Daily Hope - Rick Warren

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, this is Rick Warren, Bible teacher for the Daily
Hope Broadcast. Did you know that because of Easter, your
past can be forgiven, you get a purpose for living,
and you can have a home in heaven. That's good news.
Where else can you get that kind of news? Nowhere else?
And did you know that at Easter, studies have shown
people are more open to an invitation to go to
church than at any other time of the year. Don't

(00:22):
go to church by yourself, but bring somebody who doesn't
know Jesus Christ, a family member, a friend, a coworker,
a neighbor, a relative. And if you bring them to
that church service and they come to know Christ, You're
going to be making a friend for eternity. It'll be
the most important investment you can ever make in their lives.
And by the way, if they come to Christ, would

(00:43):
you let me know about it. I'd love to hear
that story that you brought somebody to Easter and they
found Jesus. You can write to me Rick at Pastorrick
dot com. That's rickat Pastorrick dot com. I would love
to hear from you. God bless you and Happy Easter.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
Hello and welcome to Pastor Rick Warren's Daily Hope. Well,
this weekend, across every continent and in thousands of languages,
millions of people will join together to celebrate the resurrection
of Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of our faith. But you
know it doesn't stop there. Not only was Jesus resurrected,

(01:25):
he is still alive.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
So let's go to.

Speaker 2 (01:28):
Pastor Rick as he continues with part two of a
message called how Jesus Revitalizes Your Life.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Number four, he offers you forgiveness. That's the fourth thing
Jesus did when he met his followers after he came
back to life on Easter Sunday. He offers you forgiveness.
Now this is important because forgiveness is a huge re
energizer because the two biggest leaks in your tank, the
two things that cause you to run out of energy

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and to drain emotional and physically, are a guilt and
b resentment. And the answer to both is forgiveness. Guilt
and resentment are the twin emotions that rob you of
your energy. You cannot be guilty and happy at the
same time. You cannot be resentful and happy at the
same time. Now that's a problem because we live in

(02:20):
an imperfect world. We live in a broken planet where
there's a thing called sin that means I don't always
do the right thing, and you don't either. I make
mistakes sometimes I'm selfish, and we hurt each other, sometimes
intentionally sometimes unintentionally. Now, when I hurt you, what I
feel is guilt, and when you hurt me, what I

(02:41):
feel is resentment. And those two things, guilt over the
things that I've done wrong in the world and resentment
over the things that have been done wrong to me
are the twins that keep me stuck in emotionally empty positions.
They drain the life out of me. And if you're
ever going to be happy in life, you got to
learn how to let it go, how to let go

(03:02):
of your guilt to God, and how to let go
of your resentment against other people. And there's only one
way to do that, forgiveness. That's why the next thing
Jesus said is this. If you forgive someone sins, they're
gone for good. But if you don't forgive sins, what
are you gonna do with them? Now, what's Jesus saying here? Saying, Guys,
I have forgiven you. You're completely forgiven that's why I

(03:24):
died on the cross. I died on the cross for
all the things you've ever done wrong. So you are forgiven.
Now I expect you to do the same thing with
other people. Pass it on, you know, cut them a
little slack, show them some grace. I have forgiven you,
Jesus that I've forgiven you of everything you've ever done wrong.
Now I expect you to forgive other people. Why. Because

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guilt and resentment keep you running on empty. Guilt and
resentment keep you stuck in the past. You can't get
on with the future. Guilt and resentment swarp your personality.
You get angry, you get sarcastic, you get cynical. The
more you bitter, you become. Guilt and resentment ruin relationships.
I was having dinner with a couple one time that

(04:04):
I did their wedding years and years ago, and the
lady said to me, you know, Pastor Rick, when I
was walking down that aisle in that white dress, I
had no idea that I was carrying along with me garbage,
sacks of guilt and grudges. I thought, that's a word picture.
I was carrying with me garbage, sacks of guilt and
grudges from previous hurts and relationships, and I brought them

(04:26):
all into this marriage and it nearly killed the marriage.
Guilt and resentment ruin marriages and ruin relationships. Now, when
you've got garbage in your house, you have to take
it out periodically or the house starts stinking. You don't
just pile it up in the corner. You got to
get rid of the guilt and get rid of the grudges.
So question who do you need to let go of today?

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Who do you need to let off the hook? Say? Well,
I just can't do that. They hurt me. That's right,
that's why you need Jesus. You can't do it on
your own power. My forgiveness is not earned, It is
not easy, and it certainly isn't fun, But it's what
lets you kid on get on with your life. Last year,
there was a dear friend of mine, close friend, long
term friend, who started stabbing me in the back secretly,

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and I didn't know about it. And because of their
pride and their jealousy, they just started going around spreading
rumors spread and lies spread and gossip doing things that
were to hurt me. And I had no idea this
was even going on for a long long time, and
when I finally figured it out, it hurt me so bad,
and I just start going over and why would they

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do that? Why would they hurt me like that? What
have I done to hurt them? And I sometimes I'd
go to bed at night and as I'd lay down,
I'd start to write these angry letters to them in
your mind, you ever done this? Don't let me tell
you a word or two, you know, And I'm just going,
wait a minute, this isn't helping all. This resentment in
me is not hurting that person one bit. It's just

(05:56):
making me miserable. I gotta let it go. So they said, guy,
help me, just let it go. It doesn't matter what
they've done to me. It's then going to change the past.
So help me, just let it go. And that's what
God says he wants you to do. He says, just
let it go now. Forgiveness is the key to happiness.
Look at the next verse. Happy is the person whose

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sins are forgiven and whose wrongs are pardoned. Happy is
the person whom the Lord does not consider guilty anymore,
And circle the word happy. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. Now,
because of the Cross and because of Easter, we have
been completely forgiven. If we've accepted that forgiveness, and so

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we of all people have a reason to celebrate, a
reason to be happy because I don't have a guilty conscience.
It's all been forgiven. That's a happy day now. I
know you'd never know it looking at my body, but
I love Krispy Kreme donuts. And it's not just the donut,
it is the cream inside. The be cream. Friends, that

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filling is the nectar of the gods. They have an
inventive word to describe how delicious that cream is. Actually,
I think christpy kream is the Hebrew word for manna
in the Old Testament. I think that's what God actually
showered down to them. Now. It's interesting that whenever we're
empty on the inside, we always have to have a

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filling of some kind. I wonder what is your standard
preferred filling when you're running on empty. Some of you,
when you hit the end of the day and you're
tired and you're wiped out and you're fatigued, you come home,
you fill your emptiness with television and you flop down
on a couch or a sofa, or something, and you

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watch several hours of television and you fill your emptiness
with entertainment. Others of you, when you feel empty on
the inside, you fill yourself with food, or you fill
yourself with alcohol or porn or one night stands. Some
of you, when you're feeling empty, you head for the club,

(08:07):
for the bar, for the single scene to fill up
that emptiness. Some of you, when you're running on empty,
you fill yourself with pain pills to take away the pain.
Everybody has something. It may be a hobby, it may
be a sport. The number one feeling that people have
when they're feeling empty more work. I'll just keep working,

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and I'll work harder and harder and harder and harder
and harder, because I don't like the way I feel
when I slow down. I don't like the emptiness that
creeps back into my life. So I'll just keep busy.
So when I go to sleep at night, I put
my head down. I don't have to think. I just
fall asleep, and we overwork to hide our emptiness. Now,
all of these things, the good and the bad, they

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all have one thing in common. None of them last.
None of them keep you satiated. None of them keep
you filled up you get hungry again. Now, Jesus Christ
God offers you a permanent filling inside you. He said,
I will put myself in you. I will put my

(09:15):
spirit in you. I will fill you up with me,
and that will fill the emptiness that you feel. That's
the next thing Jesus does number five on the back
of your outline. He fills you with his presence when
you're running on empty. Now, Jesus said, I don't want
to just be with you. I want to be in you.
And he says in verse twenty two to these guys.

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Then Jesus breathed on them and he said to them,
receive the Holy Spirit. Now, what's the Holy Spirit? What
is this Casper the friendly ghost? You know? What is
the Holy Spirit? Jesus says, I want to be with you. No,
I want to be in you all the time, moment
by moment. The Bible calls this being filled with the spirit,

(09:59):
being in powered and dwelt and filled with the Holy Spirit.
How does that sound kind of spooky to you? Being
filled with the spirit. Woo? You know I'm spirit filled?
What does that mean? Is that going to turn me
into some kind of weirdo, some wacko, some religious nut,
or all of a sudden, I talk different and I
wear polyester and have a comb over, and you know,

(10:21):
and or wear big buffon hair do and I say
baby or you know, Jesus, you know, and I don't
even talk right anymore. No, No, God doesn't need any
more weirdos. There are plenty of them already in the world.
Don't look at them. Okay, come on, this is church.

(10:41):
Be cool. I just don't look at him. There are
enough weirdos in the world. God doesn't need any more weirdos. Actually,
when God puts himself in you, you become more you.
You become more natural. The glory of God is a
human being fully alive. And if you're a man, it
makes you more masculine, and if you're a female, it
makes you more female. And it makes you become what

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God intended for you to be in the first place,
before all the things in life broke us all up
into pieces. It doesn't turn you into wacko. It makes
you more normal. It makes you more natural. It makes
you more alive, more enjoying of life. So what does
it exactly feel like? What does it look like? What
does it feel like to be filled with God's spirit. Well,

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let me tell you a couple of things it does.
Number one, you stop being lonely. You stop being lonely
because you realize God is with me all the time,
and I may be alone, but I am not lonely.
You can be in a large crowd and still be lonely.
But God says, I want to be with you every
moment of your life, and it just takes away your

(11:45):
loneliness when you realize He is with you and in
you all the time. A couple months ago, my older
brother died, Jem and I went through a very lonely period.
For several weeks. I just felt loneliness. You say, how
can you feel lonely? You recognize everywhere you go? Well
I did. All of a sudden, I realized my dad
had died, and my mom had died, and my older

(12:09):
brother had died, and the three people who knew me
from my very birth, who knew where Rick Warren came from,
are no longer here. They're in heaven. And I felt lonely,
and I thought, even one day, my wife will die,
or I'll die, or my kids will die, or my
grandkids will die. Because God didn't mean for us to
stay here on earth forever where it's broken. He wants

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us to live forever where it's perfect in heaven. So
that's why relationships don't last here. And I was feeling lonely.
And if you've ever lost a loved one, you know
that comes in waves and you handle it and then
you don't. Then you handle it and you don't. And
when those waves of loneliness would come on me, I
would say, God, I need to feel your presence right now.
I need you to remind me that you're with me

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and that you're in me, and this sense of peace
would come over me that could not be explained any
other way. I remember sitting right here on this front
road during my brother's funeral and feeling this sense of
total peace and total presence of God in my life.
And I'm just going, I'm handling this. It's just it's okay.

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I'm handling it. And I want you to know that's
not normal. Having been in hundreds of funerals, I have
looked in the eyes of people who have no hope,
who don't have a belief system, who don't know Jesus Christ.
You see the test of what you believe is not
how you handle the parties of life. The test of
what you believe is how do you handle the funerals.

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And if you don't have a relationship with God, what
are you going to hold on to in that moment
when you're losing the dearest things to you? And so
it helps you take away the loneliness because even though
I'm by myself, I'm not alone. God is with me.
The other thing that happens when I'm filled with God's spirit.
He puts the spirit in my life is you start

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producing certain character qualities. There are nine of them listed
in the Bible. They're called the fruit of the spirit
because you kind of grow them slowly, like fruit doesn't
happen overnight. The Bible says the fruit of the spirit
is love, joy, peace. Those are good things. I want
to be more loving. I want to be more joyful.
I want to be more peaceful, Patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,

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and self control. I want those things in my life.
They come from having God in my life. Now, when
somebody says to you, you're full of it, is that
a compliment you're full of it? Well, it all depends
on what the it is. If they say you're full
of and they mean you're jealous, well no, that's not good.

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You're full of it, that means you're egocentric, you're self serving,
you only think of yourself. No, that's not good. But
if they say you're full of it, and you're full
of love and joy and peace and patience and self control,
that's good stuff. Notice this next verse. The spirit that
God has given us does not make us timid. Instead,
his spirit fills us with power, love, and self control.

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Would you circle those three words, power, love, and self control.
You see when you're running on empty. That's the exact
three things you need when you're out of gas. You
need power to keep going, you need love to build relationships,
and you need self control to keep from self destructing.
He fills you with his presence. Number six. The sixth

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thing Jesus does when you're running on empty is he
gives you a new reason to live. He gives you
a new reason to live. And this is important too,
because another reason you're running on empty is you don't
know the purpose of your life. You were made for
far more than money. Making Money is not the ultimate

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gold in life. You were made for meaning, and all
the money in the world will not replace a lack
of meaning. Last Wednesday night, I was down at Saint
Regis Hotel and Data Point, where I had been invited
by a corporation to come down and speak to a
thousand of their managers that they'd brought in from all
over the United States. And I talked to him about

(16:10):
success and why doesn't success satisfy if I'm so successful,
why don't I feel more fulfilled if I'm so successful?
Why do I always want more? If I'm so successful?
Why do I feel like a fake? And I said
the reason why is because you were made for more
than success. God made you for significance, and all the

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success in the world will not take away or take
care of a lack of significance in your life. You're
made for more than money. You're made for meaning. You're
made for more than possessions. You're made for a purpose,
and all the possessions in the world will not compensate
for a lack of purpose in your life. And that's
why you still run on empty. So what do you

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do well? You have to turn to God and let
him give you his purpose for your life. You're not
an accident Now, guys, particularly some of you, think, well, Rick,
I've talked to guys like this. For Rick, I don't
really feel like I want to become a believer, a
follower Jesus, because don't they just kind of like sit
around in prayer groups and pray. Don't they like to

(17:15):
sit around and just talk nice and discuss stuff, you know,
skip over the hills of Jerusalem and pick flowers and
talking about peace and love. No, thank you. I can't
think personally as a man. I can't think of anything
more boring than that. As a man. I need something
big to chew on. I need something a challenge. I

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need something that makes me be a man. I need
something that is so big it forces me to grow
to be a greater person. Now, all of us, men
or women need something greater than ourselves that pulls us
out of ourselves so we don't live these little selfish
quods of lives and causes us to become what God
meant for us to be in the first place, greater

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than we ever thought. Let me tell you something, God's
plans for your life is greater than any plan you
could ever think up for yourself. Your little plans are puny,
compared to what God wants to do with your life
if you would just let him have control in every area.
I'm exhibit A of this. I have no idea why
God has done what he's done in my life. It's

(18:18):
just I said yes. Following Jesus Christ is not for whimps.
It's not for cowards. It's not for lazy people. It's
not for people who like to live in the shallows
of life and play it safe. No, it takes courage
to be a man of God. It takes courage to
be a woman of God, to say, God, whatever you
want to do with my life, I'm yours. You use

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me for your purpose, for good and for God in
this world. I don't want to just live a little
selfish life and pitter powder around. I want to go
for the big stuff, go for the gusto. It takes
courage because God's plan for your life is so much
bigger than your plans for your own life. And it'll
test you and it'll stretch you, and it'll grow your faith.

(19:05):
That's what Jesus did with these guys. These guys were
all discouraged that look, we all turned tail, we all
wiped out, We copped out. We flaked out on Jesus.
So I'm sure he's through with us. And Jesus comes
to him, he says, no. Look at this verse twenty one.
Jesus says again, peace be to you. Second time. He
said it. As the Father sent me, I now send you.

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He says, Guys, I know you blew it. You made mistakes.
You didn't stay with me in the tough time. But
he said, I got a plan. We're going to take
on the world. I got a world changing plan. And
they did. And this little group of now eleven guys
went out and soon it's all over the Middle East,
and soon within three hundred years it's overtaken the Roman Empire.

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And today two point three billion people in the world
claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. It was the
biggest task ever given. Now, let me ask you a question.
What are you living for? Yeah? What are you living for?
I didn't ask you what you're living on? What are

(20:09):
you living for? The problem in Orange Counties people have
a lot to live on and nothing to live for.
They need a purpose, they need a goal. What does
God want me to do? Well? I don't have time
to get into all of that today. But here's one
of the things. Look at the next verse, he says,
I want you to go out into the world uncorrupted,
like a breath of fresh air in a squalid and

(20:31):
polluted society. He said, to just be a breath of
fresh air to people. Provide people with a glimpse of
good living and of the Living God, saying, I'm not
unexpect you to be perfect. God doesn't expect you to
be perfect, because it's just give people a glimpse of
what it's like to live a good life and to
live for God, the Living God. Carry the light giving

(20:54):
message into the night. What's the light giving message? That's
what we've just been talking about. All these things, you
must shine among them like stars lighting up the sky.
Would you circle the word shine? What does God wants
you to do? He wants you to shine in a
dark world? Now? Why? Because most people today live mediocre lives, petty, shallow,

(21:19):
self centered, mediocre lives. And when you find somebody who
knows God and knows the God's purpose for their life
and is fulfilling that purpose, they shine like a star.
It is so unusual to find people who know God
and know his purpose and are doing it when you
find them, they're like stars. They stand out like on

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a dark night in stark contrast to the mediocre living
most people live. God says, I want you to shine
like a star. I want you to be a star
and represent me in the world.

Speaker 3 (21:59):
Pastor Rick Warloran says that every word Jesus spoke was
important and has life changing power. The words that Jesus
spoke during his final hours on the cross hold the
key to finding fulfillment in your life, career, and relationships.
That's why Rick put together a powerful seven session study

(22:19):
kit called the Seven Greatest Words of Love. Get it
now and unlock the full meaning and amazing blessings of Jesus'
last words before his resurrection words of forgiveness, assurance, love, trust,
and more. And this is a life changing Bible study
with seven video sessions and a workbook.

Speaker 2 (22:40):
Just go to pastorick dot com to get your copy
of this great resource.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
That's pastorick dot com. Or just text the word hope
to seven oh three to oh nine. Again, that's the
word hope to seven oh three to oh nine. And really,
thank you so much for your support.

Speaker 2 (22:59):
It means so much to us because your gift to
Daily Hope helps us share the hope of Christ with
people all around the world. We hope you'll join us
next time when we look into God's Word for our
daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily
Hope and your generous financial support.