The Sharing Choice – Part 2

SPEAKER 01 : 0:02

Hey everyone, it’s so great to have you with us today on Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. We are going to continue our very encouraging series today called Life’s Healing Choices. And in these lessons, Rick Warren will guide us through a deep biblical exploration of how to overcome the hurts, hang-ups, and habits that really hold us back. So get ready for some practical insights and powerful truths that can lead to lasting change and freedom in your life. And now let’s join Rick for part two of his message called The Sharing Choice.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:39

Paul, in his life, if you read through the New Testament and all those books that he wrote, he is very honest about five different things in his life, things that we don’t like to talk to other people about. But Paul had such an impact and single-handedly revolutionized the Roman Empire and Christianity spread all over because he was willing to be honest about things we’re not willing to be honest about. What are they? You might write these down. They’re on your outline. To help other people, I must be honest about these five things. First, my feelings. I have to be open with my feelings. Johnny Baker was helping me with this point last night and he talked about, you know, this is kind of hard for men. He said, you know, as men, there’s two feelings we’re honest about. Really, when we’re hungry and we want sex. But that’s about it. He goes, we don’t really talk about much else. We’re not guys who really share our feelings very well. Notice Paul says, we have spoken frankly to you. We have opened our hearts wide. Paul says, I didn’t just teach you, I opened my heart. I shared my feelings. And if you’re gonna have an impact in the lives of other people, you gotta learn to share your feelings. Then I learned to share my faults. And that’s a little bit harder. I have to be humble about my faults. In the Bible, Paul tells us, each of us must bear the faults and the burdens of his own, for none of us is perfect. So that’s pretty easy to admit, but we just are honest about our faults, and we’re specific about them. Third thing you have to be honest about, if you’re gonna be impacting others, is your failures. I have to be honest about my failures, frank about my failures. Notice Paul says, Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. He’s going, man, I’m it. And if you read the rest of the passage, he goes, you know, I helped kill a guy. I stood there when they were stoning Stephen, and he said, I persecuted the church. And he is very frank about his faults and his failures. Fourth, I need to be truthful about my frustrations. And you gotta stop saying, well, it doesn’t bother me, or it’s no big deal, forget it. No, you be honest about your frustrations. The things in your life that you can’t seem to get control of, that helps other people. Paul says, I have the desire to do what’s right, but I cannot carry it out. Don’t you feel that way sometimes? You wanna do the right thing, but you end up not doing it? He says, I keep doing the evil that I don’t wanna do. He said, all that stuff I don’t wanna do, I keep doing it. I don’t wanna look at that. I don’t wanna read that. I don’t wanna act that way. I don’t wanna say that. I don’t wanna respond that way, but I do. It is in that kind of gut level honesty you make a difference in people’s lives. Truthful about my feelings and my faults and my failures and my frustrations. And then one more on the back of your outline. He says, I gotta be honest, and this is the hardest one of all, about my fears. We hate to tell people what we’re afraid of. But every time you share fear with somebody else, it does two things. It lowers the level of fear in your own life and it encourages that other person. It lowers the level of fear in your life. Fear builds when you keep it a secret. And it lowers it in your own life and it helps other people. My fears, he says, I do admit that I have fears. This is Paul talking. That when I come to you that you’ll disappoint me and I’ll disappoint you. And frustration with each other will fall to pieces. Just isn’t gonna happen. What is Paul saying here? He’s saying, you know what, we’re all broken. Why don’t we just admit it? You know, if I hold it in, it makes me miserable. It doesn’t help anybody else. I need to learn to be honest about my fears and my faults and my failures and my frustrations. my feelings. When I do that, I get healing and other people get healing. First thing, learn to share how pain got your attention. Second thing, I need to learn to share what I’ve learned in the process. I need to learn to share what I have learned in the process. In other words, Since that crisis in your life, since that trouble, since that problem, since that pain, what have I learned from it? What are the lessons that I learned and that I can pass on? You’ve heard people say it’s wise to learn from experience. Well, it’s true, but let me tell you something better than that. Yes, it’s wise to learn from experience. It is wiser to learn from the experience of others. Why? Because I don’t have time to make all the mistakes myself. If I have to learn everything by personal experience, I’ll die before I learn it all. And isn’t it a whole lot better for me to learn from your failure than to go out and do it myself and fail and then go, oh, I shouldn’t have done that. It’s less painful and it’s quicker for you to learn from the experiences of other people. That’s why you need to read history. It’s why you need to read the Bible. It’s why you need a mentor in your life no matter how old you are. It’s why you need spiritual partners. It’s why you need a spiritual small group because we learn from each other. Oh, somebody who’s already been through that can help me move along quicker. Now, what are the lessons that God wants us to learn from pain? Johnny Baker is our director of Celebrate Recovery. Would you welcome him?

SPEAKER 03 : 6:25

Hey everybody, my name is Johnny and I’m excited to talk about these things because as we share what we’ve learned from our pain, we find that we help more and more people. So let’s look at the three things that God wants us to learn from our pain. The first thing we can share is I can share what I’ve learned. I’ve learned to depend on God’s love. As we’ve gone through these eight weeks, many of us have decided that there’s things in our lives that we’re ready to get rid of, our habits and our hang-ups. We’re ready to strip those aside and we’re ready to turn to God and depend on Him only. If you were to come to Celebrate Recovery on a Friday night and I were to stand up, I’d say, Hi, my name is Johnny. I’m a believer who struggles with alcoholism. Now your response would be, Hi, Johnny. Let’s try that. Hi, Johnny. Okay, good. I feel at home now. Thanks for doing that for me. But when we do that, we’re sharing about something that I used to depend on. I used to depend on alcohol for my comfort. Maybe for you it’s food, or it’s shopping, or it’s any of these habits, it’s anger, there’s different things that we turn to for comfort. When we begin to strip those away, we begin to let God be our comfort, we realize that he’s really all we need. Because we find out that sometimes we go through situations and people split. Our friends leave us. We find that we’re alone. We find that the thing that’s been giving us comfort is empty and is actually killing us. So we turn to God and we find that he is all the comfort we need. 2 Corinthians 1, 8-10, Paul says, Yes, it was good because then we could turn to God and we could learn that He is all we need. We often don’t learn that until he’s all we have. And so when you come to this place where you find that God is your comfort, that you can go to him and depend on him and depend on his love, you can share that with other people. The next thing that we can share that we learn when we go through painful times is learn to follow God’s word. I’ve learned to follow God’s word. See, God wants to teach you about himself, his power and his love and his grace and his wisdom, and he does that through his word. This is a tough one for a lot of us because it seems like we don’t turn to the Bible until we’re in crisis. So we don’t fill our minds with scripture until it’s too late. But the Bible is full of loving warnings. Think about it this way, if you have children, I ironed my shirt. I know by now it doesn’t look like I ironed my shirt, but I did at one point iron my shirt and I was ironing it. My three-year-old Chloe came up to me and she said, what are you doing? Because I don’t, I guess I don’t iron all that often. And I said, well, I’m trying to iron my shirt. I said, don’t touch this iron. It’s super, super hot. And I could see in her eyes, she was just like, must touch iron. You know what I mean? She just was like… Oh, you know, and I said, Chloe, if you touch this iron, I’m going to have to take you to the doctor. The doctor is like, you know, shots and scariness for her. So she was like, oh, never mind. I’ll put my hands behind my back and walk away. But I gave her that warning. Don’t touch the iron. But how many of us growing up, somebody would say, don’t do that. It’s bad for you. And that’s all we want to do. As a teenager specifically, there were times in my life when my parents would say, Johnny, don’t do that. You’re going to end up hurting yourself. Learn from my mistakes. Because my parents made lots of mistakes. But they said, learn from my mistakes. As a parent, they laugh at me now when they see my children. They go, back at you. And so… But learn from my mistakes instead of making your own. And the Bible is the same. The Bible says here are some things you can learn from. When God gives us warning, when God gives us rules, or when he tells us things of how we should live, it’s because he loves us. And he wants us to have a fulfilled life. Proverbs 1, 19, 71. It says, it was the best thing, this painful situation that was going on was the best thing that could have happened for me. For it taught me to pay attention to your laws. In our painful times, we depend on God’s love and then we learn to follow God’s word. The third thing that we can learn from painful times is that I can learn that I need other people. This is why it’s so important that we’re in small groups. I have to be honest with you. There’s some nights when we go to small group and I’ll tell my wife, I don’t want to go. I’m tired. I want to sit down and watch TV. I just kind of want to veg out. You’re my small group. All I need is you. And she goes, in the car, let’s go. We’re going to small group. And every time we leave, when we get out the door, I go, how could you have not wanted to come here tonight? I mean, this is a great small group to be a part of. In the last eight weeks, I feel closer to the men in my small group than I have ever. We need other people when we’re going through hard times. See, God uses other people to teach us about ourselves. Oftentimes, if you’re in a relationship, he uses that other person in the relationship. Sometimes we say, thank you, I don’t need you to tell me that right now. But he says, no, go ahead and keep the pressure on. Keep telling him what’s going on. 1 Corinthians 11, 11 says, remember that in God’s plan, men and women need each other. Now, this doesn’t have anything to do with marriage or relationships, but it’s saying, look, I created you in my image. I put some of my traits in men and some of my traits in women. So you need each other. Man, you need some good, godly, spiritual women to come along you, alongside you, who can talk into your life. And women, the same thing. When we do that, we find that we get a bigger picture, a better picture of who God is. And we can also see what’s going on in our lives that needs attention. Ecclesiastes 4.9-10 is so important. It says two people are better than one. Why? If one falls down, the other can help him up. But it is bad for the person who is alone and falls because no one is there to help him up. Usually… We’re not willing to face the truth about ourselves until we’re forced to. And other people in our lives can do a couple of things. They can encourage us and pray for us like we talked about last week, but they can also point out these flaws in our character that can help us. And then when we need them, when we go through hard times, They’re the people we call. They’re the people we lean on. They’re the people who encourage us and walk us through these hard times so we can share those three things that we learned from our pain. And now Pastor Rick’s going to come back and tell us the third thing we can share as we go through painful process. Thanks. Thanks.

SPEAKER 02 : 12:51

Now you’re not, yeah, you can clap. Go ahead. You’re not fully healed, you’re not fully recovered, you’re not fully mature until you’re able to start sharing with other people the hurts and the habits and the hangups that you have been going through. Doesn’t mean you’re completely worked them all out of your own life, it means you’re able to say I’m one step ahead of you, let me tell you where you can head toward. And what do I share? I share how pain got my attention and I share how I learned from pain, the lessons that I learned from pain. Now there’s a third thing God wants you to share. He wants you to share how God can bring good out of bad. And all of us have examples of this in our lives that we can share. You can look at your life and think of times how God brought good out of bad. Now one of God’s great promises in the Bible is Romans 8, 28. It’s one of the most well-known verses in the Bible. It’s also one of the most misunderstood. So let’s look at it word by word in Romans 8, 28. There on your outline, this is God’s promise. We know that God causes everything to work together for good, for the good of those who love God. We know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God. Now let’s look at what this says. First, what does it not say? It doesn’t say we know that everything will work out the way I want it to work out. Because that’s not true. It just doesn’t happen that way. Things don’t always work out the way I want them to work out. It does not promise all things will have a happy ending here on earth. That’s not true either. There’s a lot of unhappy endings on earth. This is a broken planet. This is not heaven. So we shouldn’t expect everything to have a happy ending on earth. It doesn’t. What does this verse promise to us about recovery and about growth? Well, first it says, we know. In other words, we’re not guessing. We’re not hoping, we’re not wishing, we’re not desiring. We know for certain this is a fact of life. We can be confident, we can be absolutely certain. We know this for a certainty that we can stake our lives on it. And what do we know? We know that God causes. What does that mean? It means your life is not an accident. There’s no such thing as random chance. There’s no such thing as bad luck. There is a grand design behind everything. Grand designers all behind it. Our lives are not a result of fate. Our lives are not a result of chance. Our lives are not a result of accident. You are not an accident. God had a plan and purpose for your life long before you were even born. And there is a grand design. Now we make mistakes. But God never makes mistakes. And everything that happens in life happens because of choices, not chance. Choices that God has made, choices that I have made, and choices that you have made. It’s not chance, it’s a choice. We know, we’re certain, that God is the grand designer. He causes, notice, All things, everything. Now what is included in all things? My mistakes? Yes. Are your sins included in all things? Yes. Are the sins of others included in it? Yes. Are your genetics and your DNA included in that? Yes. Are all of the circumstances throughout history included in that? Yes. Are all of the bad decisions that other people make and I make? Yes. All includes all, all things. Does that include miscarriage? Yes. Does that include divorce? Yes. Does that include failure? Yes. God says I fit it all into the plan. There’s no part that doesn’t fit into the plan. I fit it all into the plan. We know that God causes all things, now if we just stop there, that would make God the author of evil. God is not the author of evil. No, nothing that is evil in the world was caused by God. So what is he saying here? Look at the rest of the verse. We know that God causes all things to work together for good. Now notice, that verse does not say all things are good. They’re not. There’s a lot of bad in the world. There’s a lot of evil in the world. If you don’t believe in evil, you just travel with me around the world. I’ll show you the face of evil straight up in your face. There’s a lot of bad evil. When little children are stolen from their parents and sold into sex trafficking, that’s evil. And when leaders, world leaders take money and store it in Swiss account banks while their people starve to death, that’s evil. When people betray each other, that’s evil. When people torture each other, that’s evil. There is real evil in the world. So not all things are good in the world. Cancer is bad. Molestation is bad. There’s a lot of bad in the world. But it says there, God causes all things to work together for good for those who love God. Now, not separately, but together. There are a lot of things that don’t taste good on their own, but you mix them together, they taste good. I’ve used this illustration before, but I like it. So I’m gonna tell it again. When my wife makes a cake, she takes all these individual ingredients and she works them together. Now if I go down to the kitchen and I watch her and I start getting a little anxious and I eat any of the individual ingredients, they taste bitter. I don’t just naturally go into the kitchen and take a handful of Crisco and eat it. Doesn’t taste good. I don’t go in and automatically open up the refrigerator, take out a couple of raw eggs and suck them down. Doesn’t taste good. I don’t even take a swig of vanilla straight. Doesn’t taste good. I don’t take a flower and eat it by itself. It’s dry, it’s tasteless. I certainly don’t take a spoonful of salt and eat it. And I wouldn’t even take a cup of sugar and just eat it by itself. It wouldn’t taste good. But when K works them all together. Shoot, you don’t even have to cook it, I’ll eat the batter. Okay, don’t even cook it, just give me that cake batter and I’ll just start. Now, when it’s worked together, individual bitter elements actually come to taste good. Never by themselves. There are things in your life that you’ve experienced that were flat out bitter and they left a bad taste in your mouth and they weren’t good. They were bad. But God says, you know what? I’m bigger than the bad and I can work it all together and I can make a cake out of it and it’ll be delicious and your life will be delicious and your life will be something you take to a party. And all of those bitter elements put together, I will work them together for good. Can God really bring good out of bad? Oh yes, he can. How about the crucifixion? The death of his son, that was bad. They tortured him, they spit on him, they beat him, and then they hung him as a shameless criminal. Did God bring any good out of that? Oh yeah, just the salvation of the world. God specializes in bringing good out of bad. Now friends, this verse, this promise is not for everybody. We know that God causes everything to work together for good for those who love God. This is not a promise to everybody. It’s only for those who are giving God the pieces and say, God, I love you. I take the pieces of my broken life and put them back together. If you’re not following Christ, If you don’t love God, if you haven’t given him every piece of your life, all things are not working together for good in your life. In fact, they’re working together for bad. God owes you nothing. He owes you zip. If you’re going your own way, he made you and he gives you the choice to love him back and follow his way or go your own way and turn your life into a living hell. He doesn’t owe you anything. This is the Burger King theology. What is Burger King theology? God gives you the choice. He says to you, have it your way. Have it your way. God’s not gonna force you to love him, to follow him, to obey him. He says, have it your way. And he lets you have it your way. But if you’re gonna have it your way, you’re stuck with the consequences of it. And one day you’re gonna stand before God when you die, and God is gonna say, okay, obviously you didn’t love me, so have it your way for the rest of eternity. You didn’t want me in your life here on earth, why would you want me in your life for eternity? Be separated from me for eternity. Have it your way. You can’t say, well, I want to have it my way on earth, but I want to have it God’s way in eternity. That’s illogical. It’s stupid. It’s irrational. God says, okay, I give you the choice. Have it your way on earth. But if so, you’re going to have it your way for eternity, which means you didn’t want me on earth. You don’t want me in eternity. Be separated from me for eternity. Because you were made to last forever. You’re going to last forever, either with God or without him.

SPEAKER 01 : 23:26

What a great and timely word from Pastor Rick. And now here’s Pastor Rick with a letter from one of our listeners.

SPEAKER 02 : 23:33

Today I want to share a letter from a listener named Joanne who wanted to make sure that her neighbor understood what it means to have a relationship with Jesus. Now I’ve edited Joanne’s letter to help with the flow, but here’s what she writes. Dear Pastor Rick, this morning my neighbor and I were listening for the second time to the last segment from the What on Earth Am I Here For DVD study kit. Now, we’ve been going through this study for the last eight weeks in a small group, but the two of us listened again to this segment because I wanted to make sure that my neighbor understood her salvation and that she had perfect assurance that she was saved, that there was no doubt in her mind. we had a wonderful session as we watched you teach us how to have a relationship with Jesus and how to believe God’s promises to know for sure that we are saved for eternity. Well, Pastor Rick, we bowed our heads as you led in that salvation prayer, and when the DVD was over, we reviewed what we had learned, and now my neighbor knows for absolute certainty that she’s a child of God, she’s saved, she’s going to heaven. And next week, we’re gonna start the Healing Choices DVD study kit, which we’re both very excited to start this new study. Joanne, I am overwhelmed by your note, and thank you so much for taking the time to write me. I love reading these letters, for caring enough about your neighbor that you made extra sure that she understood the most important thing in life, how to begin a relationship with Jesus Christ, how to follow him on a daily basis. So thank you for your encouragement. I’m glad I’m encouraging you, but you are encouraging me. And may God continue to use all the resources that Daily Hope produces to help you and others win our friends to Christ.

SPEAKER 01 : 25:21

Hey, if you’d like to let Rick know how this broadcast has blessed you, he would love it. Please feel free to send him an email at rick at pastorrick.com. That’s rick at pastorrick.com. 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.