Your Choice – Blessed or Stressed — Part 2

SPEAKER 01 : 0:02

Hey there, everybody, and welcome to Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. And whether today is your first time tuning in or if you’re a regular listener, we’re really excited that you’re here. Well, today, Pastor Rick is continuing his series called Discover Your Destiny. So get ready to explore the practical steps to grow in all areas of your life. spirit, mind, body, relationships, and even your career. So stick with us as we uncover God’s incredible plan for your future. So let’s just join Rick right now with the final part of a message called Your Choice, Blessed or Stressed.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:40

God says, I will bless everything you do. if you will meet these conditions, meet these promise conditions. Let’s look at them. Number one, first, God promises to bless my life if I meet with him daily. That’s the first qualification. If I meet with him, meet with God daily. In class 201, we call this a quiet time. I don’t care what you call it, just do it. It’s five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes where you make a date with God every day. and you get alone with God and you just sit there and you be quiet and say, God, is there anything you wanna say to me? And you talk to God in prayer about stuff you’re worried about and you read a little bit of the Bible and you let him speak to you and you just be quiet. You just kind of check in with the commander in chief for operating instructions for that day. Now, some of you, the best time usually to do this is right when you start your day. You get up in the morning and the first person you talk to is God. But some of you, you’re not awake when you wake up. So you shouldn’t meet with God in the morning. When’s the best time to have a quiet time? When you’re at your best. If you’re a night person, meet with God at night. If you’re good in the middle of the day, meet with him at lunch. I don’t care, but you need to put on your calendar every day, I’m gonna meet with God, even if it’s only five minutes, even if it’s only 10 minutes. Because God says this, Proverbs 8, 34. Blessed is the man, or blessed is the man who listens to me watching daily, circle the word daily, at my doors, waiting at my doorway. He says, you spend some time, you have a daily appointment with God. And every great believer in history and everybody who’s ever been super blessed had this habit of meeting with God on a daily basis. Doesn’t have to be long, but you check in with God. Look at this verse, Psalm 31. When you looked at it earlier, verse 19, you have stored up great blessings for those who honor you and you give them the first part of your life, your time. You do so much for those who come to you for protection, blessing them before the watching world. Number two, God promises to bless my life if I study and do his word. There are so many promises in the Bible. God says, if you get this book into your heart and mind, God says, I will bless your business, I will bless your family, I will bless your health, I will bless your finances. God says, the will of God is found in the word of God. You wanna know what God wants you to do in the next 10 years? God’s word is the center of God’s will. And if you study it, there are so many blessings in studying the word of God. Notice this verse, Psalm 1. Blessed is the man whose delight is in the law of the Lord. What’s the law of the Lord? It’s the Bible. And on his word, he meditates day and night. Now, what does meditation mean? Some people think it means you put your mind in neutral and you contemplate the Lent in your navel and you go, um. No, no. Meditation simply means to seriously think about something. You read a verse, you go, now what does that really mean? How could I apply that in my life? How could I really practice that on a daily basis at work or at home? It says, blessed is the man who delights in the law of the Lord and on his word he meditates day and night. He’s like a tree planted by the stream of water which yields its fruit in season. In other words, you’re productive, you’re more productive. Your leaf doesn’t wither. That means when there’s a recession, you don’t dry up because you got deep roots. You’re not drying up and blowing away. The economy’s not blowing you away because you got deep roots. It says, whatever he does, circle this, prospers. I want whatever you do to prosper in the next 10 years. That’s the condition. He says you gotta get into the word and you gotta study, you gotta read it. James tells us, chapter one, book of James, tells us how to do this. The man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, that’s the Bible, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it, He will be blessed in what he does. If you wanna be blessed in what you do, it says there are four things to do. Circle those four things. Look intently, continue to do it, not forget it, but do it. That’s what you do with the word of God. You look intently, that’s called study. Study is looking intently. Not forgetting, that means remember. Why do we take notes? Why do I pass out notes at all of our services? Because the shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory. God says, if you don’t remember it, you can’t be blessed by it. That’s why we take notes. You forget 95% of what you hear within 72 hours. Shoot, I don’t even remember what I preached on last week. And I did it five times. So how in the world would I expect you? You don’t. You could go to church your entire life, and if you never write anything down, guess what? You’re never remembering any of it. Because we have very good forgetters. So the Bible says, not forgetting what you’ve heard, but do it. Number three, God promises to bless my life if I tithe my income. What does that mean? It means first part of what I make goes back to God. If I make 10 bucks, I give a dollar back to God. Why? God obviously doesn’t need my money. He wants what it represents, he wants my heart. The Bible says in Malachi 3.10, bring the whole tithe into the storehouse that there may be food in my house. What’s a storehouse? It’s wherever you worship. You bring your tithe as an act of worship where you worship. You don’t give your tithe the United Way, you bring it as an act of worship. Test me in this, circle that, test me in this. I call this verse the Pepsi challenge verse in the Bible. Test me in this, says the Lord, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you won’t have a room enough for it. That’s the kind of blessing I want on your life in the next 10 years. So much blessing, you can’t even handle it. You have to say, hold it, hold it. Slow down, Lord, you’re blessing me too much. I want you to have to say that. He said, floodgates, I’ll open them up and pour out so much blessing, you won’t have room for it. Now notice he says, test me in this. How do you know God exists? God says, there’s only one way in the Bible where God says you can prove God exists. He says, try tithing. You know, when I was working on my master’s degree and then later my doctorate, In some of the philosophy classes I took, we had to study the philosophical proofs for the existence of God. So we studied the cosmological proof for the existence of God and we studied the teleological proof for the existence of God. We studied the ontological proof for the existence of God. We studied Kant’s moral imperative and all of these different philosophical proofs. By the way, it takes more faith to be an atheist than to believe in God. I don’t have enough faith to be an atheist. Because just to believe that this all just happened, just poof, out of nothing, we disproved spontaneous generation in the Middle Ages. Nothing does not create something. It’s never happened, it never will. I could say here, you know, watch right here, there’s gonna be a gold brick here. Now it’s gonna take 10 billion years, but there will be a gold brick here. 10 billion years from now, there’s not gonna be a gold brick there, why? Nothing does not create something. If I’m walking down a mountainside and I see a rock out of place, I may say, well, that’s an accident. If I’m walking down a mountain and I see a Rolex laying there, that’s no accident. That’s evidence of design. And if I see a Rolex and I pick it up, I say, you know what? I believe that just over time, over 10 trillion years, all these parts just happened to fit together and start ticking. You’d say, I’m nuts. But a Rolex is simple compared to the universe. People say, well, we know how it all started. It started with a big bang. Fine, wherever there’s a big bang, you gotta have a big banger. I don’t have any problem with that, but somebody had to create the bang. Nothing does not create something. It takes far more faith to believe this is all just an accident. Sorry, I just don’t have enough faith. Wherever you have a design, you have a designer. Wherever you have a creation, you have a creator. Wherever you have order, you have somebody who organized it. It just doesn’t happen on its own. It never has and it never will. But it’s interesting in the Bible, God never says, prove me through the ontological argument or the cosmological argument. He says, here’s how you can prove me. Try this. He says, I dare you. This is God’s dare. Tithe. Give me the first 10% of everything you make back to me and see if I don’t bless you more. We’ll play a little game. You give to me and I’ll give to you and we’ll see who wins. I’ve played this game for 35 years and I’ve lost it every year. Most of you know my story. When Kay and I got married 35 years ago, we made a commitment as a couple. We said, in this marriage, God gets paid first. We may be in debt to other people. We’re not going to be in debt to God. I may be late on payment to somebody else, but I’m not going to be late on a payment to God when he says, if you want my blessing in your finances, put me first. So we started tithing. At the end of the first year, when we started our second year, we raised our tithe to 11% from 10%. At the end of our second year of marriage, we raised our, at the beginning of our second year, we raised it to 12%. Beginning of our third year of marriage, we raised our tithe to 13%. Now we weren’t doing this to show off. I didn’t tell anybody about it for 30 years. And the Bible doesn’t even teach that you have to increase it. I just thought, well, you know, if tithing blesses you, I want super blessing. And so I’m just gonna play this game and see if I can out give God. And so we kept raising it and raising it. And I will tell you, I’ll be honest with you, sometimes when it’s really tough and the cupboards seem pretty bare, you go, Lord, I just can’t afford this. And I think I can’t afford not to. I want God’s blessing. Now there were times when I was out of work when you don’t have any income, you don’t tithe. You only tithe on what you make. You don’t tithe on what you don’t make. And so we raised it year after year and in years I get a bonus, so I’d raise it two or 3%. And on years it was tithe, just a little quarter percent. And most of you know now 35 years later, Kay and I, we just raised it again this last year, we give away 91% of our income and I live on 9%. And I don’t even take a salary at Saddleback Church. And yet I live far better than most people do. My life is very comfortable. Why? You cannot out give God. Number four, God promises to bless my life, this is a real important one, if I help others in need. God promises to bless my life if I help others in need. with their needs, people who are less fortunate, people aren’t as well off as I am. God looks around and says, are you a reservoir or a straw? If you’re a reservoir, you just collect all the blessings yourself and you hoard it. If you’re a straw, you say, God, help other people through me. You get far more being a straw than a reservoir. Psalm 41, verses one and two, it says this. God blesses those who are kind to the poor and helpless. He helps them out of their own troubles. He protects them and keeps them alive. He publicly honors them and destroys the power of their enemies. That’s a lot of promises. God says he’s watching to see if you help the poor. Why? Because God loves the poor. He wants to know are you unselfish or are you selfish? Do you ever think about anybody else besides you? Do you ever help anybody who’s not as well off as you are? God says, when I find somebody who helps the helpless and the poor, he said, that’s the person I’m gonna pour my blessing out on. Number five, God promises to bless my life, this is the fifth qualification, if I share the good news. In other words, I don’t keep it a secret, I invite other people to church. I tell other people about the Lord. I share the good news. I give people a book or a tape or a CD. I invite them to be a part of my small group or bring them to a service, whatever. If I share the good news, God says, I will bless your life. God is looking for people who share the good news. If I had the cure for cancer and I didn’t tell it, that would be criminal. If I had the cure for AIDS and I didn’t share it with anybody, they should put me in jail. But I have something more important than that. I know how people can have their past forgiven, get a purpose for living, and have a home in heaven. Where else are you gonna get that? God says it’s criminal if I don’t share it. Philemon chapter one says this, I pray you will be active in sharing your faith so that you will fully understand, circle this, every blessing, every blessing we have in Christ. Is anybody gonna be in heaven because of you? God promises to bless my life if I participate in fellowship. This is the sixth condition. God says, if you do these things, I will bless your life. And number six is if I participate in fellowship. What does that mean? It means I don’t try to live a life by myself. I get in a family. I get in a small group. I get in a church. I get in relationship with other believers. Now the Bible says in Romans 1 12, Paul says, I’m eager to encourage you in your faith, but I also wanna be encouraged by your faith. In other words, I’m gonna encourage you in your faith and you’re gonna encourage me in my faith. In this way, each of us will be a blessing to the others. Now, why is it important for you to be in a small group? Because many of the blessings of God that he has stored up for you in the next 10 years are going to come through other people. They’re going to come through relationships. And if you don’t build those relationships, you’re not gonna get those blessings. You see, the number one thing God wants you to learn in life is not how to be rich. The number one thing God wants you to learn in life is how to love. Because God is love. And you learn love by being in a relationship. Most of you learn nothing about relational skills at home or at school. And the church is the laboratory for learning relational skills, learning how to love, to be like Christ, to be like God. You cannot be blessed by God on your own. I’ll say it again. You cannot be blessed by God living an independent life. We are better together, we’re made for community. That’s why we talk about small groups all the time. Now look at the last verse on your outline. These are the six things that God says, if you do these things, I will bless your life in unusual ways. And in John 13, 17, Jesus said this. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you know them. No, that’s not what it says. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you what? Do them. All what I just shared with you, it’s worthless if you don’t do anything about it. You just wasted an hour of your life. If you don’t have any intention to do anything about it, there’s no blessing for knowing. There’s only blessing for doing. We’ve designed Decade of Destiny around these six promises of blessing. But nobody’s gonna force you. I can spend all year preparing this stuff, studying for this stuff, taping these things, planning up Bible studies, preparing projects for you to do these so that you can be blessed, but nobody’s gonna force you to do this. Nobody’s gonna force you to. You gotta make the decision, and this is your choice. In the next 10 years, are you gonna be blessed or stressed? You’re gonna go through the next 10 years just like you did the last 10 years, stressed out? Are you gonna go and say, I want a new level of blessing in my life. I want God’s blessing on my family, my finances, my health. I want God’s blessing on my relationships, my friendships, my career. I want God to bless me. I wanna be in a position that it not only blesses me, but my kids and their kids and their kids. I wanna be a multi-generational blesser. I wanna bless other people because I’ve been so blessed. I wanna have to say to God, God, stop, you’re blessing me too much. Wouldn’t that be great? But it’s your choice, blessed or stressed. Now, all this presupposes that you have a relationship with Jesus Christ. If you don’t do that, it doesn’t really matter because the Bible says all the promises of God are yes in Jesus. It’s because of what he did for us. Let’s bow our heads for prayer. Father, I look out on these people, these dear people that I love, and I want you to bless our church in an unusual way. I wanna bless the men and I wanna bless the women. I want to bless the single adults and the married adults, the young and the old, the businessman and businesswoman, the teachers, the truck drivers, the accountants and doctors and the salesmen and all of the different careers that we have. Lord, you’ve made it really clear what you expect us to do, that if we do these things, you will bless our lives. And I pray that today many are saying, I’m in. I’m not gonna go through another decade like the last one, but I’m gonna be more blessed than ever before because I’m gonna do what you’ve told me to do and I’m gonna follow your instructions. In this moment, would you just say to God, amen, Lord, amen. I want to be what you want me to be and I wanna do what you want me to do. If you’ve never asked Jesus in your life, say, Jesus Christ, come into my life right now. Make yourself real to me. I want to know you and follow you and learn to love you. In your name I pray.

SPEAKER 1 : 20:19

Amen.

SPEAKER 01 : 20:25

Hey, if you just prayed to receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior, awesome. Congratulations. And we would love to hear from you and send you some free materials to help you know him better. So email rick at pastorrick.com. That’s rick at pastorrick.com. You know, the truth is that most of us don’t pay much attention to our health until something goes wrong. We put on a couple of pounds every year and think, no big deal, right? But a few pounds over five or ten years really adds up. Yeah, I know about that. But on a more serious note, it can lead to major illness like diabetes and heart disease. So that’s why Pastor Rick worked together with medical and fitness experts to create the Daniel Plan Study. This is a six-session video and workbook study kit from Rick Warren, Dr. Daniel Amen, and Dr. Mark Hyman. This is an out-of-the-box approach to a healthy lifestyle based on five essentials, faith, food, fitness, focus, and friends. The Daniel Plan study gives individuals and small groups the encouragement and accountability needed to succeed. So if you’ve been watching the scale going up lately, or your health may be in trouble because of your weight, it’s really not too late. So join the thousands of people who’ve lost weight, improved their health, and improved their relationships through the Daniel Plan. So be sure to request your copy when you partner with Daily Hope to take the Word of God to a hurting world. Just go to pastorrick.com to get your copy of this great resource. That’s pastorrick.com. Or you can just text the word HOPE to 70309. That’s the word HOPE to 70309. And thank you so much for your support. Your gift to Daily Hope really helps us share the hope of Christ with people all over the world. Be sure to join us next time as 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.