Rick Warren - From Stressed to Blessed Part One

Hi, this is Pastor Rick, and I want to say

thank you for your faithfulness and supporting Daily Hope all

over this past year, and I'm looking forward to all

the exciting things God's going to do in our lives

as we work together in this coming new year. Happy

New Year, everybody.

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

including spiritual, physical, mental, emotional, relational, financial, and vocational. Now,

if you can improve in any of these areas I

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Right now, here's Pastor Rick Warren with part one of

a message called from Stressed to Bless.

When my two boys, josh and Matthew were young, they

were budding entrepreneurs and it seemed like every week they

had a different business deal. They were coming up with

something to sell, something that they were going to make

money at. Joshua was the entrepreneur and Matthew was the salesman.

And one day they decided to capitalize on the increasing

level of stress they saw in our society. So they

created this thing called homemade stress balls. Well, what they

did is they took balloons and filled them with sand

and tied a knot in it, and then when you

got under tension, you were supposed to squeeze this and

it would relieve the tension in your life and in

your body. And so they came in one day to

my office. They had a bucket of these, and Matthew said, Dad,

would you like to buy a stress ball? And I

said no. They said would you like one for free?

He said, I said yes. He said great, because when

you buy one, you get one free. That's salesmanship. That

is salesmanship. Now, It's true, we spend an awful lot

of money on relieving stress in our lives. Stress at

its core is simply a threat, real or perceived. Whenever

your body feels threatened by something, an emotional, physical, spiritual,

mental threat, stress responses take place in your body and

your blood pressure goes up, your pulse quickens, your adrenaline

shoots into your body, and all kinds of other physiological effects. Now,

there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, that's pretty be good.

If you're standing in the road and a truck comes

after you in your stress response is get out of

the road. You get that extraverst of energy. That's a

good thing. The problem is, in chronic stress, your body

never shuts down, and many, if not most, of you

are living under chronic stress. We're going to deal with

that today because hundreds and hundreds of scientific and medical

studies have shown that chronic stress in your life is

dangerous and devastating to your physical health. It's damaging to

your brain to always be under chronic stress, and it's

deadly to your body stress. Chronic stress can kill you. Now.

Last week we look at transforming your spiritual health, and

we looked at the habits for spiritual health. This week,

I want us to turn the dial a little bit

and we're going to look at the habits for physical health. Now,

what I want us to do this week in is

specifically look at the effect of stress on your body.

And what the Bible says is the antidote to the

most common stresses in your life. So, if you're a

little tired, a little worn down, little stressed out, you

picked a good week to come to church, because we're

going to help you out as we look at the

most famous psalm in the Bible, Psalm twenty three. Now,

before we look at the text, let me just identify

the seven most common sources of stress in modern life.

These are the seven things that cause stress most often

in today's lifestyle. Number one is worry, and the reason

why worry is number one is because there's a lot

more things to worry about than there used to be.

Nobody worried about identity theft twenty years ago. Nobody worried

about losing their cell phone years ago. There are a

lot of things we worry about today that your parents

didn't have to worry about because of their new worries

in an increasingly complex world. Worry. The second greatest source

of stress is hurry, and hurry comes from the increasing

pace in our life. Would you agree that seems like

the world's going faster and faster. We live in a

microwave nanosecond world where everybody wants it now, and they

want it yesterday, and they want it immediately, and everything

is going faster and faster. That creates stress. Speed creates stress. Obviously,

when you're running through a town, it's a whole lot

more stressful than simply walking slowly through a town. The

third thing that causes stress is crowds. Crowds, and as

the world gets more crowded, people are getting more stressed

out and wise. We have a thing called urbanization, and

that is people are moving to the cities. They're moving

to the cities. Life used to be rural, but now

it is definitely urban. Eighty three percent of America lives

in a large city. Eighty three percent. You know, in

eighteen hundred, there was only one city in the world

that had one million people in it. There's the city

of London. There's the only city on the planet that

had a million people in it. Today, there are over

five hundred cities in the world that have over a million,

and thousands and thousands that have half a million and

they're even now what we call mega cities like Mumbai, India,

which has you know, thirty two million, Tokyo which has

thirty six million, Mexico City thirty five million. These are

enormous cities and you can go block after block after

block without ever seeing any dirt. It's all been paved.

And this crowding and this urbanness creates additional stress in

our lives. It causes traffic stress. You know, I read

one study that said in the seventy five largest cities

in America that last year Americans spent are wasted over

four billion hours waiting in traffic jams. Just imagine amount

of productivity lost on that. And that wasted over six

billion gallons of gasoline while you were stuck in traffic.

That's a stress Number four. A fourth modern stress is

multiple choice, or more choices than ever before. And actually

the more choices you have in life, we think that's

more freeing, more liberating, but actually it's more paralyzing because

it creates indecision. You know, you used to walk into

a grocery store and there'd be a couple kinds of toothpaste.

There's now sixty kinds of toothpaste. Out there, I really

have to choose. I mean I only needed to use

the minty fresh and the non minty fresh. But now

they've got fourteen different ingredients and every one of them

has well, this one's left out and this one's added in,

and you go, how do I know? And so the

more choices you have, I mean, it used to be

like there was cough syrup. Now there's like fifty kinds

of cough syrup. How do I know which one is

the right one? And the more choices you have can

be paralyzing. When you think of all the different ways

you can get your coffee in Starbucks, that could be

a little overwhelming. I just need a cup of coffee.

That's all there is. Choice. The number five is the

loss of privacy. The loss of privacy. Actually, any loss

is stressful, but in the modern world, the loss of

privacy is that there are not just the government, but

all kinds of corporations keeping their number on you, and

they want to know where you are and who you are,

and what you've said and what you've bought. And every

time you know, you buy some now somebody rings it

up and they're keeping a record on how many Pampers

you've bought when you need to move to depens you

know you move from hot wheels to wheelchair.

Okay, you're listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope Rip will

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Have you ever noticed that the world has ever changing?

So called answers to your relationship struggles, solutions to your

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what the world offers often leaves us empty and searching

for more. The good news is God's Word contains timeless

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Once again, here's Rick. The loss of privacy, actually, any

loss is stressful, but in the modern world, the loss

of privacy is that there are not just the government

but all kinds of corporations keeping their number on you,

and they want to know where you are and who

you are, and what you've said and what you've bought.

And every time you know, you buy something, now somebody

rings it up and they're keeping a record on how

many Pampers you've bought. And when you need to move

to depens you know, you move from hot wheels to

wheelchair okay, And so the more choices there are, and

the loss of privacy that causes stress. Number six, the

word I put down is pluralism. And what is pluralism.

Pluralism is we now live in a world where the

people around you often have very different beliefs, convictions, lifestyle, cultures,

and things like that. One hundred years ago, America was

pretty much a homogeneous place that were commonly held values

people shared in common. But that's just not true anymore.

Technology has shrunk the globe and we are now a

melting pot, but we're really more like a stew and

people who live all around you and who work all

around you often have very different beliefs than you, often

have very different cultural values and things like that. What

does that mean. It means that there's going to be conflict,

and conflict comes from this being around people of different things.

And of course the media feeds on conflict and it's

created this culture of incivility where people are just rude

to each other. Then number seven is the fear of

the future, the what ifs, the fear of the future.

Now we're going to look at these things, but I

want to read you Psalm twenty three because all of

the antidotes are in Psalm twenty three and it's just

six verses long. But we find the seven antidotes in

these six verses. The Lord is my shepherd, so I

have all I need. He makes me lay down in lush,

green meadows, and he leads me beside calm, quiet waters.

He restores my soul. He guides me in the right

paths for his name's sake. And even though I walk

through the valley of the shadow of death, I will

fear no evil for you or with me. Your rod

and your staff they comfort me. You prepare a table

before me in the presence of mine enemies, and you

anoint my head with oil. My cup overflows. Surely goodness

and mercy, Surely goodness and love of will follow me

all the days of my life, and I will dwell

in the house of the Lord forever. That is the

most beloved psalm in the Bible. And it's not by accident,

because it's given comfort to people for thousands of years.

But when you really dig into it, and when you

understand each of these metaphors, it is telling you how

to lower your stress. It is a model of stress management.

How many of you would like to be healthier? Proverbs

fourteen thirty says peace of mind makes the body what healthy.

It's not always what you eat, it's what eats you.

That makes you unhealthy. And so we've got to figure

out how to lower the stress and raise the peace

of mind. How many of you would like to live longer? Cout,

I see your hands. Yeah, okay. Look at the next verse.

In the Living New Living translation, it says a relaxed

attitude lengthens a man's life. So it's all about attitude. Now,

I want us to today, in Psalm twenty three, take

this passage and tear it apart, line by line, and

I want us to see that there are seven spiritual

habits for reducing stress. They actually parallel the seven sources

of stress that I just gave you in the modern world.

And I said that the first cause of stress in

your life is worry. And you worry because you think, well,

I have what I need when I need it. And

anytime you expect other people to meet your needs instead

of God, you're going to be frustrated. You're going to

be disappointed, and they're not going to be able to

measure up because nobody can meet all your needs. No man,

no woman, only God can meet all your needs. So

the first antidote to stress is this is an important one.

Write it down. Look to God to meet all my needs.

That's the first thing David says we need to do.

I look to God to meet all my needs, and

that calms me down. That way, I'm not going to

be disappointed because I'm going to trust in God. Now,

this single change in your life. If you would stop

looking to other people to meet your needs, if you

would stop looking to your husband, to your wife to

meet your needs, your stress would go down dramatically. Stop

putting your security in things that you can lose. Sometimes

people put their security in their job. They lose their job,

they lose their their peace of mind. They put their

security in their marriage and then their spouse dies, or

they go through the tragedy of a divorce and then

they go, who am I? What is my identity? Or

you put your security in your money. There's a lot

of ways you can lose your money. As your pastor

and friend, I recommend you never put your security in

anything that can be taken away from you. I'll say

it again, you should always put your security, find your

security in something that can never be taken from you.

You can lose your job, you can lose your health,

you can lose your reputation, you can lose your spouse,

you can lose your mind, but you cannot lose your

relationship to Christ. And so you put your security in

that you look to God to meet all your needs

Verse one. So I'm twenty three. The Lord is my shepherd.

So I have all I need, I shall not want.

I have nothing that I don't need because He's going

to be my shepherd. I stop expecting other people to

meet the needs, and only God can meet now. The

Bible says this in Romans chapter eight. Since God did

not spare even his own son for us, but gave

him up for us all, won't he surely give us

everything else we need? The logic there is obvious. If

God loved you enough to send Jesus Christ and done

on the cross, don't you think he loves you enough

to take care of every other need in your life? Yes,

of course he does. So stop looking to other people

to meet your needs, because they're going to let you down.

There's no one who could possibly meet all your emotional needs.

There's no one who could possibly meet all your physical, mental,

spiritual needs. So David says, I'm not going to look

to other people to meet all my needs. I'm going

to look to God. The Lord is my shepherd, so

I have all I need. What's he saying here that

the first step in stress reduction is worship. I refocus

on God. I stop focusing on expecting other people to

meet my needs, and I refocus on God. Look at

this verse up here on the screen. Isaiah thirty verse

fifteen says this, The sovereign Lord says, only in returning

to me and waiting for me will you be saved?

In quietness and confidence is your strength? Not? He going

to say, Not in anxiety and in fear, Not in

hard work and planning, not in a self motivation and

positive and latitude. He says, in quietness and confidence is

your strength? You say the Lord is my shepherd. In fact,

I want you to make this an affirmation in your life.

Every time you start to get stressed out, you need

to pause, say the Lord is my shepherd. I have

everything I need. The Lord is my shepherd. I have

everything I need. When you start to get stressed out,

like I don't have what I need right now, the

Lord is my shepherd. He's going to provide, He's going

to take care of me. I'm going to look to

God to meet all my needs. Now. Once you've laid that,

that's the bedrock of stress management. Then you go to

the second step, and here's verse two. I need to

obey God's instruction about rest. I need to obey God's

instructions about rest. You know, so much of the stress

in your life comes from always being in a hurry,

always working too much, always feeling like you got too

much to do. It's why you overwork. You never can

get caught up. How many of you feel like I

can never get caught up. Let's just have true confession.

I can never get caught up. Yeah, that's true right now,

and I have over twelve hundred unread emails in my inbox.

I have over twelve thousand emails in my inbox. There's

no way I'm ever going to get caught up. Just

no way I'm ever gonna get caught up. So what

do you do? Well, you look to God to meet

your needs, and then you obey God's instruction about rest.

There's no way I can say, well, I'll just stay

up for the next three months and read all those emails. Now,

you still got to rest. Now, think about this. If

God had wanted to, he could have created human beings

without the need for sleep. Why did he? Why did

he create you with the need for sleep? You will

spend one third of your life asleep. Now, if God's

only going to give you sixty eight 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.

This is past mister Rick's Daily Hope. We're so happy

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

you'd like to receive Ricks free daily devotional, just go

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will 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 pricibles

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

and vocational. We'll 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 and four or Pastorick dot com.

Right now, here's Pastor Rick to tell you about an

exciting new opportunity.

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