Rick Warren - Daring To Give My Best—Part One

Hello, everybody, This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope.

If you're joining us for the first time or you've

been listening every day for ten years, we just want

to say welcome, We love you, and we pray for

you every day. 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 that

gives you courage to impact the world around you. And

if you're like me, you'd really like to be more

bold and have more courage.

To share your faith in Christ.

All right, well, right now, let's join Pastor Rick with

part one of a message called Daring to give God

my best.

I said in a previous message that the greatest tragedy

in life is not death, but.

A wasted life.

And as your pastor, I am committed to helping you

be all God wants.

You to be.

I don't want you to settle for second place. I

don't want you to settle for also ran, I want

you to win the race that God has given to you.

I want you to be the best that you can be.

And so I want us to look at these three

analogies of a soldier and an athlete and a farmer

from the Bible, and it starts off The Bible starts

off by saying, look at the military. He says, you

can learn a lot about faith and about being the

best you can be in the military. Do you remember

that old army ad be all you can be.

In the army? Remember that? How do I do that?

What can we learn from effective soldiers that we would

apply to our spiritual life. Well, there's a lot we

can learn about being the best from the military.

You know. It reminds me of a story.

Admiral Heymann Rickover was the father of America's naval, a

nuclear navy, the nuclear subs, and the nuclear Navy, and

he was a genius. And I remember reading the story

one time that he was recruiting young graduates from Naval

Academy cadets who just graduated to have the privilege of

serving on a nuclear submarine. And there was one young

man who came in and sat down. He wrote this

story later became a very famous story, and he said,

the Admiral just let me talk for two hours. So

he said, I talked about anything I wanted to talk

about for two hours, and I was really trying to

show off all my intelligence, and he said. Then the

Admiral began to ask a series of questions which slowly

dawned on me that I knew nothing about what I

just talked about. And he says, very humbling, and he said,

right before I left a two hour conversation, Admiral Rickover

asked me a very poignant question. It was this, when

you were in school and in all your previous life

up to this date, did you always do your best?

And this young man said, well, I started to say yeah,

and then he said I realized that's not truthful. No,

And he said I thought, no, I didn't. He said

I was honest. I said no, I didn't do my

best all the time.

And he said.

Admiral ricover looked at me with piercing eyes and said

why not? And then just sat there. Why not? Why

not the best? And he said that question began to

burn in my heart. It began to be the turning

point in my life. The man who is that young

cadet later became the thirty ninth President of the United States.

His name was Jimmy Carter, and when he wrote his

biography it was called why not the Best? And he said,

It still haunts me that question am I doing? Am

I truly giving my best? Am I truly giving my best? Well,

there are three things if I want to give my

best to God that I must do. That every soldier understands.

You might write these down. Number one. First, I must

define what I'd die for. I must define what I'd

die for. You say, well, that's a strange place to start.

I'm giving your best to God.

No, it's not.

Until you know what you're willing to die for. You're

not ready to live. You're not ready to live until

you know what you die for. And you're not ready

to love until you.

Know who you die for. If you've never.

Clarified what's worth dying for in your life, you really

are just not fully alive. Soldiers know there are some

things worth dying for. Freedom is worth dying for. Family

is worth dying for. Faith is worth dying for. There

are some things more valuable even than my own life.

And they understand that.

And even Jesus talks about this, and about how that

love is best expressed in the willingness to die for

somebody else.

Look at this verse John fifteen, verse thirteen.

Jesus said the greatest love, the highest form of love,

is shown when a person lays down his life for

is friends. The soldiers understand this. They realize that sometimes

it's a matter of life or death, and they put

their life on the line practically every day. Jesus says,

the greatest measure of love is the willingness to sacrifice

your life for somebody else. Of course, that's what Jesus

did for us. The greatest expression of love is Jesus.

Dying on the cross.

You measure love not by what people tell you, not

by what your boyfriend says to you. You measure love

by the willingness to sacrifice. And the greater the sacrifice,

the deeper the love. The second thing we learn from

soldiers and infect the soldiers. To be the best I

can be, I must sacrifice my comfort. I must sacrifice

my comfort. And of course soldiers do this all the time.

Think of all the comforts of soldiers give up in

others in order to serve others.

They give up comfort. They go out and they.

Serving the heat, and they serve in the cold. They

give up their free schedule because they're not free to

do anything they want to do. The commanding officer says,

I want you to do this, and I want you

to do that. They give up their freedom in order

to preserve the freedom of other people. Soldiers give up

their wealth. Nobody gets wealthy becoming a soldier, and so

they give up a lot of things. They sacrifice their

own comfort and the hardships that they choose to put

up with. This is true in any air of life.

You don't become great without sacrificing. You don't become great

by five easy steps. You don't become great. You don't

become a great woman. You don't become a great man

by doing what's easy, by doing what's comfortable. You'd become

great by committing yourself to something greater than yourself and

then being willing to sacrifice for that. And the greater

your sacrifice in life, the greater your character in life is.

The Bible says this and two Timothy two verse three.

Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

He's using this metaphor, this analogy of the military, and

he says, just like a soldier puts up with hardship

for a greater cause, you need to put up with

hardship for a greater cause.

What is the hardship in your life?

What is following Christ making difficult for you? Well, it

could be your criticized some that could be a hardship, ostracized,

made fun of. Maybe that's a hardship. Anytime you do

what's right, it's never easy. If doing what's right was easy,

everybody would do it. It's much easier to do what's wrong.

Always easier to do what's wrong than to do what's right.

And that's why it's harder to tell the truth. That's

why it's harder to forgive instead of getting, even it's

harder to let go instead of getting. It's harder to

be kind. It's harder to be unselfish than selfish. These

are hardships in following Christ. It's not easy. But the path,

the greatness, and the path that being the best you

can possibly be as a man, or the best you

can possibly be as a woman, comes from first defining

what you die for and then second sacrificing your comfort.

You see, it's a battle to do what's right. It's

not easy, and we are in a spiritual battle. And nothing,

as I mentioned earlier, has ever done great without sacrifice.

The Bible says this in Ephesians five two. Live a

life of sacrificial love, just as Christ loved us and

gave himself as an offering and a sacrifice for us.

So he's saying, okay, if you want to be like

Jesus Christ, and that's the goal, If you want to

be like Jesus Christ, you need to learn sacrificial love,

because Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice his own life,

and he offered himself as an offering for others. Question,

you want to be like Jesus, who are you offering

your life for?

Right now?

Who are you sacrificing your life for? Who are you

putting up with hardships for? Besides yourself? A lot of

people will put up with hardships in order to get ahead,

in order to succeed for personal goals. Are you involving

yourself in any things that are hard to do for

the benefit of other people? And sometimes you lose sleep

because you're helping other people? And sometimes you spend some

of your money because you're helping other people. And sometimes

you lose your privacy because you're helping somebody else. These

are hardships. I must sacrifice my comfort. If you want

to be like Jesus, we have to live a life

of sacrificial love. You know, I can't think of sacrifice

and nothing's great I've ever done that su sacrifice without

thinking of One of my favorite stories that really touched

me as a young man the story of Jim Elliott

and five missionaries. Jim Elliott and four of his best

friends heard about a tribe in the deep jungles of

the Amazon in Ecuador who had never heard the name

of Jesus Christ. Very primitive tribe, no Bible, no believer,

no church. And so these five guys said, we're going

to give ourselves to go missionaries to reach this tribe

that nobody's ever shared the good news with. And they

knew they just couldn't walk in. There's a pretty violent tribe.

And so they start dropping gifts overhead from planes as

they'd fly over the jungle, and they were trying to

soften them up. And finally, after about six months of preparation,

they decided to make first contact with this tribe and

they found a little sand barge on the river on

the Amazon River where they could actually land a plane,

and they flew in in the first landing. They landed

to get out to meet the Indians for the very

first time. When those five missionaries were martyred in their

very first attempt to share the good news with those Indians, the.

World was rocked.

It was on the cover of every magazine, and many

people said, what a waste, What a waste. Those people

went to tell them the good news and they didn't

even get to share it, and they gave their lives.

But that wasn't the end of the story.

In the closing words, when Jim Elliot looks up at

min Kayani, the tribal chief who was killing him at

that moment, and offers words of forgiveness, something sticks in

his heart.

And he begins to soften.

And the rest of the story is is that some

of the wives of those missionaries said, we're going to

go in now. And Elizabeth Elliott, Jim Eliot's wife, took

her young daughter and Rachel Saint, a sister of one

of the other missionaries. Those brave, courageous, daring faith women

moved to that tribe and moved in with them, and

they began to share the good news. And the people

were so shocked that the wives would come after they

had killed the husbands, and they began to share the

good news, and the tribe converted to christ. Min Kayani,

that man who was the leader and who killed Jim Eliot,

he later had Nate Saint, who was the son of

one of the men killed, came and lived in him,

and Nate Saint adopted him as his father. The man

who killed his own dad Mi and Kayani became a

devout Christian and then became a preacher and began to

travel the world telling people about the good news of forgiveness.

And in two thousand and six that Indian Min Kayani

stood on the stage of Saddleback Church and preached to

this crowd. Gave me these beads to represent their peace

beads to represent the effect of the peace plan around

the world. And they found the old plane that had

laid buried.

In that sandbar.

They took it apart, they brought it and we put

it here on the stage on the anniversary of that

the death of those men. In fact, I think we've

got a picture of the Yeah, there's men Kayani, there's

Pastor Tom at a much younger age, and and there's

men Kayani just beaming with the love of Jesus Christ,

no longer a hater, no longer filled with rage and jealousy,

but a lover and a preacher of the good news

of the Gospel. How did that man come to Christ

because somebody was willing to sacrifice? There are some things

worth dying for.

Now.

I doubt that you will be asked to give your

life for Gesus Christ.

But would you be willing.

Or are you just a casual Christian not a committed Christian?

And are you willing to sacrifice your own comfort for

the greater good of other people? That's what it means

to be like Jesus. There is one other thing. Third

thing we learned from a soldier is that I must

eliminate distractions. If I want to be the best that

I could possibly be, if I want to be the

best man I can be, if I want to be

the best woman I can be, I've got to eliminate distractions.

And the next verse in this passage says this, As

Christ's soldier, do not let yourself become entangled in the

affairs of this life, wasting time, for then you can't

please your commanding officer who enlisted you into his army.

If there's one thing.

A soldier must have is he must have the freedom

to respond with flexibility when his commanding officer says, go no, soldiers, sorry,

I'm busy right now, I'm watching say yes to the dress. Okay,

I'm sorry, I'm busy. I can't go serve right now.

I've got my I'm going out for a game of

golf right now. I'm sorry. I can't help because I'm

I'm gonna play my hobby and I'm gonna I'm gonna

go read this, I'm gonna go watch a game. And no,

no soldiers say they can't get a fair involved in

the affairs of this life in civilian life, because they

have to be ready in a moment's notice to do

what their commanding officer tells them to do. You have

to eliminate distractions. Now, the Bible has a lot to

say about doing without things that really don't matter. How

much of your time is invested in things that aren't

gonna matter five years from today, much less in eternity.

How much of your energy.

Is invested in things that aren't gonna matter five years

from today, much less for eternity. How much of your

money are you investing in things that aren't going to

matter five years from today, much less for eternity. If

you want to be great, if you want to be

the best, you must start spending more of your time,

more of your money, and more of your energy on

things that are going to last forever, and less of

on it on things that don't really matter. I mean,

do you really need to know how many times a

Hollywood celebrity has been married? Is that the most important

thing you need to fill your mind with?

No?

Then, why are you reading all of those magazines about

those stories of people you don't even care about. It's

a waste of time, It's a waste of brain space.

What could you give up? I want to challenge you

to think about this week? What could you give up

an hour of TV a week? What could you give

up in order to make more time for the things

that matter in life? To love, to serve, to know God,

to worship. These are the things we learn from effective soldiers.

Define what I can.

Die for, sacrifice my comfort.

And eliminate distractions.

Next, Paul moves to the second example, second metaphor, and

he says, you know what, you can learn some things

from sports too, If you really want to learn you

can learn some things for your spiritual life from sports.

And he says, let's look at the.

Serious athlete, the competitive athlete, not the casual one, but

the serious one. And the second most used analogy for

the Christian life in the Bible is an athlete. And

the Bible compares your life to a race. You are

running a race in life, and it's not a fifty

yard dash, it's a marathon. And my job as your

pastor is to help you get across the finish line

because you're in a race, and I don't want you

to get sidelined. I don't want you to get run

off in the ditch. I want you to make it

to the finish line and win the prize. And here's

what the Bible says, first Corinthians nine twenty four to

twenty seven. In a race, everyone runs. In other words,

everybod life is living their life, but only one person

wins the prize. So run your race to win, run

your ways to win. To win the contest, you must

deny yourselves many things that would keep you.

From doing your best. There's that phrase again.

An athlete goes to all this trouble just to win

a ribbon or a medal that won't last, but we

do it for an eternal reward that will last forever.

So I run straight toward the goal with purpose. In

every step. I fight to win. I'm not just shadow

boxinger playing around Like an athlete. I discipline my body.

I discipline myself, making sacrifices and training my body to

do what it should, not what it wants to do.

Otherwise I fear that I might be disqualified from the race. Now,

just like the soldier has three things to teach us,

the athlete has three things to teach us about being

the best we can be.

You might write these down.

The first thing we learned from the athlete is this,

I must intend to win. If I'm going to win

in life, it's got to be intentional. It's not going

to happen by accident. It's not going to happen without effort.

It's not going to happen unless they have a goal.

You will not become great by accident. You will not

become the best woman you could possibly be, are the

best man you could possibly be, just casually. It'll only

happen if you intend to become the best you can be,

If you intend to have a great soul, intend to

have a goal. This is the difference between being a

casual Christian and a competitive or a committed Christian. Is

there a difference between a competitive golfer and a casual golfer?

Oh?

Yeah, the casual the committed golfer takes it serious. They're

playing to win, and they're very They get stressed out

about it if they don't win. If you're a casual offery,

you're just hitting the ball around and having fun, smelling

the roses, you know, looking at the gophers. You know,

you're just looking for some time off. The difference is

the degree of seriousness question, how serious are you about

being what God made you to be? Well, I'd kind

of like to do it in my spare time, it isn't

gonna happen. How serious are you about being the best

you could possibly be? The Bible said there in verse

twenty four. In a race, everyone runs, but only one

person wins the prize. So run your race to win.

Circle that run your race to win. You should be

living your life in a way that you're running to win.

God wants you to win. God doesn't want you to

be a loser. God wants you to be a winner.

He wants you to run the race to rent win,

and you've got to do this intentionally.

Now.

The truth is, there's some people that are listening to

me right now that you're never going to be a

great person. You're never going to be the person God intended.

You're never going to be the best man or the

best woman.

You're going to be.

Why because you never intended to be. You're not willing

to pay the price. You're just not willing to pay

the price. You don't want it badly enough. You don't

want it deeply enough. How deeply do you want to

win the prize that God has for you in life?

He said, well, what's the prize?

Look at the next verse, reward and responsibility and eternity.

The Bible says one Timothy six to twelve. Run your best,

run your best in the race of faith. And that's

what we're talking about, daring faith and win eternal life.

That's what you win, eternal life for yourself, for this

is the life that God called you to. When you

profess your faith before many witnesses, What does it mean

when you profess your faith before many witnesses. Let's talking

about your baptism When you're baptized, you are professing your

faith in front of many witnesses. If you haven't been baptized,

that's what you.

Need to do next.

You need to profess your faith out in front of

many witnesses. Baptism is the way you do that. Then

he says there, he says, you need to run your

best race. You need to do it intentionally, said God,

I really goofed off in a lot of my earlier life.

But I want the rest of my life to be

the best of my life. I want to make it count.

I want to make up for lost time. And I'm

serious about this. I'm not going to be a casual Christian.

I'm serious about this. I want your best for my life.

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

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

tell you more.

How'd 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 unto 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.

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