Rick Warren - The Amazing Power of Forgiveness Part 3

Hello, and thanks for joining us here on Pastor Rick's

Daily Hope. Well today we continue in our series called

God's Prescription for a Healthy Life. In it, Pastor Rick

will show you how to improve your health physically, spiritually,

relationally and emotionally by applying the five essentials needed for

a more vibrant life. If you want to have what

it takes to live out your calling in life, stay

with us for this amazing series. Now, in just a

few moments, we're going to tell you about the Daniel

Plan DVD study Kit, a sixth session video based study

by Rick Warren, doctor Daniel Aman, and doctor Mark Hyman.

This out of the box approach to a healthy lifestyle

is based on five essentials faith, food, fitness, focus and friends.

You can find out more right now by going to

Pastorick dot com while you listen to today's Manage, or

you can just text the word daily to eight hundred

six hundred five thousand and four. That's Pastorick dot com,

or the word daily to eight hundred six hundred five

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

final part of a message called the Amazing Power of Forgiveness.

The Bible says that resentment is unhealthy. Your body was

not designed to handle prolonged anger. God didn't make your

body to handle holding on to hurtz, holding on to resentment,

holding on to regrets, and holding on to all of

those negative emotions in your body. You know, have you

ever said that person? He is such a pain in

the and that's why you have a pain there? Okay?

You know a lot of you You have back pain.

And it's not lf ives one, it's Larry and Susie.

And you don't lie. Come and the stress bugs you

and you won't let it go. And so if you

don't talk it out in forgiveness, When I don't talk

it out in forgiveness, I take it out on my body.

And whenever I swallow my anger, my stomach keeps score.

And so it is unhealthy for you to hold onto

resentment and undergrudges and to be unforgiving. Research has shown

that that resentment is the most unhealthy emotion known to humankind.

It does more damage to your body, to your nervous system,

to the general health of your of your body, that

when you hold on to that, it's like taking fire

in your heart. It's like injecting yourself with a virus

or you know, inviting cancer to come in. It will

eat you alive. And we've all seen people who got

bitter and more and bitter and more bitter and more bitter,

and they just shrink into this little bitter person. You know,

there are physical and there are emotional consequences when you

refuse to forgive. Now, some people, they are so picky

about what they eat, and you could eat the perfect vegan, vegetarian,

low cow, high protein diet, and if you're still holding

on to that resentment against your ex, that's what's going

to make you sick. It's going to eat you alive.

So you got to deal with it in your heart.

Nothing depleets emotional energy faster than resentment against a boyfriend

or girlfriend or something else like that. Now there's a

third reason why I have to forgive. And as they said,

all of these none of them have to do with them.

The other person deserve it, they don't. It's because I'm

going to need more forgiveness in the future. I'm going

to need more forgiveness in the future. The Bible says,

as Jesus said in Matthew six, for if you forgive

men when they sin against you, then your heavenly Father

will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive

men their sins, your heavenly Father will not forgive your sins.

What's he saying? Forgiveness is a two way street. We

cannot receive what we are unwilling to give. Somebody asked

or told John Wesley one time. He said, I could

never forgive that person, and Leslie said, well, then I

hope you never sin. You don't want to burn the

bridge that you've got to walk across in order to

get into heaven. Now, listen, there's no way you're getting

into heaven on your good works because you're not good enough.

Heaven's perfect and you're not, and neither am I. The

only way you or I have any chance of getting

into Heaven is God's grace, his forgiveness. And God says

we cannot receive what we are unwilling to give. He said,

it is based on you. God says, I'm going to

show you grace and I want you to be gracious

to others. So don't burn the bridge that you've got

to walk over. You're gonna need more forgiveness in the

future when we pray the Lord's prayer forgive us our

debts as we forgive our debtors, or forgive us our

trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. What

are you praying there? You're saying, God, I want you

to forgive me as much as I forgive everybody else. Hello,

you really want to pray that prayer? God, I'm gonna

I want you to forgive me as much as I've

forgiven everybody who's ever hurt me. You need to learn

to let it go because you're gonna need more forgiveness

in the future.

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

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

If you've missed any part of today's teaching, you can

listen online anytime at pastorick dot com. That's pastorick dot com.

The truth is most of us don't pay much attention

to our health until something goes wrong. We put on

a couple of pounds every year and think no big deal, right.

A few pounds over five or ten years really adds

up and can even lead to major illnesses like diabetes

and heart disease. That's why Pastor Rick work together with

medical and fitness experts to create the Daniel Plan Study.

The sixth Session DVD in workbook study Kit from Rick Warren,

doctor Daniel Amen, and doctor Mark Hyman is an out

of the box approach to a healthy lifestyle based on

five essentials faith, food, fitness, focus and friends. The Daniel

Plan Study gives individuals in small groups the encouragement and

accountability needed to succeed. If you've been watching the scale

go up lately, or your health is in trouble because

of your weight, it's not too late. Join the thousands

of people who've lost weight, improve their health and improved

their relationships through the Daniel Plan. We'll send you a

copy of the Daniel Plan DVD's study Kit to say

thanks when you give a gift to Daily Hope to

help share the Hope of Jesus with people around the world.

Just go to Pastor Rick dot com to get your copy,

or you can call eight hundred six hundred five zero

zero four, that's Pastorick dot com. Or call eight hundred

six hundred at five zero zero four and thank you

so much for your support.

Once again, here's Rick, how do I let go of

the people who have hurt me. Four things. Number one,

by first, by relinquishing my right to get even. That's

the first thing you do. You give up your right.

I have a right to get even. They hurt me,

you give up that right. And that's this first step

of forgiveness. Romans twelve nineteen. Never avenge yourselves. Leave that

to God, for he has said he will repay those

who deserve it. Leave it up to God. He'll take

care of it. He'll settle the score, he'll work it out.

And need to a whole lot better job than you do. Now,

let me tell you something. I have been married for

thirty years. I have hurt my wife many many times,

I'm ashamed to say, in many different ways, by words

and emotions. And she has hurt me many many times.

But still, after thirty years, we're together and we're more

in love than ever before. Why Because I have discovered

that the key, the thing that destroys relationships is not hurt.

What destroys relationships is an unwillingness to forgive. It is

unforgiveness that destroys relationships, not hurt. We're human. We're gonna

hurt each other, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, it's gonna happen.

When you put two imperfect people together, you can never

expect the perfect relationship. You're going to hurt each other.

The issue is will you give up your right to

get even? And will you offer forgiveness? And when you do,

any hurt can be overcome. Now, let me just be

real honest to some of you. Your husband or your wife,

or your girlfriend or boyfriend, or your parent or somebody

really hurt you in the past and you have held

it over their heads for months, maybe even years, and

you won't let it go. And no matter what they do,

they can't measure up because you won't let it go.

And do you know what you are killing the relationship?

Not that hurt from years ago. You are killing it

by your unwillingness to let it go, your unwillingness to forgive.

The first step is I let go of my right

to get even. Number two I respond to evil with good.

How can you tell when you've released somebody, when you've

really forgiven them. You can actually pray for God to

bless the person who hurt you. When you can get

to that point you know you've forgiven them, you can

pray for God to bless them. The Bible says this,

do good to those who hate you, bless those who

curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you. One

of the ways you know you've matured, that you're a

mature person is that you can look beyond the hurt

that was done to you and see they're hurt and

what caused them to hurt you. You see, hurt people

hurt people. When somebody hurts you, it's because they're hurting

in some way, their own insecurity, their own guilt, their

own resentment, their own inferiority. The things that hurt them

in their past have messed up their mind and their lives,

and they're hurting others because they're hurting themselves. And maturity

and forgiveness comes. Once I forgive them, I can stop

looking at how they hurt me and start saying why

they did it, and I can actually see the sympathetic

and begin to pray for them for the hurt that

they carry that caused them to hurt others. See, forgiveness

is rarely a one time shot. When somebody hurts you,

you think about it over and over and over, and

how often do you have to forgive the person until

the pain goes away. When the pain goes away, you

know you've forgiven them. Jesus said this to Peter. Peter asked, Lord,

how many times should I forgive somebody who sins against me?

Seven times? He's thinking, man, this is really generous, No,

said Jesus, how about seventy times seven? In other words,

it's got to be continual. It's got to be limitless.

Don't even try to count it. Now. Here's the rule.

Every time you remember that hurt, how they hurt you,

and the pain comes back again, you got to release them,

and you got to forgive them, and you got to

do it over and over and over until you don't

feel the pain anymore, and then you know you've let it.

If you don't do that, if you keep rehearsing it

in your mind, whatever you rehearse in your mind, if

you don't release them, you're going to eventually resemble them.

It's a law of life. So whatever you focus on,

you become. And if you hate somebody so much, pretty

soon it starts showing up in your own life, and

you certainly don't want that. What you hate the most,

and you focus on what you rehearse in your mind,

you will eventually resemble. And people are starting to say,

you're just like your mother, You're just like your dad,

You're just like whatever, because you go no, no, I

don't want to be that. But you know what, when

you focus on it, that's what you move toward. Now,

let me say this. It's not always possible or even

advisable to go to the person personally who hurt you.

It may be the wrong time, maybe things have changed,

maybe they've moved away, you can't get confident. They may

have died, they may have remarried, and maybe to go

directly to that person may reopen some bad wounds. But

for your sake, you need to forgive them. So how

do you do it? Well, a couple of techniques. One

of them is what I call the empty chair technique.

And you send an empty chair down there in the

living room. It's just you and the s empty chair,

and you imagine that person who hurt you, and you

say this to them aloud. I'm letting you off the hook.

I'm forgiving you. You don't deserve it, but neither do I.

For all of your ways God has forgiven me. I'm

letting you off the hook because God has forgiven me,

and because resentment doesn't work, it just makes me miserable.

I'm just miserable. And number three, I'm going to need

more forgiveness in the future. So I'm letting you off

the hook. I'm letting it go. You're really doing it

for your own benefit. It's the right thing to do.

I'm letting it go. And I'm not going to try

to get even. I relinquish my right to get even,

and I'm going to respond to evil with good from

now on. Another thing you might do, if you are

a writer, you might write a letter explaining all you're

hurt and how you are forgiving them, and then don't

mail it. And you say that is my way of saying,

I'm releasing them. I'm letting them go now. I have

no doubt that in a crowd this size, with all

the people outside and all of our other venues, that

a lot of you are right now in emotional or

relational meltdown. You are in a situation right now, you're

in a conflict with a mother or father, or an

aunt or an uncle, or a brother, sister, or a

husband or a wife or somebody, and everything in your

body wants to run. What you want to do is

escape from the relationship. You don't want to deal with it.

You want to run from it. You want to run

and get away just to ease the pain. And as

your pastor, as somebody who really cares about you, I

want to say to you, for your own sake, don't

do it. You will not get rid of the pain

by running out of the relationship or running away from it.

You can run all the way to Tahiti. But the

problem is you take your mind with you and the

grudge that you are carrying, your carrying in your mind.

There's only one way to get rid of the pain, forgiveness.

It's the only way to get rid of the pain.

You've got to let it go. So I relinquish my

right to good even I am responding to Eva with good.

I am repeating these steps as long as necessary. And

the fourth part of forgiveness, now you know you've really forgiven,

is by rescuing others with the good news of God's forgiveness.

The Bible says this in Second Corinthians. Through Christ, God

made peace between us and himself. That's good news. That's

why we call this the peace planet. Saddleback and God

gave us the work of telling everyone about the peace

we can have with him. God was in Christ making

peace between the world and himself. That's the good news.

That's why we celebrate Christmas. In Christ, God did not

hold the world guilty of its sins, and he gave

us this message of peace. So we have been sent

to speak for Christ. Now in this church, we take

this verse very very seriously. Once I have been forgiven,

I am to spread the message of peace. And it

is the goal of this church to take the message

of peace to every person in America, and to every

nation around the world, and to every tribe within that nation.

Now let me close with this some straightforward questions. Do

you feel forgiven by God? If you don't tonight your knight,

you shouldn't go out of here with a load of guilt.

There's no reason to everything you've ever done wrong can

be fleet completely forgiven tonight, because you're not going to

be able to forgive other people until first you feel forgiven.

So I would encourage you in just a minute to

follow me in this prayer. You need the forgiveness of

God in your own life. Second, who do you need

to forgive? Let's just get real practical. The Bible says

love keeps no record of wrongs, and because God is love,

God doesn't keep a record of your wrongs, so he

doesn't want you keeping a record of anybody else's. Let's

bow our heads. I'm sure that many of you carry

painful wounds from others. You may have carried him for

months or even years, and when you think about that

hurt or that betrayal, or that rejection or that abuse,

or those hurtful words or whatever, it's still as fresh

as if it happened today. How are you going to

get on with your life? Somebody say, Rick, you have

no idea how much they have hurt me, and you're right,

I don't. I don't know that, but I do know this.

I do know that God has forgiven you that resentment

hurts you the most, and that forgiveness is a two

way street and you're going to need it in the future.

And I know that the steps of forgiveness are not easy,

but they are possible with God, and when you take them,

it gives you power in your life. I'm going to

pray a prayer, and I invite all of us here

to pray this in your heart. Just in your When

I say a sentence, you say me too. God, Dear God,

you know how much I've carried unforgiveness in my heart,

and I've held on to hurts and memories, and I've

secretly wanted to get even. But today I want to

let it go and I want to get on with

your plan for my life. So first I want to

accept your forgiveness, Jesus, Dear God. Thank you for sending

Jesus to pay for all my sins once and for all,

to wipe out my credit and my debts. I don't

understand it all, but I'm grateful, and because You've forgiven me,

I want to do the right thing. And so today

I'm choosing to let go of the pain and the

hurt that I've received from others, and I forgive and

you fill in the blank there name the person I

forgive that person. I'm letting go of my right to

get even, and I'm choosing to overcome evil with good,

and I commit to continue forgiving them until I no

longer feel the pain or the desire to get even

and seek revenge. Jesus Christ, please replace my hurt with

your peace, and please fill my life with your love.

I accept my responsibility now to share the good news

of forgiveness the message of peace with others. Amen. Hi everybody,

this is Rick and I hope you enjoyed today's broadcast.

You know, if you just prayed that prayer for the

very first time, or you just recommitted your life to

Jesus again today, would you let me know about it.

There's something real about sharing your commitment. So write me

Rick at pastor Rick dot com and say, Rick, I

prayed them prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ.

And I'll send you some material that'll help you on

your journey with Jesus. And I'll also pray for you.

God bless you.

This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. We're so thankful that

you've chosen to spend time with us. If you've missed

any part of this broadcast, including portions we didn't have

time for today, just go to Pastorick dot com and

listen online anytime. Rick will be back to close out

our time today. But first, the truth is that most

of us don't pay much attention to our health until

something goes wrong. We put on a couple of pounds

every year and think no big deal, right, but a

few pounds over five or ten years can really add up.

That's why Pastor Rick Warren has put together the Daniel

Plan DVD Study Kit. This sixth session video based study

by Rick Warren, doctor Daniel Ahman and doctor Mark Hyman

is an out of the box approach to a healthy

lifestyle based on five essentials faith, food, fitness, focus and friends.

The Daniel Planned Studykit gives individuals the encouragement and accountability

needed to succeed. If you've been watching the scale go

up lately, or your health is in trouble because of

your weight, it's not too late to join join the

more than fifteen thousand people who've lost weight, improve their

health and improve their relationships by ordering the Daniel Plan

DVD Study Kit. Let us send you a copy of

the Daniel Plan DVD Studykit as our way of saying

thanks for your financial support of this ministry. Just go

to Pastorick dot com right now to get your copy,

or you can call eight hundred six hundred five thousand

and four. That's Pastorick dot com. Or call eight hundred

six hundred five thousand and four and thank you so much,

so much for your support. Here's Pastor Rick with a

closing thought.

God has five purposes for your life. He wants you

to know and love Him. That's called worship. He wants

you to belong to his family that's called fellowship. He

wants you to grow in character to be more like Christ.

That's called discipleship. And he wants you to learn to

serve using your gifts and talents, serve God by serving others.

That's called your ministry. Finally, he wants you to share

the good news and your life message with other people

around the world. That's called your mission. I'd like to

close today to talk to you for just a second

about your personal mission. Did you know that the Bible

says every time somebody accepts the Lord, they throw a

party in heaven. Did you know that it's right there

in Luke fifteen, verse seven, where the Bible says, there's

more joy in heaven over one sinner who changes his

heart and life than over ninety nine who don't need

to turn to Christ, who are already there. The day

that you accepted Jesus Christ, there was a party in

heaven for you. And by the way, the day that

you help somebody else come to know the Lord. There's

going to be a party in heaven, but there's also

going to be a party in your heart. I want

to encourage you today to look outward, to look around

you and see the people who need to hear about

the love of God, about the message of Christ, about

the purpose of life, about the daily hope that we

have in our hearts. The Bible says, always be ready

to share the hope that is within you. Could I

pray for you, and as we bow in prayer, you

might want to pray this prayer with me. Say, Father,

I want the joy that you've given me to be

shared with other people. And a lot of times I'm

afraid or hesitant to talk about you to others. Would

you give me so much love for other people that

the love will overcomes my fears and gives me the

right words to say as I share the hope that's

in me. Allow me to help others find You, to

find real hope, to find joy through knowing you. Thank you,

Lord so much for trusting me to help bring others

to you. I want to accept my mission and I

want to use it for your glory and in the

power of your spirit. Thank you Jesus put somebody in

my life today that I can tell about you. In

your name, I pray, Amen.

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

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