Rick Warren - What Happens When You Have Faith—Part Two

Hey, everyone, it's Daily Hope with Pastor Rick Warren. 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. And so far

this series is giving all of us powerful tools to share our faith, a

faith that gives you courage to impact the world around you. Now, let's

join Rick as he shares the final part of a message called what Happens when

you have Faith. The first thing that I do when I began to open

the eyes of my heart Lord, and I began to see what God is

doing around me, and I begin to look at things from God's viewpoint,

it shrinks my problem. It gives you a new perspective. See, when

you see your problem from God's point of view, well, then everything gets

a whole lot more manageable. If you have a big God, problems get

small. If you've got a small God, problems get big. Now when

you come to the Lord and you sayd Lord, You're a big God,

and you can handle this problem, and I'm going to give it to you,

and I'm going to just let you work it out. I'm trusting you.

I'm seeing with the eyes of it. Let you work it out.

Then you can relax and you say, well, how's it going to be

solved? And you say, well, that's God's problem. It's not my

problem, it's God's problem. Faith shrinks my problem. Genesis eighteen fourteen says,

is anything too hard for the Lord? And the answer is obviously no,

nothing's too hard for the Lord. Luke one thirty seven. Jesus says,

for nothing is impossible with God. You know, if you were to

come to my office and you were to go into my library and pull out

my dictionary and look up the word impossible, you would find that the word

impossible is not in my dictionary because thirty five years ago I cut it out.

I said, if it's not in God's vocabulary, it's not in mind.

The Bible says nothing thing is impossible with God. Faith shrinks my problems.

Number two. Faith opens the door for a miracle. Faith opens the

door for a miracle. Faith can move mountains. You know, if you

study the Bible and if you study history, you find that every time God

moves out on earth and does a miracle is because somebody believed. Faith opens

the door to miracles, Mark eleven Jesus said this, have faith in God.

If you have faith in God and you don't doubt, you could tell

this mountain to get up and jump into the sea and it would. Whatever

you ask for in prayer will be yours if you only have the faith.

Now, what's he talking about here telling them mountain to jump in the sea.

God has set up the universe in a hierarchy of laws, and the

law of faith is actually a higher law than the law are the laws of

nature. And that's where miracles come in because when faith is used, the

law of faith goes into practice, and God set up the fact that the

law of faith can actually do more than the laws of physics. You know,

if you actually had the real faith, you say, go jump into

an ocean and the mountain wood. And does God still perform miracles today?

Of course he does. Every time you stretch your faith, God does miracles

every single time. So my question is, we're getting ready to start this

series, what's the mountain in your life? What's the mountain that needs to

be moved? What's the thing You look at that thing, and that thing

it's never moved, It hasn't moved, It's not gonna move. It never

will move. What is the mountain in your life that you were saying it's

never gonna change. Well, you've already decided that's a self defeating and so

fulfilling prophecy. How do you know, maybe God wants to do a law

of faith superseding the law of nature. He has, he has in the

past, he has in the present, He's done it all around the world.

Faith opens the door for miracles. God is in the mountain moving business.

But you must not doubt. Look at this verse on the screen.

Matthew thirteen fifty eight says Jesus did not do many miracles. He's talking about

that town there because of their lack of faith. Their lack of faith caused

Jesus to not do many miracles. You say, I don't see any miracles

in my life. I wonder why are you seeing with eyes of fear?

Are you seeing with the eyes of faith? Faith shrinks my problems. That

opens the door to miracles. The number three. Faith moves God to act

on my behalf. Faith moves God to act on my behalf. Now,

don't get me wrong when I say this, it moves God to act on

my behalf. I do not believe. I do not subscribe to the health

and wealth theology where God really ends up being a servant and that God serves

you rather than you serving God. And in many versions of this, God

becomes a genie where you rub the bottle and you pray the prayer, or

you drop the you know, fifty cent piece into the slot machine whatever,

and then you hit the jackpot. No, God is not your genie.

God is God, and you're not, and he is not there to cater

to your every whim. He's not. He's just not. But at the

same time Matthew nine twenty nine, Jesus said this, according to your faith,

it will be done to you. God says, you get to choose

how much I bless your life. According to your faith, it will be

done to you. Do you want to know why God has blessed my life?

Not because I deserve it because I don't, Not because I'm smarter than

everybody else, because I'm not. Maybe because I'm better looking, but no,

just kidding, Not because of any human thing at all. God has

worked in my life because I humbly expect him to. I expect him to

use me. And God does exactly what you expect him to do according to

your faith, it will be done unto you. If you expect God to

do a little in your life, he'll do a little. If you expect

God to do a lot, he'll do a lot. If you don't expect

God to do anything, he won't do anything. This is why I'm going

to push you on your faith in this series. This is why I'm going

to stretch you and challenge you because I don't want you to be satisfied with

playing in Kitty Beach in the shallows of life. I want you to put

on your big boy swimsuit and dive in the deep end. And I want

you to challenge yourself to believe God more than you've ever believed him. For

I have believed God for some really big things in my life. But it

didn't start there. It started by developing the muscle of faith a little at

a time. And when I saw God did that, well, then God

could do that. And I just keep pressing and pushing and stretching. And

the Bible says, according to your faith, it will be done to you.

Any of you, as a parent knows that is a mom or dad.

Fathers love to bring pleasure to their kids and even more to their grandkids.

And when they do that, it brings them pleasure. It gives God

pleasure providing for you. It gives God pleasure watching you succeed. And he

goes, that's my girl. She's being ex exactly who I made her to

be. That's my boy. He's being exactly who I made him to be.

And the Bible says God takes pleasure in the success of his saints,

and so according to your faith, it will be done unto you. See

the problem with us is we think the wrong thing moves God. God is

not moved by my complaints. God is never moved by my griping, my

complaining, my grumbling, my whining. None of that moves God. But

God is moved. And I said, God, I'm trusting you, and

I'm expecting you to keep your promise. You put your name on that promise,

and I'm expecting you to do it. That brings me to the fourth

benefit of faith. Faith unlocks all the promises of God. Faith unlocks all

the promises of God. You know, we've talked about this many times here

at Sadovak Church. There are over seven thousand promises in this book. In

the Bible from cover to cover, over seven thousand promises, and they're like

blank checks waiting for you to claim them. And if you want to be

a person of faith, a man of faith, or a woman of faith,

you must learn to become a promised person. Memorize the promises of God

so that you can claim them in your life when you need them. And

what does God have to say about all seven thousands of those promises? Tewo

Corinthians, Chapter one, verse twenty. For no matter how many promises God

has made, they are all yes in Christ. Circle that yes in Christ.

All of the promises that God has made in his Bible, in his

word, in the scripture are yes in Christ. And faith unlocks the promises

of God. Now let me just try to put it this way. What

if you were to find you were going through an old attic that you'd bought

a house and people had died and nobody claimed to the the leftovers. You're

going through the attic and you you find a letter promising a million dollars to

anybody who finds the letter? Would you be interested? Yes, yes,

you would be interested. But would it be useful if you didn't know who

wrote it? No? It'd be worthless. You could be holding on to

a promises. I will give whoever has this this letter one million dollars.

No, you'd have to You could only use it claim the promises if you

knew the name and the address of the person making the promise. The promises

of the Bible only apply to those who know the author, to those who

know the name of Jesus. All the promises are yes in Christ. And

when you know him personally, now you know the guaranteur of all the promises

of scripture. And faith unlocks the number five. Faith terms dreams god given

dreams into reality. Faith turns God given dreams into reality. Now this is

so important We're going to spend an entire session on it during this campaign.

On daring to dream, because nothing happens to somebody starts dreaming. And I

want to challenge you to dream about your relationships, to dream about your marriage,

a family, your career. The Bible is full of people who had

God given dreams. Abraham dreamed of being the father of a great nation.

Moses dreamed of setting the people free. Joseph dreamed of saving the nation and

his own family. Daniel and Paul and David and over and over and over

all through scripture, all kinds of people who are inspiring dreamers. But they

didn't even have a verse that we have today, And it's this verse Ephesians

three twenty. Glory be to God, who, by his mighty power,

his mighty power at work within us, is able to do far more than

we would ever dare to ask or even dream of, infinitely beyond our highest

prayers and desires and thoughts or hopes. Now, if therever there was a

blank check verse in the Bible, that's it. He says, God is

able to do far more than we would dare to ask. What are you

afraid to ask? God? For God is able to do far more than

we could even dream of. I don't know about you, but I'm a

pretty big dreamer. I can think of some pretty big dreams I have in

my lifetime. And God says Warren, you think of the greatest thing you

could ever dream of, the greatest thing you think I could do in your

life? And guess what I can top that. We limit God by our

unbelief. I think one of the biggest if there were tears in heaven,

it would simply because we would get there and we realize all the things that

could have done if we would just believe God for a little bit more.

To me, that would be hell. Hell would be to be shown everything

I could have accomplished and done and become and been as a husband, as

a father, as a man, as a pastor, all that I could

have been, and all that I could have done good in the world if

I had just believed God a little bit more. I want to push you

to believe God a little bit more than you ever have before, because God's

able to do far more, and we would dare to ask or even dream

of number six. Let me just end with this one. Faith gives me

power to hold on in tough times. This is why we are doing during

Faith for ten weeks, because it unlocks the promises of God, and it

shows us the power of God, and it turns dreams to reality, and

it gives me the power to hold on in tough times. Why is this

one important? Because faith doesn't always take you out of the problem. You

know that faith often takes you through the problem. Faith doesn't always take away

the pain. Faith gives you the ability to handle the pain. Faith doesn't

make life heaven on earth, this world is never going to be heaven on

Earth. Things are never going to go perfectly on this planet. You will

always have pain, and you will always have suffering in your life. But

faith gives you the ability to handle it. It doesn't take you out of

the storm, it calms you in the storm. I remember reading the stories

of Corey ten Boom, who was in a young woman sent to the Nazi

death camps, the prison concentration death camps Buchenwalden Auschwitz, and she said that

the people who lasted in those camps were those who had the deepest faith.

Why. Because faith gives me the power to hold on in tough times.

It produces persistence, It gives you the ability to bounce back. Study after

study after study after study has shown that probably the most important characteristic you could

teach a child, and probably the most important characteristic you need in your own

life if you're going to make it in life, is actually resilience. Resilience

it's the ability to bounce back, it's the ability to keep going. Why

Because nobody goes through life with an unbroken chain of successes. Everybody has failures,

flops, duds, mistakes. We all embarrass ourselves. Nobody goes through

life scot free. We all have pains, we all have problems, we

all have pressures. The people who make it in life have resiliency. I've

told this to pastor anytimes. You don't want to know how many times I've

wanted to resign as pastor of Saddleback Church. Just every Monday morning. They

go, God, it's too big, it's too many people, too much

responsibility. I'm not smart enough. What am I supposed to say to that?

Many people get somebody else who can do a better job than this,

And yet God says, keep on, keeping on? And where do you

get that keeping on? Keeping on? There's so many times over thirty five

years I wanted to just give up. There are a lot of things I

could have done, you know, easier, And after purpose driven life came

out, I effectively retired. I don't take a salary, so nobody pays

me to stay here. What is if it keeps me going faith? I

want to see what God's going to do next. I don't want to miss

out on it. So I don't like to miss really any week at church

because I want to think, is that going to be the week that could

change my life? I just never know if that's going to be the message

that might just set the new direction for the next five or ten years.

I just want to be there and be there and listen. The Bible says

in the Second Corinthians four, eight and nine Paul's testimony, we're pressed on

every side of troubles, but we're not crushed and we're not broken. He

said. We're perplexed. I means we're confused. We don't know why why

this happened. We're perplexed, but we don't give up and quit. We're

attacked, but God never abandons us, and we get knocked down, but

we're not knocked out, he says. We get up and we keep going.

Where do you get resilience like that? Faith? Now do you see

why you need to work on strengthen your faith, probably more than anything else,

and why we're going to spend ten weeks on it, Because it is

faith that does these six things. Strengths my problems, opens the door for

miracles, moves God to act on my behalf, unlocks all the promises of

God, turns dreams into reality, and gives me the power to hold on

in tough times. And by the way, faith is the way we get

to know God. John three point sixteen says God so loved the world that

he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in Him, that means

has faith in Him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. It's

how we get to know God. Now, as I said earlier, you

can't claim the promises of God unless you know the man who made the promises,

and his name is Jesus Christ. And there might be somebody listening this

weekend who has not stepped across a line and giving their lives to Christ.

If you don't do that, you're not going to get any of this.

It's going to be a total waste the next ten weeks. It starts with

a relationship, you know. I remember when I was a little boy and

America started the space race and we were racing the Communists or the Russians to

see who's going to get to the Moon first. And for a while Russia

was actually ahead, and they were sending up cosmonauts before we were traveling,

all before our astronauts went out into space. And I remember Yuri Gagarin,

who was a very famous Russian cosmonaut atheist, and he was the first man

to go up and circle the earth, and when he came down he said

this. He said, I was an eagle. He said, I searched

the heavens and I found no God. I didn't look. I looked for

God in the heavens when I was up there, and I did not see

him. There is no God. And all the Fathist applauded and said,

yeah, Yuri, you just proved there is no God. A few months

later, John Glenn, who by the way as a Christian and later served

as a Senator, but was an astronaut, and the Gemini program went up

and circled the Earth three times. When John Glenn came down, his first

words in his interview were, I saw God everywhere. I said. I

felt his glory in the heavens. I saw his presence in the stars.

I felt his power in the sun. I saw God everywhere. Which one

was telling the truth? The answer is they both were. They both were

because Jesus said in John chapter three, unless you're born again, you cannot

see the Kingdom of God. You can't see what God is doing behind the

scenes. You can't see the miracles, you can't see the mighty things he's

doing. You just can't see it because you're not tuned in. You can't

see the promises. So you need to give your life to Christ. Today

as we start this series, let's bow our heads, and I've got two

prayers that I want you to pray. First. If you already know Jesus

Christ and he's a part of your life and you're serving him as best you

know how, I want you to just say this simple prayer, Dear Jesus,

help me to see with eyes of faith, not fear. Help me

to see with eyes of faith not fear. You might even say, open

the eyes of my heart. Lord, I want to see you and say,

Lord, use this series to challenge and to stretch my faith so that

I might be more of the person that you want me to be. I

want to bring pleasure to your life. If you've never opened your life to

Jesus Christ, then your simple step is to say, Jesus, Yes,

Yes. As much as I know how, I open my life my heart

to you, just say that Jesus Christ, as much as I know how,

I open my life to you. I want to learn to love you

and trust you and follow you. I want to put my faith in you,

strengthen my faith in your name. I pray Amen. Hey, if

you've just prayed along with Rick to accept Jesus in your life, Rick would

love to hear from you. Just email Rick at Pastorick dot com. I

want you to take just a second and think, is there anybody I know

that is graduating this year? Could be a son or daughter, or a

grandchild, or maybe a neighbor or a family friend. Well, as you

celebrate this important milestone and they begin the next phase of their journey, they

really need to know that God created them, loves them, and has a

plan for their lives. So Rick created a special resource just for graduates called

The Purpose Driven Life. Selected Thoughts and Scripture for the Graduate. This is

a beautiful book that I've given to my own kids. It's filled with inspirational

scripture, biblical wisdom from Pastor Rick, and some really beautiful imagery. It's

a really unique hardcover gift book that they'll want to keep, and it provides

an awesome reminder of the great life that God has planned for your graduate.

I'm telling you it will inspire them to seek His unique plan and purpose for

their life. Please don't miss this great opportunity to minister to the graduate in

your life. Today. We'll send you a copy to say thanks when you

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