In this special Christmas episode of Daily Hope, Pastor Rick Warren challenges us to examine the rooms of our hearts and ensure we have made space for the most important guest of all—Jesus. By drawing parallels to the innkeeper’s choice on the first Christmas, Rick highlights the significance of inviting Jesus into every corner of our lives. He explains how this act not only bestows peace that surpasses all understanding but also drives out fear rooted in worldly anxieties.
Welcome back to Pastor Rick Warren’s Daily Hope. We are so glad that you’re here with us to help us celebrate this season. You know, on the very first Christmas, when Mary was just about ready to give birth to Jesus, she and Joseph were turned away by the innkeeper because there was no room. Well, today, Pastor Rick is going to continue his Christmas series, Will I Make Room for Jesus?, And he shows us how, just like the innkeeper, we can miss out on being part of God’s greatest plans if we don’t make room for Jesus in our everyday lives. And now, here’s Rick with the final part of a message called, Will I Make Room for Jesus?
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You see, your life is extremely significant. It is so significant that God cared enough for it to come to earth at Christmas, live a perfect life, and then die on the cross for your sins. And if you wanna know how much you matter for God, you look at Jesus hanging on the cross with his arms outstretched and he says, this is how much you matter to me. You matter to me so much, I’d rather die than live without you. You matter so much for me, I love you so much it hurts. That’s how much you matter to God. So your life is extremely significant, but you are living it in such a tiny, small, insignificant way because you’ve stuffed the rooms of your heart with stuffing instead of stuff that’s gonna really matter the longest. Now, not only does God give me a new sense of purpose when I invite Jesus to take over the rooms of the inn in my life, but I get a new sense, and this is a big one, of peace. Jesus said it like this, I’m leaving you with a gift, and that gift is peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give you isn’t fragile like the peace the world gives. What is the kind of peace the world gives? It’s temporary. You know, we’ve had about 260 peace treaties signed in the last 300 years. Almost none of them were kept. The peace that comes from the world is totally circumstantial. I got a good job, so I’m at peace. I lose my job, I’m not at peace anymore. I got money in my stock portfolio, I’m at peace. The stock market tanks, I’m not at peace anymore. It’s totally circumstantial. Jesus said, I don’t give you that kind of peace, the peace the world gives. I give you the kind of peace, the Bible calls it, the peace that passes understanding. What does that mean? It means you have peace when there’s no reason visibly, physically, why you should be at peace. Everything around you is in chaos. It’s all hitting the toilet. It’s all been flushed down. Nothing’s working in your life. And for some unexplainable reason, you’re at peace. That is the peace that passes understanding. And that can only come from God, Jesus, the Prince of Peace. And he says, I’m gonna give you that so you won’t be troubled or afraid. God doesn’t want you to live with fear. In fact, look at this next verse. God does not give us a spirit of fear. God did not give us a spirit that makes us afraid or fearful. So if you’re afraid or fearful, that didn’t come from God. Instead, he gives us a spirit of power and of love and of self-control. It’s interesting that the more I give of my life to God, the more self-control I have. I’m not out of control. The more I give control to Christ, the more self-control he gives me. And that way, all those things, those habits that you’d like to change, those hurts you’d like to forget, those hang-ups you’d like to let go of, but you can’t, and you’ve tried and tried and tried, and you don’t have enough willpower to do it, you need the Spirit of Christ who gives you the spirit of self-control. Now, he says, I’ll give you peace of mind, and you won’t be troubled, and you’re not going to be afraid. You see, whatever you worry about, reveals the rooms in your heart you have not invited Jesus into. Whenever Jesus walks into room, he fills that room with peace. So any room in your heart that you’re worried about, that you’re upset about, that you’re anxious about, that you’re afraid about, that’s simply telling you, you haven’t invited Jesus into that room. Because when he enters a room, he fills it with peace. And your worries are revealing the areas you have not given over to God. You haven’t let it go. You haven’t said, Jesus Christ, come in and be a part of my finances. Be a part of my dating life. Be a part of my career. God gives us a spirit of power and love and self-control. Now, why do I need love? Well, there’s a lot of reasons, but one of them is 1 John 4, 18. In love… There is no room, there’s that phrase, no room for fear. But perfect love drives out all fear. I’d like to teach you right now how to be fearless. Here’s how you be fearless. I can tell you how. You fill your life with love. Because love is the antidote to fear. Perfect love drives out all fear. Here’s how it works. When you invite love into your heart, fear goes out the back door. When you invite fear into your heart, love goes out the back door. Fear and love cannot operate in the same heart at the same time. So if you wanna get rid of your fears, you need to fill your heart with perfect love. Perfect love casts out all fear. That’s how you become fearless. You fill your life with perfect love and you’re fearless. You say, where can I get perfect love? Well, not from me. Not from anybody sitting by you right now. Not from any human being because we don’t, none of us love perfectly. There’s only one person in the entire universe who loves you perfectly. Jesus Christ. God is love. He doesn’t just have it. He is love. The only reason you are able to love other people is you were made in God’s image. And because God is love, human beings have the ability to love. We are made in his image. So God says, let me fill every room in your life with love and peace and purpose and power, and you’re not gonna have any fear, you’ll be fearless. Now follow me on this. The fact that the innkeeper didn’t make room for Jesus did not stop Jesus from being born. My actions don’t stop God. He has his plan in history, history is his story. And when the innkeeper said no room, it didn’t hurt God, it just hurt the innkeeper. He missed the biggest blessing of his life. He missed the privilege of housing the son of God on his birth. No room for Jesus didn’t bother God, but it was the innkeeper who got hurt. And the same thing is true with you. You may say, I’m not gonna open up my heart to God. Oh, I’ll give him one room of my end. I’ll give him the Sunday room. I’ll give him the Christmas room, the Easter room. But I’m not gonna give him my sports room. I’m not gonna give him my sex room. I’m not gonna give him my family room. I’m not gonna give him, no, no, no, no. I’m just gonna keep those myself. Well, those are all areas that will be filled with fear and those are all areas that he can’t bless. You don’t hurt God shutting him out of your life. You don’t hurt him. You’re the one who gets hurt. You’re the one who gets hurt. Now, you know, we often at Saddleback have people come and share their stories, testimonies of how God has worked in their life. And I thought I’d end this message by writing out a testimony of the way I think the innkeeper would share his testimony. I read a fellow pastor who’d written an article about the innkeeper and it inspired me to write this. It was the busiest season I’d ever seen as an innkeeper, a once-in-a-lifetime business bonanza for me, courtesy of Rome’s Caesar Augustus. Wanting to raise taxes, Caesar came up with a bright idea that everyone have to travel to their hometown to be registered for his silly census. That meant travelers everywhere, and that meant overnight lodging was in great demand. My inn was booked solid for a month. I could ask any price I wanted and still it was packed out night after night. Now I hate the Roman rule over our land, but in this case, Caesar did me a big favor because that month of income set me up for life. But then that couple showed up. I’d already turned away dozens that night, so I didn’t think twice about it. How was I to know who that couple was? They looked no different than a dozen other families that I’d already turned away. How was I to know that they were unique, they were special? So I just said, sorry, we’re booked. We have no vacancies. There is no room for you. But as I said those words to that very young couple, I saw a worried husband and a young girl about to pop from her pregnancy. So I thought I’d at least do them a favor and allow them to sleep with the animals in the stable back out behind the inn. Obviously, I didn’t know who it was. And I didn’t know the importance of that baby that she was carrying. But now, and for the rest of eternity and all of history, I’ll be known as that guy who said, Sorry, no room. I’m the guy who put the savior of the world out back with the animals. That’s my legacy. And my name is Mr. No Room for Jesus Guy. In fact, that’s the only thing anybody knows about me, including you. I made no room for Jesus. So at least let me teach you a few things that I’ve learned from my mistake. First, Christmas is all about making room for Jesus in your life. If you miss that, you don’t get it. You miss the meaning of Christmas and why Jesus came. Second, beware of busyness. I miss Jesus because I was too busy to realize what God was doing right in front of me. I just wasn’t paying attention. I was so busy, I was clueless. Now to be honest, it was an inconvenient time for Jesus to show up. So I just pushed him off in a corner. But now that I think about it, seems that there’s always something, some reason, some distraction, some inconvenience, some other preoccupation to use an excuse to not make room for Jesus. You know, maybe God knew that. Maybe he knew that there would never be a convenient time in my life when I would have room for Jesus. I was gonna have to make room for him if it was ever gonna happen. Now I know that if I had the opportunity to do it over again, I’d certainly do it differently. So let me offer you some advice from my painful failure. If your life is filled to capacity, if your schedule is overbooked, if your budget is overspent, and you’re running on empty, you’re probably gonna miss him too when he knocks at your door. You know, Jesus’ other name was Emmanuel, which means God is with us. He came to be with us for our benefit. How ironic that it was the animals, not human beings, that made room for him. They took him in when I shut him out. If I had just paid better attention, if I had not overbooked my life and in, if I had not been so focused on making a profit, I could have received the incredible gift that God offered to me personally that night. the privilege of making room for Jesus in my inn. You know, if I had realized it, I would have moved somebody out, I would have given him my room, shoot, if I could do it all over, I would have given him the whole inn. I think that’s what God’s asking each of us to do this Christmas, to make room where there’s been no room. You know, I missed the knock on my door But for you, for you, there’s still time to receive him. There’s still time to look at your life, to consider if your rooms are really filled with what matters most or just cluttered. You have time to choose Christ over clutter. You still have time to reserve a place for the most important guest of all. And when he knocks, You can give him the welcome and the reception that he deserves as your creator and savior and king of kings. And he will knock. Oh yeah, you can count on it. You can bet on it. He will knock. Like my inn, your heart was designed for God to live in. Yeah, he’ll definitely knock. In fact, I bet he’s knocking right now Can you hear him? Are you paying attention? Will you open the door? Or will you just be another no room for Jesus guy? So how do I do it? How do I make room for Jesus in my life, in my heart? God made it so simple, nobody could say it was too hard to understand. A child can understand this. A senior citizen can understand this. It’s only three words. Invite him in. You say that’s it? Yeah, that’s it. It’s not rocket science, folks. You just open the door. is go, okay, God, you made me, you saved me, you love me, I open my life to you. Here’s how Jesus said it, last couple verses. Jesus said, listen, I’m standing and I’m knocking at your door. He’s knocking at your, notice, it’s not my door, it’s your door. I’m standing and knocking at your door. If you hear my voice and open the door, I’ll come in and we will eat together. He said, we’ll have a party, we’ll celebrate, we’ll get down, we’ll chill out, we’ll build a relationship. You can get to know God and love him the way he knows and loves you. I’ve had that relationship for over 50 years and it’s incredible. He says, you just open the door. One last verse, open up before God Keep nothing back, the Bible says, and he’ll do whatever needs to be done. I don’t even have to do it. He does it all. He does all the saving. I just open up and hold nothing back. So I come to God and I say, okay, Jesus, this Christmas, here is me. Every room in my heart, bedroom, bathroom, dining room, living room, family room, workroom, garage, Every part of me, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Jesus, it’s all for you. The stuff I’m ashamed of and the stuff I’m proud of. The stuff I wish had never happened and the stuff that I’m glad happened. It’s all yours. Come on in and take over the inn. And he says, I will fill you with power, peace, purpose, and love, and I’ll drive out the fear. He says, I’ll do whatever needs to be done. What do you need God to do in your life? I need a job. What do you need God to do in your life? I need to get married. What do you need God to do in your life? You say, open up your life before God, hold nothing back, and he’ll do whatever needs to be done. He said, I’ll take care of it. Let’s bow our heads for prayer. I’m going to pray a prayer right now. And whether this is your first time to pray it or your 500th time, I invite you to follow me along in this prayer. Now you don’t have to say it aloud, and it doesn’t even matter the words you say, it’s the attitude of your heart. But as I pray this prayer, you say, me too, God, me too. What Rick’s saying, me too. Okay? Dear God, I admit that I haven’t paid a lot of attention to you all my life. And I’m sure you’ve been around in my life when I wasn’t even aware of it. And I admit that I have crowded my life with so many other things, I have not had any space for you. Or I’ve given you just a Sunday or a Christmas. And I have not been able to receive the gifts you wanted to give me because there’s no room for them. And I have been at times overwhelmed by all the things I had to do and all the things I wanted to get. And yes, the stress has strangled me. And I’ve been distracted. And I’ve often missed the one thing that’s really important is getting to know the creator who made me. I ask you to forgive me for the times I’ve been so full of myself and my things that I just forgot you. There hadn’t been any room for you in my thoughts. I was always thinking about other things. I went and did my own way and done my own thing. But sometimes I got lost and I need your help. So tonight, this Christmas, I’m saying I want to open up all the rooms of my life to you. I want to get to know you as my creator. Thank you for making me, for giving me life. I wanna know you as my savior. Thank you for dying for me to forgive all my sins. I wanna believe in you, Jesus Christ, who split history. And I ask humbly for the privilege of becoming a part of your forever family so that I could be with you forever in heaven. I wanna live a life of purpose. I need your peace in my life. I need your power and I need the power to have self control. So fill me with your love. I invite your love to fill every room of my life to drive out the worry and to drive out the fear and to drive out the anxiety. And I don’t wanna make the mistake of the innkeeper. I wanna open the door. And right now, in faith, I invite you into my life. Do whatever needs to be done. Thank you. Amen. Hi, everybody. This is Rick, and I hope you enjoyed today’s broadcast. You know, if you just prayed that prayer for the very first time or you just recommitted your life to Jesus again today, would you let me know about it? There’s something real about sharing your commitment. So write me, Rick, at PastorRick.com and say, Rick, I prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ. And I’ll send you some material that will help you on your journey with Jesus, and I’ll also pray for you. God bless you. I want to take a minute and tell you how important your support is to Daily Hope. Your generosity, when you give to Daily Hope, you’re helping us take the message of Jesus Christ literally all around the world into many places where there aren’t missionaries or churches. These are called unreached tribes. Now, I’m sure you’re familiar with the refugee crisis around the world. Literally millions of people have been displaced from their homes, particularly in the Middle East and in North Africa, because of civil wars and violence. One of those places is South Sudan, where over 200,000 people are living in refugee camps. Now, when people are under tension and in transition, they are more open to the gospel than at any other time. These people who are living in refugee camps right now need the hope of Jesus Christ and the gospel. Now, when you help Daily Hope Radio and Daily Hope Broadcast, we’re not only broadcasting across America, but in places like South Sudan, where the station airs our program three times a day. And we are told that many, many people are coming to Christ in this war zone as they listen to these Daily Hope broadcasts. So thanks. Thanks to you. Now, let me just read you one testimony that we’ve received. Here’s a note from a woman who’s living in a refugee camp there in South Sudan. She said, my name is Joyce, and I’m from the central equatorial state in South Sudan. I’m I lost all five of my children and my beloved husband. This is in the Civil War that was going on there, as well as our family possessions during the recent fighting in the capital of Juba. She said, I had planned to commit suicide. There’s somebody who needs hope. When I listened to Rick Warren’s broadcast, the one called When You Feel Like Giving Up, I got inspired, and I dropped the idea of taking my life that very night. And I’ll continue to pray God to bless this great preacher, and thank you for giving me hope. Joyce, we’re happy to do that, and I want to say it’s because of the listeners who are giving faithfully every month to Daily Hope. Do you realize that when you give to Daily Hope, you’re helping reach people like Joyce? She was going to commit suicide in a refugee camp. Now, isn’t God amazing how when you just give what you can give, God takes it and he multiplies it, and we reach out to people that none of us could reach on our own? Here’s what I want you to do. I want you to pray for Joyce, and today I want you to pray for all of the people who are in refugee camps, and pray that we’ll be able to continue to broadcast on these stations, taking the good news of Jesus Christ and hope to people who need it the most desperately. It’s your sacrificial giving. It’s your prayer support that makes this possible. So thank you for whatever you can do, and God bless you, my friends.
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In this special Christmas episode of Daily Hope, Pastor Rick Warren challenges us to examine the rooms of our hearts and ensure we have made space for the most important guest of all—Jesus. By drawing parallels to the innkeeper’s choice on the first Christmas, Rick highlights the significance of inviting Jesus into every corner of our lives. He explains how this act not only bestows peace that surpasses all understanding but also drives out fear rooted in worldly anxieties.
