Rick Warren - Learning To Live Wisely Part Two

Pastor Rick Warren often says, you were made by God

and for God, and until you understand that, life will

never make sense. Welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope Today.

In our series called God's Vision for the Rest of

your Life, Rick continues in his effort to help you

discover the unique purpose and vision that the Lord has

for your life. Now, in just a few moments, we're

going to tell you how to get a copy of

the brand new Daily Hope twenty twenty one prayer Journal

based on the theme God's Great Adventure for You, a

great resource to help make your time in prayer the

best it can be. Go to Pastorick dot com to

find out more, or 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 Warren

with part two of a message called learning to Live Wisely.

The next verse Proverbs three sixteen to eighteen mentions seven

major benefits of getting wisdom in your life.

Notice this right circle them all.

Wisdom offers you long life, that's the first one, as

well as wealth, that's the sactly. Wealth is a mark

of wisdom. You wise up. You use your money wise

as well as wealth and honor. Circle honor. Wisdom can

make your life pleasant. In other words, it's not as hard.

If I make foolish decisions, life is hard. If I

make wise decision, life is pleasant.

It's easier.

Says, wisdom can lead you safely through life. In other words,

wisdom is a protection keeps you from making mistakes.

You circle that.

Those who become wise are happy. You want happiness. Get

wise up. The wiser you get, the happier you'll be.

Wisdom will give them life. In other words, true life. Now, friends,

those seven benefits are so ridiculously over the top. If

I didn't believe that was in the Bible, it sounds

like an infomercial. I mean, if I held up a

product and said, this product will give you a long life.

It will make you wealthy, it will bring you honor.

It will make your life pleasant and easier than before.

It will lead you safely through the problems of your life.

It will make you happy, and it will cause you

to experience life it was.

Meant to be lived. You've begun.

I don't believe it it's unrealistic. But I didn't say this.

God said it. God said it, and God is telling

you the value of learning wisdom. This is why we're

going to do the next six weeks. If you become

more wise, these things will be true in your life.

One more verse Proverbs four to twelve will stand in

your way. If you walk wisely circle, nothing will stand

In other words, you got your dream, you got your goal.

Wisdom will show you how to get around all the barriers.

Nothing will stand in your way, and you will not stumble.

You're not going to make so many mistakes when you

run if you are wise. Do you see how important

wisdom is to your life? Do you understand why wisdom

should be the number one goal of your life? Do

you realize how it's worth the next six weeks of

your life to hear it, read it, study it, memorize,

meditate on it to learn how to live wisely. Now,

Like everything else, wisdom is a choice. Happiness is a choice.

Being close to God is a choice. Success is a

series of making wise choices.

Wisdom is a choice. You got to learn to be wise.

And what I want to do is talk to you

about what the Bible says are the five ways to

build wisdom into your life. Bible is very specific that

if you do certain things, then you make certain choices,

you will become a wiser and wiser woman, you will

become a wiser and wiser man. Well, if wisdom has

so many benefits to my life, why don't we live

more wisely?

The answer is it's harder. It's harder.

It's quite easy to make foolish decisions. It's quite difficult

to make wise decisions. We are not by nature wise people.

By nature, we do the dumb thing, we do the

foolish thing, we do the easy thing. You don't come

out of the womb automatically being wise. Wisdom has to

be learned. And until you do the five things that

cause you to learn wisdom, you're not going to learn wisdom.

You can go to school for the rest of your

life and not learn wisdom. You could read all kinds

of books and not learn wisdom, because wisdom is seeing

life from God's viewpoint. So you've got to make a

choice to learn. The Bible says in Proverbs four, verse five,

learn to be wise. Circle the word learn. You got

to learn to be wise and develop good judgment. That's

a choice. It's your choice. You don't have to learn,

you don't have to develop, it's your choice. Recently, I

got a letter said Pastor Rick, I regret that I

didn't open my life to Jesus until very late in

my adult life. I regret that so much, that I

wasted so many years going in the wrong direction. I

feel like I will never catch up. Well, you're wrong.

You are never too old.

To learn to be wise.

If you're alive, if your heart's beating, if blood is

pumping through your veins, then you can learn to be wise.

You're also never too young to learn to be wise.

Wisdom has absolutely nothing to do with your age. You

can be old and a fool, you can be young

and wise. Would you agree with me, It's possible to

grow older without growing up. Everybody agree with that. Don't

look at them. You can grow older without growing up.

A lot of people grow old wisdom. You can be

old and still be a spiritual baby. You're still walking

around in spiritual diapers at ninety five years of age.

Or you can be a young person and you can

be full of a lot of wisdom because you're doing

the things that make you wise. How do I learn

to be wise?

Well?

The Bible says in the Book of Proverbs, you do

five things, and just for fun, I decided to put

these five things in acrosstic l EA r N. These

are the five things you must learn to do in

order to learn wisdom.

Let's look at them. Number one, the first.

Thing if I want to be wise is I must

the l and learn stands for I must listen to

God's word.

Every day.

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.

If you want to make your time in prayer the

best it can be, then you're going to want to

get a copy of the brand new twenty twenty one

Daily Hope Prayer Journal. This year's theme, God's Great Adventure

for You, will help you tap into God's power and

presence when you learn how to pray with passion and purpose.

Covered in soft vegan leather with full color pages, this

prayer journal has sections to pray for specific people, and situations,

as well as space to express your gratitude and personal

prayer requests to God. Each page is beautifully designed and

filled with inspiring Bible verses, photos, and artwork. The God's

Great Adventure for You Prayer Journal is a spiritual growth

tool designed to help you enjoy a vibrant prayer life,

connect with God, and establish consistent daily prayer time. When

you give a gift to help daily Hope take the

certain Hope of Jesus to people around the world, we'll

send you the all new twenty twenty one Daily Hope

Prayer Journal to say thanks. Quantities are limited, so don't wait.

You can give right now by going to Pastorick dot

com or by calling eight hundred six hundred five zero

zero four. We'll say thanks by sending you the brand

new Daily Hope Prayer Journal. That's Pastorick dot com or

call eight hundred six hundred five zero zero four.

You're listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope once again. Here's

Pastor Rick Warren.

The first thing if I want to be wise is

I must the l and learn stands for I must

listen to God's word every day. I must listen to

God's word every day. Now I just listen to the radio,

I just listen to television. None just listen and read

what's on the internet. I got to listen to God's

word every day because that's where the wisdom comes from.

Proverbs chapter one, verse seven says, this start with God.

The first step, start with God. The first step in

learning is bowing down to God. The Bible says, the

fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Why

because it comes from God. Let me show you the

next verse Proverbs two, verse six. It is the Lord

who gives wisdom. From him comes knowledge and direction. You

don't get it from television. You don't get it from

the internet. You don't get it from magazines. Wisdom comes

from God. Question, how many of you believe everything you

read in the newspaper? Of course, none of us do.

How many of you believe everything you hear on the

radio or watch on television? No, how many of you

believe everything you read on the internet. You know, how

many of you believe everything God says is true in

his word?

Question?

Why do we spend more time reading and listening to

what we don't believe and what we do? Tell me

the logic of Alan. Okay, there are a lot of

things in life you can read about. They don't build

your wisdom, They just keep you pretty much about the same.

You gotta start with the Word.

Now.

The Bible says this Proverbs fifteen, verse fourteen, A wise

person is hungry, hungry for truth, while the fool feeds

on trash. You gotta print that verse out and tape

it to your television. You're gonna either feed on truth

or you're gonna feed on trash. And whatever you fill

your mind with is what's gonna come out, garbage in,

garbage out. If you want to be wise, you gotta

feed on truth every day, not feed on trash every day. Now,

you remember a year ago when we did forty days

in the Word, and I talked about there three kinds

of things you can fill your mind with. You can

fill your mind with poison. You can fill your mind

with junk food, or you can fill your mind with

health food.

Three kinds of reading. Material or.

Poison is stuff that poisons your system. It's bad for you,

it takes you down. Pornography is poison. You know, we

worry about air pollution, You should worry more about your mind.

Pollution.

What you allow in your mind is far more important

than what you breathe. Because if this is a computer

that runs your life. We worry about making sure my

water is pure. I gotta have pure water. You should

worry more about the pure content that goes in your mind.

Some people are so open minded their brains fall out.

You know, they let anything. It's like a railroad going

through my mind and they say, you know, you know,

they say, well, I can, I can watch that stuff.

It just doesn't bother me anymore. That's the problem. You

have become so desensitized to evil. It doesn't bother you anymore.

You can watch your rape on a movie.

It doesn't bother you.

If that doesn't bother you, you got a problem. You

have become desensitized to evil. If you can watch your

rape and it doesn't bother you, And when you can

watch stuff that is vulgar, profane, blasphemous, evil, vile, abusive,

and it doesn't bother you and you can read it,

you have a problem. You have become a fool. Wise

people protect their mind. They put on the helmet of salvation.

They don't just let anything into their mind that's poison.

You keep it out now. The next category of stuff

you can put in your mind is junk food. Junk

food is neither good nor bad. It's just junk. And

there's nothing wrong with junk food except that it has

no nutritional value to it. And most of the stuff

you see on TV, it's not evil, it's not bad.

It's just junk food. It's what I call stuffing. And

the problem stuffing is when you stuff yourself with stuffing,

you have no hunger for truth. When you feed on trash,

you're not hungry for truth. If you go watch the

television for four hours, you don't want to go read

the Bible because you're full. Your mind is full, and

you filled up on empty calories. Stuff that doesn't help

your body, it doesn't help your mind. A lot of

things aren't necessarily wrong to watch or read. They're just

not necessary, and so you have to do. The wise

person says, I'm not gonna stuff my mind with stuffing.

It's either good nor bad, but it's just do I

really need to know this?

Not really.

You've stuffed your mind with stuffing, you have no hunger

for truth. The wise person feeds on truth. That's brain food,

that's soul food that's nutritional food. It makes you wiser,

wiser in your relationships, wiser in your time, wiser in

your money, wiser in your business, why your parenting, wiser

in your marriage, and all these other areas because you're

feeding on truth. So number one, if I want to learn,

I've got to every day spend time connecting.

To the truth.

I've got to listen to God every day. We're gonna

do that and develop that habit. Number two the e

and learn how you learn to be wise. The E

is enlist a friend or enlist friends who challenge me.

If you're going to be wise, you got to get

some wise people in your life. It's like that old phrase,

if you run on to fly so or with the eagles,

you can't run with the turkeys. You got to put

some smart, wise, godly people in your life. And if

you don't have any of those people in your life,

you need to enlist them.

You need to get a few.

You don't need a lot of friends in life, you guys,

you don't really need to be popular. You just need

a few good friends. Friends that build you up, not

tear you down, friends that are eyes not fools. If

you hang around with fools. That's what you become.

Now.

We always grow in community, We always grow in connection.

That's why we talk about small groups all the time.

You cannot grow to spiritual maturity by yourself. Sorry, you

just can't do it. You could go become a hermit

or a monk and move to the top of a

mountain and spend your life in silence and reading books,

and you would not grow in wisdom. You can grow

in knowledge, but you won't grow in wisdom. Why because

wisdom is all about relationships. The Bible says, wisdom is

all about love. The Bible says God is love. Wisdom

shows up primarily in relationships. That's why a lot of

people have great educational degrees and their marriages are falling apart.

They're educated, but they're not wise. You look at the

relationships of a person to see if they're wise or not.

Let me just pause there for a minute. You look

at a person's relationships to see if they're wise or

or not. It's all about love. So if you don't

have any relationships, then you don't have any love. And

if you don't have any love in your life, you

are not wise. Wisdom is about love and relationships. The

quality of the rest of your life will largely be

determined by the people you choose to keep close to you.

The quality of.

Your life for the rest of your life will be

largely determined by the friends that you choose, the kind

of friends you choose, and how close you keep them

to you. If you build wise friendships in your life,

you're gonna get wiser. So I need to enlist friends

who challenge me. You need a group in your life.

Look at what the Bible says here on the screen

one crindin fifteen. Bad company corrupts good character. We know that,

then just happen with teenagers. Happens with all this peer pressure.

Bad company croups good care character. You need friends who

build you up, not tear you down. You know, if

I come over here at the edge of the stage

and I'm trying to pull you up, and you're trying

to pull me down, which is it easier to do

h It's obvious it's always easier for somebody to pull

you down for them to pull you up. You need

to not have friends in your life who pull you down.

People who pull you down are not your friends. They're

not They're not your friends. If they're pulling you down,

they're not your friends. Friends pull you up. And so

you need to get wise people you need to get

You need a small group. That's what you need. The

Bible says this Proverbs thirteen twenty. Spend time with the whys,

and you will become wise. But spend time with friends

of fools. Be friends of fools will suffer. Do you

have anybody in your life who is giving input for

good for God in your life on a regular basis.

That's called a small group, and you need to Like, Hey,

you meet with them once a week. You don't need

to meet with them every day, but once a week

you get a small group of friends and they're building

you up there encouraging you to do the right thing,

not the wrong thing. If you don't have that, you're

going to give up. So what I want you to do? Then,

during the next six weeks, everybody in our church, I

want you to get in a group. Now, how big

is a group? I'm not talking ten people, I'm not

talking to eight people. Actually, in a small group, small

was better. All you need is three. If you only

have two, that's a duo. That's not a group. That's

a date that's what that is. Okay, maybe you won't

go on a date.

That's fine too.

Go ahead, go on a date, but that's not your

small group. Okay, and be sure make sure you're having

personal devotions on your date. Okay, I'm just kidding. Just

how do I need a group? Jesus said it like this,

where two or three are gathered in my name, there

am I in the midst of them. Now there's a

third key if you want to learn wisdom. First, every

day I listen to God for a very short time.

I just read the Bible or listen to the Bible.

Connect.

That's the l Then I enlist some friends and get

some wise people around me in my life for input

that encourage me keep me going. The A stands for

ask questions and accept correction.

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

you've chosen to study along with us today. If you'd

like to receive rix free daily devotional, just go to

Pastororick dot com and sign up right now. Rick will

be back in a moment to close out our time today.

But first, if you want to make your time in

prayer the best it can be, then you're going to

want to get a copy of the brand new twenty

twenty one Daily Hope Prayer Journal. This year's theme, God

Great Adventure for you will help you tap into God's

power and presence when you learn how to pray with

passion and purpose. Here's Pastor Rick to tell you more.

Do you ever feel like your prayers get stuck in

a rut? Would you like to know what God told

me to do when my prayer life got stuck in

a rut. It was a time when I just felt

like I was praying the same thing over and over

and over. In fact, I was beginning to wonder if

God was even answering my prayers or even listening. Maybe

you felt that way sometimes, or maybe you feel that

way right now. So what did God tell me to do? Well,

here's what he told me. It was such a powerful

way to re energize my prayer life, and it was

so simple that I want to pass it on to you.

God told me to do this, he said, Rick. Start

writing down what you're saying to me, and then I

want you to write down what I say to you.

Write down what you say to me, and then write

down what I say to you. You see, It's really

not that complicated. God just said I should start by

by writing down what I'm feeling, and then I should

write down what He tells me after I've read his word.

It's really just a form of journaling, and spiritual journaling

is a spiritual habit that will help your prayers stay

fresh and effective. If you've never tried it, I'm begging

you try this for a week or two and see

if it doesn't reinvigorate your prayer life. Journaling has many

many benefits to your spiritual life. It'll help you stay

consistent in your prayers. It'll give you a permanent reminder

of how God answers your prayers. Because you we've written

him down. It shows how God is working in your life.

You can go back and review it. It'll even help

you worship God more and more as you speak to him.

God speaks to people who care enough to write it down.

So write down what God tells you. But you've got

to have a place to do that now. I want

to encourage you, and I want to help you take

this simple step of learning this new spiritual happy in

your prayers, of writing down your prayers and writing down

your prayer request So what I did is I had

my Daily Hope team create a brand new spiritual prayer journal.

It's got a real simple to follow format that will

help you put into practice God's wisdom that is found

in Philippians four to six that says this, don't worry

about anything. Instead, pray about everything, Tell God what you need,

and thank him for all he has done. Those four

things are part of the format of our prayer journal

for this year.

It's really cool. You're going to love this tool.

Covered in soft vegan leather with full color pages, this

prayer journal has sections to pray for specific people and situations,

as well as space to express your gratitude and personal

prayer requests to God. Each page is beautifully designed and

filled with inspiring Bible versus photo work and artwork. The

God's Great Adventure for You Prayer Journal is a spiritual

growth tool designed to help you enjoy a vibrant prayer life,

connect with the Lord, and establish a consistent daily prayer time.

When you give a gift to help Daily Hope take

the certain Hope of Jesus to people around the world,

will send you the all new twenty twenty one Daily

Hope Prayer journal to say thanks. Quantities are limited, so

don't wait to get your copy of this great resource.

Just call eight hundred six hundred five thousand and four

or go to pastorick dot com to get yours. That's

eight hundred six hundred five thousand and four or pastorick

dot com. 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 Ricks Daily Hope and

your generous financial support