Rick Warren - From Stressed to Blessed Part Two

Hi, this is Pastor Rick Warren. You know, the Bible

says that God's mercies are new every morning. That means

every day you get a chance to start over, new day,

new vision, new goals, new mercy. That's good news. We're

going to be talking about it all year here at

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This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible teaching ministry

of Pastor Rick Warren. Today we continue in a series

called Transformed. In these lessons, Rick uncovers key principles found

in God's.

Word that will completely.

Transform our lives from the inside out in every area

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five thousand and four to find out more. Right now,

here's Pastor Rick Warren with part two of a message

called From Stress to Blast.

You will spend one third of your life asleep. Now,

if God's only going to give you sixty eighty one

hundred years here on earth, why wouldn't he give you

one hundred percent of the time. Why would one third

of that time be wasted in sleep? Because God wants

you to learn the importance of rest. Rest is so important.

God rest. God modeled it when he created the whole universe.

The Bible says that after he finished all creation, it says,

on the seventh day, God rested. Now, why did God rest?

He wasn't tired. God doesn't ever get tired. He was

modeling the importance of rest to your life. And he says,

every seventh day you rest. And he said, that's what

God did. He modeled it. Now, the Bible's filled with

instructions about rest, recreation, and relaxation. In fact, it's so important.

God put it in the Big Ten. It's in the

ten Commandments, right up there with don't commit adultery and

don't murder and don't lie.

He says, every seventh day you take a day off.

Hello, that's how important a sabbath is in your life.

Jesus later said the Sabbath was made for man, not

man for the Sabbath. In other words, God says, I

created this idea if you take a day off every

seven days for rest, recreation, worship, and restoration. He goes,

that's my idea. It's for your benefit. It's so you

don't burn out. And yet today, in our modern society,

people aren't doing that. Even on their day off, they're working.

And a lot of people, even if they go to

a church service, then they go home and they go

right back to work trying to get done all the

stuff they didn't get done during the work week. That's

not a sabbath. That's not a sabbath. Now, God says,

I want you to rest. Psalm twenty three, verse two

says this he makes me lie down. Circle the phrase

makes me He says, God makes me lie down? Has God,

I've had to make you lay down because you aren't

smart enough to obey what he says about rest and

take a day off every week. You know, sheep aren't

smart enough to rest when they get tired, so the

shepherd has to make them lay down. And if you're

not smart enough to get the rest you need and

take a day off every week for rest, your body

will make sure you do it. And God has wired

your body in such a way that if you don't

take time off, your body will make time off. Anybody

want to give a testimony on that. If you just

keep working, working, you're going to get sick. Because God

wired you to obey his commandments. Getting enough sleep is

essential to stress management. I want you to write this down.

My best requires rest. You are not wasting time when

you're relaxing. You're not wasting time when you're resting. It

is better to have loafed and lost than to have

never loafed at all. That's why God gave us a sabbath.

And here's the Sabbath Exodus thirty four to twenty one.

Six days are set aside for work. But every seventh

day you must rest completely. Circle the word completely. You

must rest completely. Even during your seasons of plowing and harvest,

you must observe a Sabbath day of rest. Notice that

even in your busiest season, it's no excuse you may

be a tax accountant and it's April, you still have

to take a day off.

Okay.

I mean you may be a retailer and it's Christmas season,

you still have to take a day off. You may

be a farmer and it may be a harvest or

planting season. You still have to take a day off. Now,

what am I supposed to do on my Sabbath? Three things?

Write these down. Here's three things you're supposed to do

on your Sabbath. Number one, rest my body. You need

to rest your body physically.

Rest.

There's a biblical basis for a good Sunday afternoon nap,

right there. Number two, just not when I'm speaking. Number two,

refocus my spirit. I rest my body on the Sabbath,

and I refocus my spirit. And what is that? That's worship.

It's what you're doing right now. You are refocusing your

spirit right now by coming to worship, and in corporate worship,

we recharge and refresh our spirit. And number three, I

am to recharge my emotions. Use the sabbath to recharge emotions.

That's what recreation does. It recharges your emotions. Now, different

things recharge different people, and we'll talk about that in

just a minute.

About how you.

Need beauty in your life, but you need you need

to do something that restores you and re energize. It

could be a hobby, it could be a sport. These

are good things that God has given us as gifts

in order to recharge your emotions. You know, it doesn't

really matter which day is your Sabbath. In fact, the

Book of Colossians in the Bible says it doesn't matter

which day you choose. You just need to choose to day.

My sabbath is not Sunday. Sunday is a workday for me,

by the way, so is Saturday. My sabbath is Monday.

And on Monday, I rest and I refocus and I

recharge and that's and I don't do any work on Monday.

That's my sabbath. And by the way, I don't call

it your day off, because if it's your day off,

you'll cheat on it. And you said, oh, I got

all these things they need to do, I'll do this.

But if it's your sabbath, then you use it for

what God intended. He said, but I feel guilty when

I relax. Well, Jesus didn't. When you study jesus ministry,

he often took time off to relax. In fact, he'd

go out into an entire period of intensive ministry and

then he'd say, guys, we need to come apart for

a while. We're going off to the mountains. We're going

off the desert. We got to come apart. And I

always say, if you don't come apart, you're going to

come apart. And he said, let's go off to the desert.

He goes out there where there's these springs and those

those date palms, palms and springs and palm springs. There's

a biblical basis for going to palms right there. Okay,

he says, go off to the desert and we're gonna.

Go relax for a while.

I'm sure they didn't have a jacuzzi to sit in,

but it would have been nice. But Jesus didn't feel

guilty about it. Did you know that during the French

Revolution they canceled the French government canceled the sabbath and

said every day is going to.

Be a workday.

And after a couple of years they had to reinstate

it because the health of the nation had crumbled. You

need this in your life, you need a sabbath. I

heard about a guy who said to his pastor. He said, Pastor,

I tried to get a hold of you all day

on Monday, and the pastor said, well, I'm sorry, it's

my day off. And the man said, well, the devil

never takes a day off, and he said yeah, and

if I didn't, I'd be just like the devil. And

some of you that's why you're so mean. You're not

getting enough sleep, you're not getting enough rest, and you're

a little devil because you're not taking the Sabbath.

And the devil's not your model. Okay.

Number three, I looked to God to meet on my needs.

The Lord is my shepherd. I obey God's instructions about rest.

He makes me lay down, lie down. Then number three,

I recharge my soul with beauty. Beauty is an incredibly

important thing in stress management. Ugliness stresses you out. Beauty inspires,

Beauty encourages, Beauty motivates, Beauty stirs up positive emotions.

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

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

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Have you ever noticed that the world has ever changing

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Once again, here's Rick.

I look to God to meet all my needs. The

Lord is my shepherd. I obey God's instructions about rest.

He makes me lay down, lie down. Then number three,

I recharge my soul with beauty. That's the third thing

you need to do. Recharge my soul with beauty. Beauty

is an incredibly important thing in stress management. Ugliness stresses

you out. Beauty inspires, Beauty encourages, Beauty motivates, Beauty stirs

up positive emotions. Have you ever thought about why God

made the world so beautiful?

And you look at.

Sunrises and sunsets, beautiful flowers that are never even seen,

and all of these sites around the world that many

people will humanize.

We'll see, but God created a world of beauty.

He could have made Earth just like the moon, just

a moonscape, or like Tattooine.

For those of you who don't know Star Wars.

That's the desert planet that Luke was from Skywalker, and

he wanted to get off that planet really quick because

it's pretty ugly. Anybody should have go on about the gospel.

According to Scar Wars, he could have made it just

a desolate, dusty, gray planet.

No.

No, God created a planet with vibrant colors. Have you

ever heard anybody say? I heard it the other day

when I was actually last summer, I was on vacation

up in Yosemite. We were under some redwood trees, and

a man said to me, I feel so close to

God in nature.

Well, of course you do. He created it.

Man was made to live in a garden, not in

a skyscraper. When God created man, he put him in

the garden of Eden. He didn't put him a skyscraper.

You weren't made to live in everything concrete. God made

us to live in a garden, in a beautiful place.

Any of you remember Woodstock? You're really old if you

just raise your hand. Okay, really really old. Okay. There's

this rock concert many many years ago. Joni Mitchell wrote

a song about it called Woodstock, and it says, well,

I came upon a child of God. He was walking

along the road, and I said where you're going? He said,

I'm going up the Yazgres Farm for this rock and

roll band.

And there's a line in.

The course that says this, we are stardust, we are golden,

and we're caught in the devil's bar and we've got to.

Get back to the garden.

And it's a capital g she's talking about the garden

of Eden. We've come a long way from the Garden

of Eden on this planet.

People say I feel close to God in nature. Of

course you do.

It's God's beauty, and beauty inspires and beauty motivates. Notice

the next verse Psalm twenty three, verse two and three.

He makes me lie down? But where does he make

me lie down?

He makes me lie down in lush green meadows golf course.

And leaves me.

Beside calm, quiet waters.

By the sandtrap.

He restores my soul. Okay, he restores my soul. Now

it's no wonder. Psalm twenty three is the most beloved

psalm because we can all visualize this one. When I

say think about lush, green meadows and a calm, quiet lake, you.

Relax just thinking about it. Okay.

If I say think about downtown LA, you get stressed out.

I say, think about meadows and calm waters and babbling brooks.

Nature refreshes because beauty inspires. Now you need beautiful scenes.

You need to see beautiful scenes, and you need to

hear beautiful sounds. In order to keep the stress down

in your life. You need to add beauty into your life.

Let me give you some suggestions. Write these down.

Number one, get outside every day. If you're not getting

outside every day, your stress level is going up. Even

if it's just your backyard, even if just walk around

the block, even if it's take your lunch outside. Walk

outside of the office and sit outside and look up

at a tree while you eat your sandwich. You need

to get in touch with God's creation. You need to

surround yourself with beauty. Get outside. Let me give you

a second suggestion. Start the day with God, not the media.

Before you read any text message, before you check your email,

before you turn on the radio to some talk radio

people screaming at each other, or before you turn on

the television for some morning show. You need to get

in touch with God first. The first seven minutes of

your day set your mood every day. So do you

want to start it with an alarm clock and then

the worst news of the day coming at you. No,

you don't really need to know all the bad news

first thing when you get up, you don't need to

know that you need to turn on some praise music,

some worship music. You need to get in touch with God.

You need to let the first five ten minutes of

your day be with the Lord, and that'll dramatically reduce

your stress and improve your mood. Another suggestion number three,

intentionally put beauty around you, whether it's pieces of art

or music that inspires you, or something a craft, that

something that you know. I used to collect seashells, and

I collected them from all over the world, and I

did it and I had had my library filled with

them because looking at those things simply inspired me to go, Wow,

that the intricacy of that nautilus, how God inspired that.

Looking at beauty lowers your stress level. Listening to beauty

lowers your stress level. So I highly recommend that you

either take up an instrument or or some kind of

art or craft to create beauty. You are most like

your creator when you're being creative, and so you need

art in your life.

You need beauty.

And by the way, art and music are two of

the greatest arguments against evolution. Why because they're totally unnecessary

for human survival. And if the whole survival of the fittest

really works, then why in the world do we have

music and art in the world. Because you're more than

a body and God made you for worship. Did you

know more songs have been written about Jesus than any

other subject in human history. Did you know more books

have been written about Jesus than in any other subject

in human history. Do you know that more art has

been created about the Bible and honor and glorify God

and Jesus than any other subject in history. Why God

gave us music and God gave us art for one reason,

to express emotion. That's the only purpose of it. You

don't need it for physical survival, but you do need

it to really live, to be who God made you

to be. So fill your life with art, and fill

your life with music. You know, when I get stressed out,

I go home, I pick up a guitar and start

playing a guitar, are sitting on piano, bang on the piano, ukulele,

doesn't matter, kazoo, you know whatever, just come and paper.

It's like last week you said, make a joyful noise

that don't have to be pretty, Just make a joyful noise.

Philippians four to eight says this, You'll do best by

filling your minds and meditating on things that are true

and noble and reputable, and authentic and compelling and gracious.

It sounds like television, doesn't it. No, it doesn't. That

is not television. Okay.

You'll do best by filling your mind with things that

are true and noble and authentic, compelling, gracious, the best,

not the worst.

The beautiful, not the ugly.

Now because of sin, there's a lot of ugliness in

the world. World, there are a lot of unpleasant things

in the world. Whatever you give your attention to is

going to either raise or lower your stress. Some of

you during fifty days transformation, you need to do a

fast on the news. I hate to tell you this,

but you could miss the news for the next fifty days,

and I'm going to make one difference in the world.

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

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

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be back to close out our time today. But first,

you know the world is shouting for our attention with

answers to our relationship struggles, solutions to our financial troubles,

and explanations to our search for meaning. But the world's

promises leave us empty and searching for more. God's Word

contains the only answers that promise to transform your life

from the inside out. That's why Pastor Rick has put

together the Transformed Study Kit, which includes a vegan leatherbound

interactive workbook and a seven video session DVD. These video

sessions can be used independently or with a small group

of friends. This kit will help uncover key Biblical principles

that will completely transform your life in every area including spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, relational, financial,

and vocational. Will send you the Transformed Study Kit as

our way of saying thanks when you give a gift

to help daily hope take the certain hope of Jesus

to people around the world. To get your copy of

this great resource, call eight hundred six hundred five thousand

and four or go to Pastorick dot com. That's eight

hundred six hundred five thousand or Pastorick dot com. Here's

Pastor Rick with an important closing word.

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