Rick Warren - Allow God to Lead You Today & Unlock Your Life's Blessings

Now you've probably noticed that you often get tired. In fact,

you're tired a lot.

And at the end of the day, you're kind.

Of worn out and you run out of energy. And

the reason why is real simple. You're a human being.

Your strength is finite. God's strength is infinite. You know,

probably the most common greeting that you hear, particularly among believers,

is God bless you. And we say it not just

when people sneeze, We say, God bless you. Have you

ever thought, what in the world does that mean?

What's a blessing?

How do you define a blessing? Would you know a

blessing if it slapped you in the face? I mean,

the Bible says that sometimes a problem is a blessing.

So when you say, God bless them really great, you say,

given a bunch of problems? Really, what in the world

is a blessing? And if you pray for God to

bless somebody, how do you even know if it's happened

or not if you don't know what a blessing is?

The word blessed in the Bible is the Greek word.

Makarios, makarios.

And makarios is the word for happy, happy. It is

the word for happiness. To be blessed is to be happy.

To have a blessing is to have happiness in your life.

And when Jesus talks about you're blessed if you do this,

he's saying you're going to be happy if you do this.

It's the exact same word. Now today we're going to

begin quite a long series through Jesus' most famous sermon.

It's called the Sermon on the Mount.

And Jesus begins the Sermon on the Mount by talking

about eight ways to be blessed by God. Eight ways

to receive God's blessing on your life. You could call

it eight ways to be happy. The truth is, I

want you, as your pastor, I love you, I love you.

And I want God to bless your life. I want

him to bless your relationships. If you're in school, I

want him to bless your studies. If you're married, I

want you to bless your marriage. I want him to

bless your finances. I want God to bless your health.

I want God to bless your talent. I want God

to bless your future. So I'm extremely interested in how

to receive the blessings of God. Now, as we study scripture,

we find that the problem isn't with God, the problem

is with us. God wants to bless your life, you

just have to get blessable. And a lot of us

don't live lives in ways that God can bless. God

isn't gonna bless sin. God isn't gonna bless arrogance. God

isn't gonna bless indifference. There are a lot of things

God will not bless. And so when Jesus starts his

most famous sermon, the first thing he begins with, I'm

gonna teach you the eight conditions for receiving God's blessing

in your life. And for the next eight weeks, we're

gonna look at each of those eight conditions in detail.

We're calling it the P's to a blessed life. Now

let me read the first verses. In Matthew chapter five,

this isn't on your outline, but the Sermon on the

Mount is in Matthew chapter five, chapter six, and chapter seven.

We're gonna go through all three of those chapters verse

by verse in the days ahead. And chapter five starts

like this. When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up

on the mountain, and after he sat down, His disciples

came to him and he began to teach them. Now notice,

in Bible times, the teacher always sat and the people,

the audience, always stood.

I think that's a good idea. I want to be

like Jesus.

So maybe I'll just sit down right now and I'm

going to ask all of you to stand up for

the next 45 minutes, all right?

No, no, we won't do that.

But you know, I want to be like Jesus. Jesus

doesn't wear socks, so I don't wear socks. But Jesus,

it says, sat down. That was the way they taught

in those days. The teacher sat and everybody else stood.

And then he gives the first of these eight conditions

for being blessed by God. And he says this, blessed

are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom

of heaven. Now that doesn't tell me a whole lot

because I don't understand most of the words in that verse. First,

I don't know what poor in spirit means, and I

don't know what the kingdom of heaven is. So we've

gotta unpack this for you to understand the benefit to

your life. First, what is the kingdom of heaven? Is

that different from the kingdom of God? Well, I'm gonna

ask you to hold your questions on this, because I

promise you, in this series, we're gonna deal in depth

with this issue. We're going to look at what is

the kingdom of God and why it is so incredibly

important to your life and why you definitely want to

be a part of it. And we're going to go

into that in detail, explaining what is the kingdom of God.

But this week as we start the series, I want

us to look at just the first six words of

Jesus' most famous sermon. And the first six words he

starts with, the first word he starts with, blessed. Now

I like that. God starts teaching with a blessing. He

doesn't start with let me give you eight curses. He

gives you eight blessings. That's my kind of preacher. And

he says let me tell you eight ways to be happy.

That's the first thing Jesus talks about in the Sermon

on the Mount.

Here's what he says.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the

kingdom of heaven. So the first word out of his

mouth to you is a blessing. Now what does it

mean to be poor in spirit? Well, he's not talking

about physical poverty. He didn't say blessed are the poor.

He says blessed are the poor in spirit. He's not

talking about economic poverty. He's not talking about material poverty.

He's not talking about physical poverty. He's talking about spiritual poverty.

He's talking about maintaining a certain kind of attitude. For

you to understand this, I put there on your outline

several other translations of this verse so you could actually

see a fuller understanding of what it means to be

poor in spirit. For instance, the New Living Translation says,

God blesses those who realize their need for him. The

God's Word Translation says, God blesses those who recognize they're

spiritually helpless. The Common English Version says, God blesses those

who depend only on him. And New Century Version says,

God blesses those who know they have a great spiritual,

have great spiritual needs.

You can see a pattern developing here.

He's saying, I recognize that I am inadequate to live

my life without God. Without God in my life, I

am spiritually poor. Without God's help in my life, I

am spiritually poor.

I am inadequate.

A good verse that... Helps clarify, this is Psalm 146.

There in your outline, verse five. The Lord blesses everyone

who trusts him and depends on him. Circle the word

trust and the word depend. This is the first condition

for God's blessing on your life. You gotta trust him.

You've gotta depend on him. And that's what it means

to be poor in spirit. In fact, let me give

you a definition. Why don't you write this down? To

be poor in spirit, which is the first condition for

God's blessing on your life, means I humbly depend on

God instead of myself.

That's what it means.

To be poor in spirit means I humbly depend on

God instead of myself, because I know I'm inadequate to

handle all the problems that face me in life. So

if I want God's blessing on my relationship to my girlfriend,

my boyfriend, my husband, my wife, or anybody else, then

I've got to be dependent upon God. If I want

God's blessing in my work, in my career, in my studies,

if I want God's blessing in my finances, in my health,

I have to humbly depend on God instead of myself.

So then the question becomes, how do you do that?

How do I actually depend on God on a daily

basis and on a moment by moment basis? Well, this weekend,

I wanna give you five practical ways to do this

from the word of God. And these are five practical ways.

You can practice every one of them this week. And

if you practice these, you will become a woman or

a man who is poor in spirit, which means you

depend on God rather than yourself. You understand your need

for God in your life. And then that's the kind

of woman, that's the kind of man that God says

I like to bless. So let me just get right

into it. You might write this first one down. Five

ways to express my dependence on God. Number one, to

be blessed by God, first, I depend on God's wisdom,

not mine. I depend on God's wisdom, not my wisdom,

not my own. In other words, I listen to what

God says, I follow what God says to do, and

I do what he says to do. Now let's look

at some verses together from the Bible. Proverbs chapter 14

Proverbs 14:12

verse 12 says this. There is a way, there is

a way that seems right to a man, but in

the end it leads to death. Now circle the word seems.

There's a way that seems right to us, to human beings,

but in the end, it's a dead end. He said

our ideas often lead to dead ends. It leads to death.

Have you ever in your life had this feeling that

something was so very, very, very right and you just

knew it was the right thing to do? and you

felt it with all your heart, and then you did it,

and it ended up being so very, very dumb, or very,

very wrong, or it became a total fiasco and a failure.

That's what this verse is all about.

There's a way that seems right to us, but it

often ends, he says, in a dead end, and every

one of us could give a testimony on this, where

you've had this feeling, this hunch that, This is the

perfect job, and it ends up being a dead end.

This is the perfect relationship, the one I've always needed,

the one I've always wanted, and that relationship ends up

a dead end. This is the perfect person that I

should marry, and I know this is the person, and

we all know people who've made that decision.

And it flopped miserably.

Parents will often think, I know this is the right

thing to say to my kids. And then it has

the exact opposite effect on the kids and actually harms

them rather than hurting them. It happens in friendships. It

can happen in investments. I know this is where I

should put my money. This is a sure winner. This

is a big deal. I know if I invest in this, man,

I'm gonna clean house. It's gonna be great. And then

it just totally flops. You could probably, and we could

probably spend the rest of the night doing this, Think

of painful examples where you wish that you would listen

to God instead of your gut. Because God is filled

with truth and your gut is filled with pizza. So

your gut's often wrong. Just because you think it doesn't

make it right. And just because you feel it certainly

doesn't make it right.

Feelings lie. They lie to you all the time.

I mean, there's an old country western song that says,

how could it be wrong when it feels so right?

Are you kidding me?

There are a lot of things that are wrong that

feel so right at the moment.

Are you kidding me?

That's about the most immature, stupid thing you could say.

Because a lot of stuff feels so right and it

ends up being so bad. And six months later you're

saying about that relationship, what was I thinking? How in

the world did I get messed up in that one?

How did I get my life so tangled in something

so stupid and so dumb and now I'm scarred and

I'm hurt and I'm burdened and I'm going, am I gonna.

Recover from this?

The Bible says there's a way that seems right but

it ends in a dead end.

So the first way to.

Get God's blessing in your life is I depend on

God's wisdom Not my feelings, not my thoughts, not what

everybody else is telling me. I depend on God's wisdom,

not mine. Now, if you want to have fewer dead

ends in your life, if you want to have fewer defeats,

fewer failures in your life, this next verse is for you.

Proverbs 3, five to seven. Trust the Lord with all

your heart. Do not depend on God. on your own understanding.

In other words, don't depend on your wisdom. Don't depend

on what you think is the right thing to do.

Don't depend on your hunches and your feelings. Those are often,

lead you astray. Do not depend on your own understanding.

Seek his will, God's will, in all you do, in

everything you do, how you spend your time, your money,

your relationships, everything. And he, God promises, he will direct

your paths. Don't be impressed with your own wisdom. What

he's saying there, Don't go around saying, I got this

all figured out. I can handle this. I'm a big girl.

I'm a big guy. I know what I'm doing. I've

got it all figured out. I got a plan. He's saying,

don't be impressed with your own wisdom. Instead, respect the

Lord and turn your back on evil. So if I

really want God's blessing, the first thing is I depend

on God's wisdom, not what my feelings say, not what

my gut says, not what my friends say, not what

I think. but I trust in the Lord with all

my heart and lean not on my own understanding. Now,

how do I get God's wisdom?

Two ways. You pray and you read.

You pray, you talk to God, and you read the Bible,

you let him talk to you. And that's how you

get God's wisdom. Look at this next verse. The Bible

says in James 1, verse five, if any of you,

if any of you lacks wisdom, You should pray and

ask God who gives it grudgingly and sparingly to all.

That's not what it says.

If any of you lacks wisdom, you should pray and

ask God who gives it, read it with me, generously

and graciously to all. Now notice he gives it to everybody.

All you gotta do is.

Ask for it.

You don't have to be qualified for it. All you

have to do is ask for it. You see, God

doesn't want you to be stupid. God doesn't want you

to make dumb mistakes. God doesn't want you to hit

dead ends. God doesn't want you to go through failure

after failure after failure after failure.

In your life.

God wants you to succeed in your life. He wants

you to be wise. He wants you to make smart

decisions with your time, your money, your relationships, and everything else.

And it's not like you're waiting on him, he's waiting

on you. God's saying, hey, I'm here, and I'll give

you wisdom, and I'll give it generously. and I'll give

it graciously, I'm not grudging about it, I love to

give you, I wanna make you wise, but you just

gotta ask. Now, how do you know when you are

living on God's wisdom rather than on your wisdom? How

do you know if you're really depending on God's wisdom?

You're talking to God throughout your entire day, and you're

reading his word on a daily basis. If you're not

talking to God throughout your whole day, God, I'm getting

ready to go into this meeting. I'm getting ready to

go into this class. I'm getting ready to go meet

with some friends. What do I do?

What do I say?

And you're not talking to God like that all day.

And if you're not reading God's word on a daily basis,

you are depending on your own wisdom. You're just fooling yourself.

You're not depending on God's wisdom. You're depending on your own.

And it's why you have so many problems and why

so many things fall through and why you end up

with so much pain in your life. Because you're not

depending on God's wisdom by reading the book and talking

to the author.

Would you write this down?

God's wisdom and God's will are in God's word. God's

wisdom and will is in God's word. They're in God's word.

God's wisdom and will are in God's word. And if

you're not in the word, you don't know God's will.

And if you're not in the word, you don't have

God's wisdom. And if you don't have God's wisdom, you

can't be blessed. So that's the starting point. I gotta pray,

talk to the Lord, and I gotta let him talk

to me.

Let me give you another one, number two.

If I really want God's blessing on my life, and

not only depend on God's wisdom, I depend on God's strength,

not mine. I depend on God's strength, God's power, God's energy,

not mine. Now, you've probably noticed that you often get tired.

In fact, you're tired a lot. And at the end

of the day, you're kinda worn out, and you run

out of energy, and the reason why is real simple.

You're a human being. Your strength is limited. God's strength

is unlimited. Your strength is finite. God's strength is infinite.

Your strength is exhaustible. That's why you get exhausted. God's

strength is inexhaustible. God never runs out of energy. God

never gets tired. And so I need to depend on

God's strength, not my own. Let me show you some verses.

Psalm 84 verse five. God says, you bless all who

depend on you for their strength. You want God's blessing

in your life? You need to depend on God for

your strength. Now what do you do when your strength evaporates?

You're at the end of the day and you go,

I'm just out of steam, I'm out of energy. I

don't have the energy to go into this next week.

I got too many things to do and not enough

energy to do it. Here's a good promise, Isaiah 40, 31.

Those who trust in the Lord for help will find

their strength renewed. They will rise on wings like eagles.

They will run and not get weary. They will walk

and not grow weak. And I'll give you a personal

testimony on this one. I have been living this verse,

this one, Isaiah 40, 31, for the last year. Because

there's no way I could face the loss of my

son on my own energy, on my own strength. I

needed God to pull me through many, many dark times.

Now let me just say this, in the darkest moments

of your life, when you cannot see your way forward,

and doesn't matter what they are or where they came from,

in the darkest moments of your life, you need God's

strength to get you through. And the reason why most

people never get through it is they don't have God's strength.

I've seen people go through a divorce and they never recover.

I've seen people go through a breakup and they never recover.

I've seen people go through a major illness. I've seen

them go through a bankruptcy or getting fired or getting

laid off or getting arrested. I've seen people go through

all kinds of different things. Abuse and they never recover, why?

Because they're depending on their own strength. You're not gonna

get through it on your own strength. You're gonna get

stuck at that stage and you get miserable the rest

of your life. The only way you get through the

darkest days of your life is on God's strength. You

gotta depend on him. Now I've put down here a

couple verses that I would encourage you to memorize. One

of them is for when you're young and another one

is for when you're old. But the first one, everybody

can memorize this, it's only one sentence, Psalm 71 16,

look at this verse.

I walk in the strength of the Lord.

I walk in the strength of the Lord. That's an affirmation.

Psalm 71 16. In fact, let's memorize it right now.

Let's say it together. Psalm 71 16, I walk in

the strength of the Lord.

And where is that verse?

Psalm 71 16. And what does Psalm 71 16 say?

I walk in the strength of the Lord. Now here's

what I encourage you to do. Write that verse on

a card. and read it over and over and over

until you got it memorized so you can say it

10 times a day. And here's what you do. You

make it the most important affirmation in your life. And

when you get up in the morning and you wanna

go right back to bed, and you're worn out and

you go, I don't even have enough energy to get

started today, you sit on the side of your bed

and you say, I.

Walk in the strength of the Lord.

And then when you get up and you go to

school or you go to work or whatever you're doing

and you have that first conflict with somebody, you say,

I walk in the strength of the Lord. And later

in the afternoon when you get a phone call and

it's bad news and it's terrible and you're frustrated and

you're scared and it creates anxiety and stress, you say,

I walk.

In the strength of the Lord.

When late in the day you're just running out of

energy and there's still a whole lot more to do,

you say to yourself.

I walk in the strength of the Lord.

And when you go to bed at night, as you

put your head down on the pillow and all of

the things that you didn't get done and all of

the worries and the fears and loneliness and any other

thing that tends to pile in, you say, I walk

in the strength of the Lord. That is the kind

of woman God blesses. That is the kind of man

God blesses. I walk in the strength of the Lord.

I don't just depend on God's wisdom and.

Do the right thing.

I do the right thing with the right power. I'm

not doing the right thing under my power, I'm doing

the right thing under God's power. God, I need you

to give me the energy. I need to plug into

the power. When you get older, you're gonna face the

pains and problems of aging.

And that gets pretty frightening.

Just talk to somebody who's getting up in age and

ask them that.

And here's a good verse for then.

When maybe your body isn't working like it should and

your mind isn't as sharp as it used to be

and maybe you're starting to get a little Alzheimer, a

little dementia, Psalm 73 26 says this. My heart may fail,

my health may fail, My health may fail and my

spirit may grow weak, but God remains the strength of

my heart.

He is mine forever. That's a great verse to remember.

Everything may else fall apart in my life, but God

is the strength of my heart.

He is mine forever.

One of the most famous Christians of the 19th century

was a guy named Hudson Taylor. He was a very

famous missionary to China and he was a spiritual giant.

A brilliant man.

Later though in age, he lived to be an old

man and in his old age he lost his health

and became very, very weak. And he wrote this letter

to a friend and it said this. I am so

weak I can no longer work. I am so weak

I can no longer study. I'm so weak I can

no longer read my Bible. I cannot even pray. I

can only lie still in the arms of God like

a little child and trust.

That's good enough.

Sometimes in your life you're gonna be so weak you

can't even pray. Sometimes in your life you're gonna be

so weak you can't read the Bible, you can't go

to a Bible study, you can't work, you can't do anything.

What do you do in those moments? You're just laying

there in bed so weak. I rest in the strength

of the Lord. in his arms like a little child

and I trust. You see, weakness can actually be a

good thing in your life if it causes you to

depend on God. Look at this verse up here on

the screen. This is from Saint Paul. Paul says this,

2 Corinthians 12. Three times I begged God to take

away my weakness. Now you got some weaknesses you'd like

God to take away. You've probably asked him to. And

each time God said, my grace is all you need.

My power works best in your weakness. So you don't

need anything else.

You just need me.

My power works best in your weakness. So, Paul says,

I now gladly boast. I boast about how weak I am.

I used to hide my weaknesses. I used to be

ashamed of my weaknesses. Paul says, not anymore. I'm proud

of my weaknesses. Why? Because when I'm weakness, when I'm weakest,

the power of Christ works in me and shows up

through me. And when I'm weak, then I am strong. See,

that's the paradox of depending on God. The more you're weak,

the more you depend on God. The more you depend

on God, the stronger you get. You know that verse,

they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength,

like we just looked at earlier? I was quoting that

verse all this last week. I had 12 Easter services

to preach, and I'd be sitting backstage, and I'm thinking,

they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.

They will mount up with wings as eagles. They shall

preach and not grow weary. They shall preach and not faint.

And you do the right thing, but you do it

in the power of God, not in your own power. Now,

there's a third one, and this is a big one,

where you can learn dependence, being poor in spirit this

week so.

God can bless you. And Tom's gonna come talk about it.

To be blessed by God, I depend on God's wisdom

and I depend on God's strength, but the third thing

is I depend on God's timing, not mine. I depend

on God's timing, not mine.

The older I get, the more I understand how timing

is so important in every area of life.

Look at it in sports, you can see it easily.

The difference between a professional pitcher and an amateur is timing.

The difference between a professional golf player and an amateur

is timing. You can see it in things like cooking.

A professional cook knows that it takes 37 seconds in

the toaster for the perfect Pop-Tart. They know that if

they're a real professional. You just see it in all

kinds of areas of life. You see it in your life.

God's timing, the right timing, is God working in the

right way in your life.

The Bible's really.

Clear about the fact that there are seasons to our life.

And the fact, I don't like this, but the fact

is one of those seasons that God talks about again

and again is the season of waiting.

He is working in our lives during this season of waiting.

While you're waiting, God is working.

Don't think that the season of waiting means that God

has stopped working.

He's still working.

He's just taking us through a season of waiting because

of timing, because of what he's doing in our lives,

because of what he's doing in circumstances. So that's why

the Bible says in Psalm 31, 14, and 15, I

trust in you, O Lord.

You are my God.

My times are in your hands.

You're going to spend a lot of life waiting.

And if you don't figure out how to trust God

while you're waiting, you're going to spend a lot of

life not trusting God. Because there's a lot of life

where we are in God's waiting room. You ever been

in a hurry when God wasn't? That happen to anybody

else I'm talking about? I mean, you want it to

go along, but it's just not going along. God is

never in a hurry. God is never in a hurry.

Because he's eternal. And he is watching. He is working.

He is seeing how and when you will trust him

as you're waiting. We're saying, when, Lord? When is it

going to happen?

And God's saying, what am I doing in your life?

You can trust me with this. Now, the problem with

waiting is our human nature and the culture around us,

everything about it says don't wait.

Get things as quickly as you can.

I mean, we have Fast Track and Fast Passes and

one of the best business magazines is Fast Company.

Everything is fast.

When I go through the drive-through, I don't know if

you guys are like this for getting food, I like

to give my food at the first window and I

wanna see the bag come out so I can just

sort of keep driving by and grab it as I

go by.

I don't wanna even wait 20 seconds. That's the way

we tend to.

Be wired in our culture, and it goes against God's

blessing in our lives.

Because God's blessing comes through these times of waiting.

Ecclesiastes 3.11 says, God has set the right time for everything. Now,

I know some of you right now, you are in

a time of waiting. Maybe it's for school to end.

Maybe it's for a man or a woman to come

into your life. Maybe it's for a marriage to happen

or for a baby to come. You're in this time

of waiting in your life. And if you were honest,

you would say, I'm frustrated right now with how slow

this is working. We've all been there at times. There's

a promise in the Bible that tells you not only

that God is working, but also how God is working.

It's an important promise to understand for how God works

in our lives during these times of waiting. Isaiah 60

Isaiah 60:22

verse 22 says, I am the Lord, and when it

is time, I will make these things happen quickly.

Quickly.

Here's how God's working in how he works in our lives.

And it will drive you crazy. You wait and wait

and wait for something. And then all of a sudden,

God just gives it to you all at once.

And it's just overwhelming.

And you say, I was asking for it, but could

you slow it down a little bit now? This can

happen with, I know a lot of people who've been

through adoptions like this, where they've started the adoption process

and they thought the adoption was going to go through

in a few months and they waited months and months

and sometimes years and years and thought it never was

going to happen.

And then they get the phone call and the phone call.

Says, okay, we got the baby for you. Are you

ready in two days? And you got to go pick

them up in another country. Can you do that?

That's how God works many times. That's how God works

in sending Jesus into this world.

The Bible tells us that the world waited thousands of

years for Jesus to come the first time. But at

the right time, Jesus came into the world. And we've

been waiting 2,000 years now for Jesus to come again.

When's he going to come again? God's right time. That's

when he's going to come.

You might write this down in your outline, just this sentence.

A delay is not a denial. Just remember that a

delay is not a denial. We think God is saying no,

but really God is saying not yet.

Will you keep trusting me through this?

And this has to do many times with how we

talk to God about it, how we pray. Sometimes when

we pray about something, we say, God, it's like, I

want to give you first option on this. Can you

do this really fast? If you don't get it done,

then I'm going to go get it done myself. I

don't care what I have to do. I'm going to

get it done. And God's saying, no, are you trusting me?

Micah talked about that. Micah 7 says, I trust the

Lord to save me.

And I will wait on him.

I'm not going to go out and get it myself.

I'm not going to accomplish this myself. I'm going to

wait on him to answer my prayer. That is the

kind of faith that God blesses.

You know, one of the things that Tom just said,

and I didn't see anybody writing it down, and it's brilliant,

so you need to write this down. While I'm waiting,

God's working. You need to write that down. He said,

while I'm waiting, God's working. A lot of times we think,

while I'm waiting, nothing's happening. But God is often working

behind the scenes in ways you can't even see to

get you ready for the answer to your prayer. While

you're waiting, God's working. It's not like God's waiting. While

you're waiting, God's working. Good example of that is how

we got this land for Saddleback Church here at Lake Forest.

You know, we started many, many years ago over in

Laguna Hills High School. And the church began to grow,

and the more it began to grow, we had to

go to other different buildings. And at one point, we

were using four different high schools in the same week.

We were using Laguna Hills High School on one day,

Mission Viejo High School on another day, El Toro High

School on another day, and Tribuco Hills High School on

another day. In fact, in the first 13 years of

this church, because we didn't have any land, to build on,

we used 79 different buildings.

Can you imagine that?

We said, we're the church if you can figure out

where we are this week, you get to come. Because

we only want really smart people. If you can't find us,

you're too dumb. And we were literally, you know there's

a church up in LA called the Church on the Way.

We were the church on the move. Because you never

knew where we were from week to week. And the

church kept growing. and we went from one service to

two services, to three services, to four services, and I'm

getting tired, to five services, to six services, and I'm going, anytime, Lord,

we'd like to have a building now. And I'd look

around at friends of mine who were pastors, they got

a building, and they got a building, and they got

a building, and one day God said to me, Rick,

who are you doing this for?

I said, well, I'm doing it for you, Lord.

He said, well, Does it matter what other, what does

it matter to you what I do in other people's lives?

You just follow me. And he said, would.

You still serve me if the church I call you

to lead and pastor never has a building?

And I said, of course I would. Of course I would.

The fact is, while we were waiting, God was working.

And God was preparing this piece of land, 120 acres.

That's bigger than most college campuses. But the problem was,

nobody knew where this piece was. Because while we were

starting the church, there was no city of Rancho Santa Margarita.

There was no city of Foothill Ranch. There wasn't even

a lake forest. There was an El Toro. There were

no roads around here. There was no freeway. This was

a cow pasture. Nobody even knew it was here. But

a thousand years ago, a million years ago, God had

already planned, that's where I'm gonna put part of my church,

part of my body called Saddleback, I'm gonna put him

right there. And we just had to wait for everything

to happen for God.

To give us this piece of property.

And I can't tell you how many times we were

tempted in early years, to settle for something small. And

people say, here's a half acre of land, here's a

third acre of land. We could have bought that, but

each time I'd say, no, no, it's too small, it's

too small. And I just kept trusting God for this.

If we had bought it, we would have built a

church that seated 200, and none of you would be here.

Now let me just give you a little lesson. God

always gives his best to those who wait.

Wait.

And if you get in a hurry, you're gonna settle

for second best in your life. And before God brings

the best man into your life, the best woman into

your life, the best job into your life, the best

opportunity into your life, Satan's gonna give you all kinds

of detours.

And he's like, hey, see me over here, me over here.

And you go, oh, you know, I'm getting tired. Why

don't we just pick this one? And you settle for

less than God's best in your life. Don't do it.

As your pastor who loves you, I'm telling you, don't

do it. If you will wait for God's best, God

always gives his best to those who leave the choice

to him. But if you get frantic and you get

nervous and you get in a hurry and you start

trying to answer your own prayer, you will have a

fatal flaw and a terrible mistake in your life when

you try to answer your own. That's what Abraham did.

God promised Abraham, I'm gonna give you a son. And

when it didn't happen and didn't happen and didn't happen

and didn't happen and didn't happen, because his wife was

unable to conceive at that point, he took her handmaid,

got her pregnant, and had a little boy named Ishmael

and said, here God, I got the miracle son. And

God says, that's not the baby I'm gonna give you.

That's your plan. That's not my plan, that's your plan.

If you want God's blessing, you gotta learn this truth

very deeply. Spiritual poverty means I don't do it myself.

I depend on God's wisdom. I depend on God's strength.

And I depend on God's timing. And he'll answer it

when he's ready to answer it and when he knows

I'm ready for the answer. I'm gonna trust him, all right?

Number four, let me give you another way to practice

this week. To be blessed by God, I depend on

God's wisdom, God's strength, God timing, and I also depend

on God's defense, not mine. I'll explain this. But I

depend on God's defense, not mine. There's always gonna be

people in your life who misunderstand you.

Do you agree with that?

There will always be people around you who misunderstand. There

will always be people who don't like you. There will

always be people who criticize you, judge you, attack you,

gossip about you, spread rumors about you. And a lot

of people are like, you know, if I could just

be perfect, then everybody would like me. Wrong. Jesus was perfect,

and a lot of people didn't like him. So even

if you were perfect, even if you were Jesus, there

would be people who are just not going to like you.

And so they're going to attack and they're gonna criticize

and they're going to try to get, and even in

your closest relationships, those who love you most, your boyfriend,

your girlfriend, your husband, your wife, those who love you most,

you're still gonna be misunderstood by them because we live

in a broken world. And when you are misunderstood, you're

gonna have a tendency to get in there and defend yourself.

And when you're attacked, your tendency is to attack back.

When people criticize you, you want to criticize back. People

slam you, you want to slam them back. People insult you,

you want to insult them back. You're out on the freeway,

somebody expresses to you the international sign of displeasure. You

wanna express the international sign of displeasure back to them.

Don't do it.

Let God be your defender, don't defend yourself. God says

every time you get under attack, get criticized, get put down,

get misunderstood, now you.

Got two choices.

You can defend yourself or you can let me defend you.

What it'll be. Who do you think can do a

better job of defending you? Yeah, God can. Now, you are,

listen to me very closely. You're most like Christ, you're

most like Jesus when you say nothing in the face

of attack, in the face of unjust, unfair criticism, in

the face of lies about you. You're most like Jesus

When you say nothing and you remain silent and you

just say, I'm gonna put this in the hands of

God and let him be my defender and I'm gonna

try on myself and defend myself back. Let me show

you a verse about Jesus up here on the screen.

In 1 Peter 2, 23, we talked about last week

Jesus' crucifixion and his resurrection. It says, when they hurled

insults at him, Jesus, he did not retaliate. When he suffered,

he made no threats back. Instead, he entrusted himself to

God to set things right. That means I depend on

God to be my defender. You know, I told you

last week that they did six trials for Jesus, three Roman,

three Jewish trials. All of them were sham trials. They

were all fake, phony trials. And one time, the religious

leaders take Jesus to Pilate, who was the Roman governor

of Israel at that time, Palestine, and they bring him

in and they make a false charge of Jesus and

they said, this guy's trying to overthrow you. He wants

to be king. He wants your job, Pilate. He wants

to overthrow you. He thinks he's the king. Pilate looks

at him and goes, is that true? He's asking Jesus,

you want my job? You trying to overthrow me? I'm

the Roman appointed governor. You claim to be the king

of Israel? Not when they don't have a king? You

on my job? Is that what you're saying? And the

Bible says Jesus would not even dignify that false accusation

with an answer. It said he remained totally silent. He

spake not unto them. He said not a word unto them.

You are most like Jesus when you face flack and

don't defend it, and don't attack back. Now here's an

interesting thing. When people don't like you, they get what's

called motivated reasoning, and so often, if people don't wanna

like you, they'll.

Believe anything negative. Isn't that true?

If people don't want to like you, they are quick

to believe the negative, and they do not believe anything positive.

They only wanna believe the negative. Now here's the problem.

Today on the internet, Anybody can say anything about you,

and it's global, it's searchable, and it's permanent. And it's

never going off. So somebody can say something bad about you,

and it's there, and nobody's ever taken it down. And

10 years from today, somebody can Google your name and

find that, and it wasn't true today, it won't be

true 10 years from today, but they'll believe it.

That's the kind of world you're gonna live in.

So you gotta learn how to depend on God's defense

not your own, why? Because to be a leader is

to be misunderstood. If you're gonna be a leader in

your home, if you're gonna be a leader at your school,

in your community, in your church, or anywhere else, to

be a leader means somebody's gonna misunderstand you. You can

spend all your time trying to correct those misunderstandings, but.

Here's what happens.

If they don't like you, and they have motivated reason,

a lot of people are like, well, if I teach

them the truth, then they'll like me. But if actually

you teach them the truth, it just makes them more mad.

It makes them more mad because you've disproven they were

wrong and now they really don't like you.

And so they go out and they find out something else.

The more effective you are in life, the more you're

going to be attacked. You know, I decided a long

time ago that I'm not gonna spend any of my

time trying to answer every lie, every criticism, every rumor,

every gossip, every false misrepresentation, I'm just gonna leave it

to God.

Why?

Because if I did spend my time trying to correct

all those things, I wouldn't have any time for anything else.

The more influence you have, the more you're gonna be

criticized in life.

Just count on it.

And pioneers get the arrows in the back. If you're

gonna call the shots, you're gonna take the shots. So

to be a leader in a business, means you're gonna

be criticized. To be a leader in a church means

you're gonna be criticized.

Community, anywhere else. I want you to be fearless.

What God wants is a generation of fearless men and

fearless women who say, I'm gonna do the right thing,

doesn't really matter what anything else, because I'm living for

an audience of one. Well done, now good and faithful servant.

That's what I'm living for. Now, you just leave it

to God. Because you can't correct it all, and even

if you did, they're not gonna change your attitude. Now

let me show you a couple verses. Psalm chapter two,

verse 12. God blesses and God protects everyone who runs

to him. Not everybody who defends himself, not everybody who

fights back, not everybody who goes tit for tat and

you hit me, I hit you back. No, God blesses

those who run to him. So you let God be

your defender against accusations and against critics. The next verse,

Psalm 62, on your outline, gives us five metaphors for

God's protection. I want you to underline them. He says,

and by the way, David who wrote this was criticized

his entire life. He was attacked his entire life. In fact,

most of his life, people wanted to kill him because

they were jealous. And a lot of people are gonna

be jealous of your success and they're gonna wanna attack

you for many different reasons. David says this, I depend

on God alone. I put my hope in him. He

alone protects, underlines. He alone protects. He alone saves, underline saves.

He alone protects and saves me. He is my defender,

underline that, my defender. I shall not be defeated, underline

not be defeated. My salvation and honor depend on God.

What's your honor? It's your reputation. It's your reputation. My

salvation and my reputation depend on God. He is my

strong protector and he is my shield. Underline my shield.

Now notice the five metaphors.

God says he's my protector, he's my savior, he's my defender,

he's my victor, and he's my shelter.

He's saying, let me handle it.

When you do that, you are being poor in spirit.

You're saying, God, I'm not depending on myself. I'm depending

on you. I depend on your wisdom. I depend on

your strength. I depend on your timing and your plan.

And I depend on your defense, not mine. And when

God sees a person like that, he.

Goes, that's my boy. That's my girl.

That's who I want to bless. You're most like Jesus

when you don't defend yourself. Now, One of the greatest

sources of stress you're gonna have in your life is

anxiety about money. In fact, studies show it's the number

one cause of divorce, financial pressure.

It's the number.

One anxiety-producing issue, money. Am I gonna have enough to survive?

Am I gonna have enough to make it? Financial worries.

It keeps people awake at night and it causes people

to do all kinds of stupid things. because they start

worrying about money. So let me just give you one

more way to depend on God, and that is this,

number five, I depend on God's wealth, not mine.

For my own safety, for my own.

Security, I depend on God's wealth, not my wealth, for

my security. If you put your security in your bank account,

you are an insecure person, because you can lose everything

you got in the bank. If you put your security

in your job, you are a very insecure person, because

you can lose your job. If you put your security

in your investments, you're a very insecure person, because you

can lose your investments. You have to put your security

in something that cannot be taken from you, and that

is God. Here's what the Bible says about God's wealth,

not yours. Philippians 4.19. And my God will supply all

my needs. My God will supply all my needs from

his abundant wealth.

Circle that.

It's God's wealth, not your wealth, that makes you secure.

From his abundant wealth. Because of what Christ Jesus has.

Done for me.

So I depend on God's wealth, not my wealth. I

depend on how much God's got, not how much I've got.

to be secure and to not be anxious. Now I

want you to write this down. Write it down on

your outline. My job is a channel, but God is

my source. Let me explain this, very important. If you

understand this, you'll have so much less stress in your life.

My job is a channel. but God is the source

of my supply. Let me give you an example. If

I were to go home from this service and I

were to turn on the faucet in our kitchen and

no water came out, what would I do? Would I say, oh.

My, the world has run out of water.

There's no more water left in the whole wide world.

I turned on the faucet, there is no more water left.

Of course not.

I know the problem is not with the source. The

problem is with the distribution point. The problem is not

the source. There's plenty of water in the world. The

problem is the channel. The channel has gotten blocked.

One way or another.

And you know what, if one channel gets blocked in

your life and this faucet stops working, God can turn

on another faucet just as easy. And if God closes

a door in your life, he can open another door.

And if another door closes, he can open a window

and you can crawl through it. God is not limited

to your ability and capacity. Your job is a channel,

God is a, if you think that your job is

what keeps you financially secure, you're gonna be insecure your

entire life.

Living poor in spirit means.

I realize that God is the source of my supply

and I depend on God's wealth. My God shall supply

all your needs according to his riches and glory in

Christ Jesus. And I'm gonna trust in him, that is

gonna handle me. Jobs may come and go. Bank accounts

may come and go. Economies can go up and down.

Stock markets can go bull or bear.

Doesn't matter.

My source of supply is in God. And the more

you do that, the more blessed you're gonna be. So

here's the first key to blessing. I don't depend on

my wisdom. I don't depend on my wealth. I don't

depend on my strength, I don't depend on my plan

and timing, and I don't depend on my defending myself. Instead,

I trust God in all of those areas. So, here's

what I want us to do. Let's take this, and

I want you to rate yourself on each of these five.

I want you to give yourself a plus or a minus.

Let's go back over all five. And a plus means

I'm doing pretty good in this area. I'm trusting God

really well. A minus means I need to work on

this one this week, okay? How about the first one?

I depend on God's wisdom, not mine. Okay, here's the test.

Are you talking to God constantly throughout the day and

are you reading the Bible every day? If you're not,

you are not depending on God's wisdom, you're depending on

your wisdom. Because you're not talking to him about your decisions,

You've given first choice to every decision and you're not

reading his word. So you're either doing those things and

depending on him or you're not.

So give yourself a plus or minus.

How about the second one? I depend on God's strength,

not mine. Are you doing that? Are you walking in

the strength of the Lord? Are those who trust in

the Lord will renew their strength? Okay, give yourself a

plus or minus. How about number three? I depend on

God's timing, not mine. How impatient are you? Plus or minus?

Am I going, God, you're too slow. I'm gonna take

matters into my own hands. I'm gonna find me a man.

Okay?

I'm taking it in, okay? Or are you just saying, God,

I'm gonna make sure, I'm gonna make this job happen

or whatever. Are you depending on God's timing or are

you depending on your timing? Okay, number four. I depend

on God's defense, not mine. How well are you doing

on that one? Somebody says something mean to you on Instagram,

you immediately slam them back on anything else. I depend

on God's defense, not mine. And how about where are

you looking for your source of security? Are you depending on, man,

I'm so nervous because I don't have any money, or

are you depending on God to meet your needs?

Give yourself a plus or minus on each of those.

Now, what's the first step you need to take in

this first condition of the blessings of God? Well, you

need to make a public declaration of dependence. You know,

in America, we have the declaration of independence.

And that's a good thing.

But for you personally, you need to make a declaration

of dependence. God, I'm depending on you. in all five

of these areas. By the way, do you know what

the public demonstration of your dependence on God is?

It's baptism.

Baptism is saying to the whole world, I am totally

depending on God. I'm gonna depend on God for my strength.

I'm gonna depend on God for my wisdom, my wealth,

my defender. My plan in life, I'm getting.

All wet for Jesus. I'm all in.

I'm totally submerged into this will and I am in

and God says that's the person that I wanna bless.

Let me show you this last verse. The Bible says

this in Romans chapter six. This is what happens in baptism.

By the way, did you know that baptism is actually

a Greek word?

It's baptizo.

And the word baptism simply means to dip or submerge.

So baptism isn't actually a word, it's a transliteration. The

translation of the word baptism is dip. So like chips

and dips, so you'd go home to a party and say,

I'd like some chips and baptism, please. Because the word

baptism literally means dip. That's what it means, it means

to dip.

Under, okay? This is what happens in baptism.

When we went under the water, we left the old

sin behind. And when we came up out of the water,

we entered into a new life of grace. Then Romans

6 says this, when we're lowered into the water, it's

like the burial of Jesus, and we're raised up out

of the water, it's like the resurrection of Jesus. We

are raised to live a new life. Now, if you've

never been baptized like Jesus modeled, and in the way

Jesus was baptized, as an adult, he was 33 years

old when he was baptized. You need to do that

as your public declaration of dependence. And you say, well,

I was baptized as a baby. I'm not talking about that.

Lots of us were baptized as babies. Lots of us

were dedicated, confirmed as babies. There's nothing wrong with that,

but that was your parents' decision, not yours. You don't

even remember it. When Jesus was a baby, they took

him to the temple and he was dedicated. That's what

his parents did, and there's nothing wrong, that's a good

thing to dedicate your baby to Jesus. But when Jesus

was a full grown adult, he went out and made

his decision to be publicly baptized. Have you done that?

Jesus commanded it. He commanded it, that we be baptized.

And he said, if you're ashamed of me, I'll be

ashamed of you. It's your coming out of the closet

for Jesus party. Little boy asked me one time, Pastor Rick,

when can I get advertised? And that's what baptism is.

It's an advertisement for Jesus. Baptism says, I am all in.

I'm getting all wet. I'm totally submerged. I'm really into this.

I'm not just tinkling in here, twinkling in. I'm just

tippling in.

No, I am all in.

And I'm gonna depend on God for my strength. And

I'm gonna depend on God for my wisdom and for

my wealth and for my defense and for the plan

of my life. If you haven't done that, what are

you waiting on Really, why not now? I mean, could

it be that your pride is keeping you from being baptized?

That's the exact opposite of being humble in spirit. It's

the exact opposite of the attitude that God blesses. I'll

tell you what, it's the end of the day. After

this service, Tom, will you do this with me?

Okay. Okay.

We're gonna go out and we're gonna do a baptism

after this service, okay? And we got water, and we

got baptism, and we got, you know, towels and, okay? So,

this is gonna be the Nike baptism, just do it.

Okay? So I'm making the decision to.

Just do it, you make the decision to just do it,

and we'll see you out there. Let's bow for prayer. Oh,

let me show you one more verse. Look up here

on the screen. Never mind. Matthew 5, 6, happy are

those whose greatest desire is to do what God requires.

God will satisfy them fully. Do what God requires. Let's

bow our head. I'm gonna pray a prayer and you

can follow me in it. Dear God, thank you for

sending Jesus to teach us how to live.

Just say that.

Dear God, thank you for sending Jesus to teach us

how to live and to die for my sins. I

want your blessing on my life. So today, I wanna

take this first step of learning to depend on you more.

Let's pray this. I wanna depend on your wisdom this week.

Your wisdom, not mine, so you can replace my confusion

with your confidence. I wanna depend on your strength, not mine,

so your power can show up in my weakness. I

wanna depend on your timing Help me to be patient

and quietly trust. I know that at the right time,

you can change things instantly. And Lord, when people misunderstand

me or criticize me, I wanna quietly trust you for

my defense. I don't wanna retaliate, I wanna be like Jesus. Finally, Lord,

I wanna look to you as a source to meet

all my needs.

Help me this week to walk in the strength of

the Lord. Help me to walk in the strength of

the Lord.

And as my public declaration of dependence, I want to

be baptized. And I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.