to learn to be generous with my money,

and I want to pass on the good news. Help

me to find one person that I can bring to

you to become a part of your family this year. Now, Lord,

I can't do these things on my own. I can't

build these habits without your help and your strength. So,

Jesus Christ, as much as I know how, I ask

you to come into my life, put your spirit in

me and give me the power to do what you

want me to do and what in my hard hearts

I want to be able to do. I want to

grow healthy and become more like You by developing these

habits and I pray this in your name Jesus. Amen. Now,

if you prayed that prayer, congratulations, I'm glad you prayed.

Here's the first thing you need to do. You need

to tell somebody about it. Tell somebody if you open

your life to Christ for the first time, saying you

know what, I followed Rick in that prayer, and let

other people know about it so they can help you

start growing. We're going to have a great time in

this series, and we're going to look at seven different

areas of your life, but it all starts with your

spiritual growth. Begin to practice these habits this week and

God will bless you and I'll be praying for you.