Rick Warren - Daring To Imagine Part Two

Hey, everyone, it's 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. And so far this series

is giving all of us powerful tools to share our faith,

a faith that gives you courage to impact the world

around you. All right here it comes Pastor Rick with

part two of a message called Daring to Imagine.

So my imagination shapes my life, and imagination is essential

to living by faith.

Number three. Third thing I've learned.

Great lives are built on great dreams. Great lives are

built around great dreams.

In my lifetime, I've.

Had the opportunity to meet a lot of very great people.

Some of them are famous, some of them are not famous.

Because fame and greatness have nothing to do with each other.

You can be famous and not be great, and you

can be great and not be famous. But in great lives,

they're built around great dreams. What I've discovered is that

nobody is naturally a great person. You don't just pop

out of your mommy being a great person. No, you

become great by attaching your life to a great cause.

A great purpose or a great dream. You need something

bigger than yourself to draw you out of yourself, to

make you grow better than yourself. And that's what makes

you a great person. Until you have a great dream,

you will never be a great woman. Until you have

a great dream for your life, you will never be

a great man if you don't have a great vision.

If you don't have a great dream, it is impossible

for you to be great. Greatness comes from what you

attach yourself to. You need something bigger than yourself that

pulls you out of your self centeredness that makes you great.

Now during during faith, I want to help you unlock

your imagination and I want to help you become a

mo or great person. And I want you to dream

and to visualize them, to think about how God wants

to use your career, how God wants to use your future,

your finances, your family, your giving, your ministry, your career.

And my prayer for you is actually this next verse

on your outlines Pesians chapter one. As your pastor, I'm

praying this, may God enlighten the eyes of your mind

so that you can see the hope that His calling

holds for you. I notice this, may God enlighten the

eyes of your mind. What's he talking about there, the

eyes of your mind. He's not talking about your physical eyes.

He's talking about your imagination. He's saying, I pray that

your imagination will come alive and in faith, you will

be able to see God's dream for your life. God's

vision for your life, God's purpose and plan for your life,

God's calling on your life. God has a calling for you.

Most people miss their calling in life. Why because they're

following their dream instead of God's dream. I'm not interested

in you following your dream. I'm interested in you in

following God's dream. I could make up a dream for

my life. I could say, you know, I dream of

being a rock star, and it would be a waste

of my life because God didn't wire me to be

a rock star. God said, I want you to give you.

I want to give you my dream for your life,

and that's your calling. And he says, when you understand

what I've made you for, what I've built you for,

what I have a vision for your life, then you're

going to have hope.

You will know the hope that is calling holds for you.

If you want significance in your life, if you want

satisfaction in your life, if you want fulfillment in your life,

here's what you gotta do. You got to stop following

your dream for your life, and you've got to start

following God's dream for your life. Because God's dream, when

you fulfill it, you go, this is it. This is

what I was made to be.

It fits. I know my niche, I know why I'm alive. Now.

If you can't imagine, you're calling. If you can't dream

God's dream, you're not really living. You're just existing, and

you're just going through life. And without a dream, you're dying.

The Bible says in Proverbs twenty eight eighteen, where there

is no vision, what does it say the people perish?

Circle that the people perish? I tell pastors when a

church has no dream, where there's no vision in a church,

the people go to another parish. Now, as I said,

I want you to discover God's dream. And one of

the things that I told you that during daring faith.

I'm going to push you. I'm going to stretch you.

I'm going to challenge you to discover God's dream for

your life.

And that leads me to number four. The fourth thing

I've learned, and it's this.

God's dream for my life is bigger than my dream.

God's dream for my life is bigger than my dream.

It's exponentially bigger. It's far larger. It's eternally significant.

There are a lot of dreams.

You could have big dreams and they wouldn't be significant.

You could dream of being a millionaire by a certain age.

Your dream of being a billionaire.

For what purpose?

Just do you think God puts you on this planet

to live for yourself? Of course not, of course not.

God's dream is for your life is bigger than your dream.

Let me show you what the Bible says the Phesians three.

God can do anything, you know, far more than you

could ever imagine, or guess or request in your wildest dream. Notice,

far more than you could ever imagine. God can do

that in your life, or guess or request in your

wildest dream.

Now let me stop there.

I don't know about you, but I'm a pretty big dreamer.

I've never been accused of small dreaming. I've never been

accused of being a tiny thinker. I have big visions

in life, and yet God says, rick, think of the

greatest thing I could do in your life. Think of

the greatest way I could bless your life. Dream the

biggest dream, the greatest vision, and I can top that.

You have no idea what God wants to do in

your life. You are living such a small fraction of

what you're capable of. You were doing with your life,

such a small portion of what God wants to do

in your life. God's dream for your life is enormous.

It's big. He says, I can do more than you

can imagine or guests or requestion your wildest dream. The

Bible says He does it not by pushing us around,

but by working within us his spirit deeply and gently

within us. And by the way, the next verse after

that says, so glory to God in the Church, glory

to God in Jesus, Glory to God in all generations,

and glory to God.

Forever and ever.

We just sang that. That's this verse. We just sang

this glory to God forever. Now, I want you to

write this down in your outline. God wants me to

dream big.

Write that down.

God wants me to dream big. He wants me to

use the imagination that He gave me. Because dreaming big

honors God. It shows faith, It shows trust. Now you

should base your dream not on what you think you

could do, but you should base your dream on what

you think God could do. I remember many years ago

when we bought the Lake Forest property and the word

got out in Orange County that a church was going

to go buy one hundred and twenty acres. Let's put

this a perspective, that's bigger than Disneyland. His property is

bigger than Disneyland. And people said, what kind of church

is this going to go buy one hundred and twenty

acres of Orange County property? Who do those people think

they are? And when I heard that, I said, that's

the wrong question. The question is not who do we

think we are?

It's who do we.

Think God is. That's the real issue. I write this down.

Let the size of my God determine the size of

my goal. I must let the size of my God,

not the size of my gifts, but the size of

my God determine the size of my goal. God's dream

for my life is bigger than my dream. Number five,

The fifth thing I've learned about dreaming and vision and

imagination is this, Doubt is the enemy of imagination. Doubt

is the enemy of imagination. Now, doubt and fear neutralize

what God wants to do in your life.

You see, it takes courage to imagine. Why.

You know why most people don't imagine because they're afraid

of failure. When you were a kid, you had a

great imagination. Children have a massive amount of imagination. But

the older you get, the more your imagination grows rusty.

You stop imagining what things could be, and you just

start living the way they are, and you get stuck

in the status quo, which is Latin for the mess

we're in, and you don't imagine what they could be.

You just imagine or you just think about what it is,

and you stop using that imagination muscle in your life.

Doubt is the enemy of imagination, and that's why it

takes courage. And by the way, what is courage. Courage

is doing the thing you fear the most. If you're

not afraid, you don't need courage. You don't need courage.

Courage only happens when you're scared to death. Courage is

when you're scared to death. He said, I'm going to

do it anyway. In the history of Saddleback Church, every

great thing that we did, I was scared to death

to do scared to death? Dude, I just said, we're

going to do it anyway. Why because I'm not going

to about to let fear dominate my life. So I

do it, moving ahead, trembling, moving ahead in fear, and

I just do it anyway and God shows up. God

will show up in your life. Courage is when you

do the thing while you're afraid. You do the right thing.

He said, should I wait till all the fear is gone.

It's never gonna go away. You just do it while

you're afraid, and then it goes away. Doubt is the

enemy of imagination. You have to move against your fears,

and sometimes you have to ignore all the insecures you're feeling.

You say, I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna go

for it.

I'm gonna do it even though I'm scared to death

and I'm insecure and i might fail, and blah blah

blah blah blah. James, Chapter one. If you need wisdom,

you want to know God's dream vision for your life.

If you need wisdom, just ask God for it because

he's generous and he enjoys giving it to everyone. But

when you ask You must believe and not doubt. For

a doubtful mind is as unsettled as a wave of

the sea that's driven back and forth and tossed about

by the wind. Such doubters cannot decide anything that they do.

So they should not imagine there's that word. They should

not imagine receiving anything from the Lord. You gotta believe,

and you've gotta banish doubt. You know what you need

to do. You need to doubt your doubts and believe

your beliefs. The problem we have today is we do

the exact opposite. We believe our doubts and we doubt

our beliefs. No doubts are meant to be doubted. Beliefs

are meant to be believed. So you believe your beliefs

and your doubt your doubts. Your imagination in your life

is either gonna be governed by fear or it's gonna

be governed by faith.

And that's your choice. Now.

If you let your imagination be governed by fear, you're

gonna go around freaked out, stressed out, worried all the time,

and you're gonna worry about what other people think, and

you're gonna worry about are you gonna have enough?

And you're gonna worry about this and this and that.

And when you allow fear to control your imagination, you

live a miserable life. And instead, if you say, I'm

not gonna allow fear to dominate me, I'm gonna allow

faith to dominate me, and I'm gonna trust in God.

All things are possible with God. Then your imagination talks

about what could happen, the good things that might happen,

and your imagination moves you ahead.

Doubt will destroy you.

Now, there's a great story in the Bible about a

man who had a son who was sick, and he

comes to Jesus, and we pick up the story in

Mark chapter nine, and the man says to Jesus, please

heal my son if you can. And Jesus replied, what

do you mean if I can? Anything is possible if

a person believes. The father replied, I do believe, but

help me not to doubt.

I love this.

Passage because I love the authenticity. I love the honesty

of this guy. He goes, I believe. I just got

some doubts. And one of the passages in translations, he says, Lord,

I do believe, help me with my unbelief. And you

know what Jesus's response was to this guy when he said,

I mean, if all things are possible if you believe,

and the guy says, well, I do believe, help me

with my doubts.

You know what Jesus said.

He does good enough, and he heals the guy right

there on the spot. On the spot. You know, I

wish I had learned a long time ago. Wish somebody

told me that I don't have to have all my

doubts resolved and all my questions answered in order to

follow Jesus Christ and enjoy all the benefits of it.

I've been walking with Jesus Christ now for almost well

over fifty years. I still have questions. I got a

list of them. I still have doubts.

When I get to have it, I'm going to be

You can get in line behind me. I've got all my.

Questions to ask Jesus. Jesus, why did you do this?

Why did you do that? I doubted this, I doubted this.

I didn't think this was a good thing. He did

here and on and on, and I'm just going to

go through my laundry list of questions and doubts. Why

because I believe I just have some doubts. Now, if

I had thought that I had to answer all my

doubts and all my questions, I still wouldn't even be

a Christian. What I learned listen very closely is I

don't have to understand something for me to benefit from it.

I don't have to have it all figured out for

me to benefit from it.

For instance, I don't understand how internal combustion works. It

doesn't stop me from driving a car. I don't understand

the chemistry of digestion. It doesn't stop me from eating steak.

I don't understand how there are literally colored pictures flying

through the air right now and going through my body

and yours, but it doesn't stop me from turning on

a TV and watching them.

How in the world does that happen? I don't know.

How can I pick out my phone and talk to

somebody on the.

Other side of the world. I don't know all of it.

I can't explain that to you, But I don't have

to explain it to enjoy it.

Does that make sense?

And I don't have to have all my doubts answered,

all my questions resolve in order to live by faith. Lord,

I believe, help me with my doubts. God says, that's

good enough. And so doubt will destroy you if you

let it keep you from imagining and being all that

God wants you to be. So this guy comes to

Jesus and he says, Lord, I want to believe, help

me with my doubts. Have you ever cried out to

God that way? Have you ever cried out to God

and said, Lord, I.

Want to believe, help me with my doubts. You need

to do that this morning if you haven't now.

One of the things that happens because of doubt and

because of fear and because of worry is vision begins

to dissipate in your life. You get a dream, but

you leak and your dream dissipates. A lot of people

start off in life with a great dream, a great goal,

a great vision, a great objective, a great cause and

a purpose to live the life for. But over time

it begins to dissipate and drain out and.

Leak out of their life. Just much like you buy a.

Balloon with healing minute, you put it up in your house,

and three days later nobody's actually poked it.

It didn't all leak out at once.

It just started to leak out a little bit at

a time, and pretty soon it's droopy. And some of

you have a flat tire emotionally, and you got a

flat tire mentally because you don't. You're not dreaming anymore,

You're not believing anymore. And so what you have to

do is you have to re energize the dream periodically.

You have to refuel the dream or you run out

of gas.

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

I always can use in my own life after listening

to this show. All right, would you like to step

out of a life of ordinary existence and into a

life of extraordinary faith? Then please order the Daring Faith

DVD study kit by Pastor Rick Warren. Here's Rick to

tell you more.

How would you like to have a bold, unshakable faith

that gives you the courage to make the changes you've

always wanted to see in your life, your work, your family,

and in the world. That's not a dream. That's exactly

what God wants to do in your life. He wants

you to learn to live by daring faith. The Bible says,

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

Now to help you develop that kind of faith, I

put together a Daring Faith Study Kit, and it includes

a DVD and it includes a workbook. Now there's six

sessions in the Daring Faith Study Kit, and it'll teach

you these six things. How to build a life of faith,

how to expect the best from God, how to stretch

your imagination in order to see what God wants to

do in your life to expand your vision. How to

have the courage to take the initiative with your faith,

how to face your fears with bold faith, and how

to believe and what to do while you're waiting on God.

You cannot afford to miss this series. It was one

of the most important series I've ever done at Saddleback Church.

And the Bible tells us in Ephesians three twelve, because

of our faith in Him, we dare to have boldness

and courage and confidence in coming to God with freedom

and without fear. I want you to have that boldness,

that courage, and that confidence when you come to God

in prayer. I want you to come to Him without

fear and come to Him in freedom. God will use

this Daring Faith Study Kit just like He used it

in the lives of tens of thousands of other people.

He'll use it in your life if you'll trust him

in all things.

So get this kit today.

You know, today, when you give a gift to help

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