In an inspiring message on recovery, Pastor Rick Warren dissects the pivotal role of prayer in overcoming life’s toughest battles. Highlighting poignant biblical examples such as Peter’s impulsivity and massive failure, Job’s deep losses, and Judah’s journey from grief, Warren expertly illustrates the pattern of falling, praying, and rising again. Furthermore, he calls attention to the first recorded sermon of Jesus, emphasizing his commitment to recovery and eyesight restoration. This episode is a guide for anyone seeking not only recovery for themselves but a framework to aid those around them.
00:00:02 Introduction and Conclusion of Life’s Healing Choices Series
Hello everybody, and welcome to another episode of Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. Today we are bringing our series called Life’s Healing Choices to a close. And in these lessons, Rick Warren is guiding us through a deep biblical exploration of how to overcome the hurts, hang-ups, and habits that 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, here’s Rick. He’s got the final part of a message called, There’s No Recovery Without Prayer.
SPEAKER 01 :
With prayer, we can recover our vision, our perspective, our sight. When I’m locked in to a habit, her to hang up, when I’m locked in to a pattern of thinking, a way of living, an attitude, when I’m stuck in a relationship I can’t get into, I can’t get on with, and I can’t get out of, and I’m just stuck, then I need to pray. Because with prayer, we can recover our vision, and then we can see things we never could see before. We see things about ourselves we never saw before. We see things about our partner that we never saw before. We see things about the world, about God, about Satan, about life, about death, about what’s important in life. We see things we never saw before. It only comes through prayer. You’re not gonna get this in a secular recovery program. You’re not gonna get these benefits in a secular recovery program. Because in those programs, they’re not talking about prayer. They’re not talking about prayer at all. Let me give you another. This one had to do with Peter and his massive personal and yet very public failure. Peter was Mr. Foot and Mouth Disease. I like Peter, because he reminds me of myself, he’s so impulsive, he’s so impetuous, you know, it’s like, he sees the Lord walking on water, I’m coming, and he just, he’s not even thinking about it, this is dumb, walking on water. He just starts, then he goes, oops, and starts to sink, you know? I love Peter. Peter’s up on the mountaintop with Jesus and the Transfiguration and the three great leaders in the Old Testament. He goes, hey, let’s just build tents up here and have a party. I might have said that. They come to arrest Jesus. Peter pulls out his sword, knocks the guy’s ear off. He’s just, act before you think. And at the Lord’s Supper, Jesus says, one of you is going to betray me. By the way, I was in Ireland on vacation a week ago. Can I tell you a good Irish joke? This fits. It fits. It really does. I wasn’t planning on sharing this, but it does fit. There’s this Irish priest, and you know the Irish really didn’t like the English because they dominated them for 800 years. And so this Irish priest was always preaching the same sermon against the English, the English are bad. And his bishop comes and goes, buddy, you gotta preach about Jesus. You gotta share the gospel. You can’t just preach against the English every week. So he promises, next week I’ll preach on the Lord’s Supper. And he says, today I’m going to speak on the Lord’s Supper. And the Lord said to the disciples, one of you will betray me. And the blessed Saint Peter said, is it I, Lord, will I betray you? And the Lord said, no, it isn’t you, Peter. And the blessed Saint Thomas said, well then, is it I, Lord, am I the one who will betray you? And the Lord said, no, it isn’t you, Tommy. And the blessed Saint Matthew said, he said, thy Lord, am I the one to betray you? And he said, no, it isn’t you, Matthew. And then Judas said, well, blimey, it must be me, mate. There’s always a way. If you really want to, there’s always a way. So it’s at this event, and Jesus has just said, one of you is going to betray you, and Peter goes, man, I, you know, come on, I’d die for you, Lord. He’s Mr. Bluster. You know, don’t, not me, man. And in Luke 22, verse 31 and 32, predicting Peter’s fall, Jesus says this. Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift you just as wheat is sifted. You know, farmers sift the wheat to get the chaff, the chaff away from the wheat. Satan has desired to sift you just as wheat is sifted. But, Jesus, I have prayed for you, Simon, so that your faith may not fail. And when you have recovered, notice, I wish this was written out, because it doesn’t say if. When. When you have recovered. Jesus knew before Peter’s fall, he’d recover. Jesus knew before your mess ups, you’d recover. And when, not if. I’ve prayed for you, so if I prayed for you, it’s not if. You know what Jesus is doing for you in heaven right now? He’s praying for you. He’s praying for you. If there was something more important for Jesus to be doing, don’t you think he’d be doing it? That’s how important prayer is. It’s not like the last resort, it’s the first choice. And a lot of times in prayer we go, well, all we can do now is pray. Like that’s the last thing. Well, all we can do now is pray. And everybody goes, has it come to that? Prayer is the first choice, not the last resort. Peter, I’ve prayed for you. I know you’re going to mess up. I know you’re going to deny me. But when you have recovered, put that back up there, it will be your job to strengthen your brothers. I commission you in the name of Jesus Christ to go commission others and to do it yourself to encourage your brothers and sisters. So Peter has this massive public failure, but you don’t need to worry about it because Jesus prayed for him. And so he says, when you recover, now your job is to strengthen your brothers. Here’s point number five. Write this down. With prayer, we can fully recover and even use our failures to help others. I like that. With prayer we can fully recover, doesn’t matter what’s happened in your life, we can fully recover and even use our failures to help others. All right, now let’s review. The Israelites teach us that with prayer we can recover from problems that we cause by our own impatience. And we cause most of our problems by getting in a hurry. And Jeroboam teaches us with prayer we can recover even when we’re paralyzed by our emotions. And Hezekiah teaches us with prayer we can recover even when other people tell us you’re not going to recover. You’re never going to change. And the two blind men who cried out to Jesus teach us that when prayer, when we pray we can recover our vision and see things we’ve never seen before. And Peter teaches us that with prayer we can fully recover and even use our failures to help others. That’s the plan. That’s the last step. Now let’s look at Job. Nobody had to recover more than Job. There is no one in this room who had to recover more than Job. So he’s the greatest testimony. We should pull him out at CR every week. Hi, I’m Job. Let me tell you my testimony of recovery. Now Job had three friends. And his friends literally, they did some good things, they did some bad things. The Bible tells us that when Job lost everything, all his family and all of his money and all of his health, he lost literally everything except his wife and she nagged him. And she came and says, look, honey, why don’t you just curse God and die? Oh, thank you, honey. That’s very helpful. Very, very supportive. Curse God and die. I’ll file that. He loses everything except the wife who says, go ahead and die. Thank you, God. Thank you, God. But he does have three friends and his friends show up and the Bible says they sit down with him for a week, they sat there and said nothing. That’s smart. His friends were real friends until they opened their mouths. The deeper the pain, the fewer words you use. You need to remember that, write that down. The deeper the pain, the fewer words you use. If somebody’s having a bad hair day, you can talk to them for 30 minutes. If they’ve just lost a loved one, or they’ve gone bankrupt, or something serious, show up and shut up. It is the ministry of presence. People say, I didn’t come because I didn’t know what to say. Don’t say anything, just be there. They don’t need your words, they need your skin. When people have had a major failure or a major loss, they don’t need a sermon. They need the ministry of presence. So Job’s friend did it exquisitely for one week. They just sat with him, not saying a word. My youngest son, after a lifetime of fighting mental illness, took his life years ago. And my small group showed up. They didn’t try to preach a sermon. They just showed up and shut up. And they just said, we’re gonna be here with you. And that night, they all came over to our house, those that were here in town, and said, we’re gonna stay at your house. We’re not leaving you alone tonight. You’re walking through the valley of the shadow of death. And they slept in the kitchen and on the sofa and wherever. They just be there. We didn’t need a sermon. Needed a hug. needed a hug, needed presence. But somehow, after a while, they started deciding, we’ve got this thing figured out, and we’re going to tell Job why he’s wrong, and he needs to repent, and it’s all of his sins that caused all this stuff. And they start giving all these reasons and rationales and theologies, a bunch of mumbo-jumbo. They get to the end, and in the end, in Job 42, it says this, verse 17. After the Lord finished speaking to Job, he said to Eliphaz, that’s one of the three friends, I’m angry with you and your two friends because you did not speak the truth about me the way my servant Job did. Job was talking the truth all during this time. Now, sometimes he’s railing on God. That’s called lamenting. That’s okay as long as it’s true. He says, you didn’t speak the truth about me the way my friend servant Job did. He says, I’m ticked at you, so I want you to make a sacrifice. God says, I want you to make a sacrifice, and notice he says, Job will pray for you. Hello? Who’s in the crisis? Who’s in the tank? Who’s lost everything? That guy will pray for you. I know he’s the one that needs recovery, but that guy is gonna pray for you. And he says, then I’ll answer his prayer and not disgrace you the way you deserve. So Job’s three friends did what the Lord told them to do. He’d asked them to make sacrifices and bulls and oxen. And the Lord answered Job’s prayer. Now notice, then Job, When Job, look up here, when Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored Job’s health and prosperity and Job recovered. There’s the word recovered. He recovered twice as much as he had had, little stutter there, that’s from the reviled substandard perversion, it’s actually just an error. Twice as much as he had had, I mean really a lot, That’s not in the Greek, but it’s on the text there. When Job prayed for his friends, the Lord restored Job’s health and prosperity, and Job recovered twice as much as he had before his pain. God did not recover Job. Job did not experience recovery when he prayed for himself and when he prayed for other people. when he prayed for his friends. He didn’t have recovery when he was praying for himself alone, when he was praying for his friends. Here’s the sixth point. Our recovery is only complete when we pray for the recovery of others. Our recovery is only complete when we pray for the recovery of others. Do you see how close prayer and recovery are combined here? How you cannot have true recovery without prayer? I told you there are many types of recovery in the Bible. Genesis 38, it says this, Judah recovered from his grief. See up here on the screen. Genesis 45 says Joseph recovered from his shock. First Samuel 30, it says this, David recovered from all the Amalekites had taken from him, all his family and everything valuable to him. What’s been taken from you? What have you lost in the process? Genesis 14 says this, Abraham recovered everything that had been stolen. His nephew Lot with his possessions and all the women of his family and all the others who’d been taken captive. You know, when I’m taken captive, it takes a lot of other people captive too. When you get in a mess, it creates messes for other people. When you’re not free, it binds up other people. And all the others have been taken captive too. So, he recovered it all. Notice, he gave a tenth of everything he recovered, a tithe, to Melchizedek. Are you tithing? Hmm. Hmm. I’ll just leave that one right there. Okay? I don’t even think I have to preach on it, okay? Just… He gave a tenth of everything he recovered to Melchizedek, who was God’s priest in that situation. You know what all these verses that we’ve looked at today say to me? God is a God of recovery. And the whole business of Jesus Christ has been a search and recovery mission to seek and to save that which was lost. Why does Saddleback Church keep growing? My favorite size church was actually 300 people. I could know every name of every person, every kid, every cat, every dog. I knew everybody personally. I loved that face. But we grow because people without Christ go to hell. We grow because people need the Lord. And as long as there’s one person within driving distance who doesn’t know Christ will reach out, and as long as there’s one person who needs recovery, and that’s everybody in your neighborhood, you have to keep growing. You have to keep growing. If I summed up the whole Bible, it is in this phrase. God wants his lost children found. Jesus’ first recorded sermon is in Luke chapter 4. He’d actually been out preaching for a while, but this is his first recorded sermon. He goes to hometown. He goes to Nazareth. Hometown boy. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Prophets not without honor, saving his own family or country. When he goes in and he picks up the scroll, this is in Luke chapter four, but he’s actually reading the Old Testament and he’s reading Isaiah 61. Here’s Jesus’ first recorded sermon. He announces his mission. God’s spirit is on me. He’s chosen me to preach the good news to the poor. Does God have favorites? Yes, God loves the poor. There were 2,000 verses in the Bible on the poor. God says if you help the poor, God will help you. God does have favorites. He loves the poor. God says he has chosen those who are poor and riches to be rich in faith. He’s chosen me to preach good news to the poor. Why? Because they’re the ones who know the most that they’re in need. And then number two, to announce freedom to those held captive. That sounds like recovery. Recovery. And then to give recovery of sight to the blind, that is recovery. And to set the burdened and battered free, that’s recovery. And to proclaim that this is the time of God’s favor, God’s grace, that’s recovery. That’s Jesus’ first sermon. Friends, I have a five point sermon on recovery. That’s his first sermon, recorded sermon. Now he’s quoting actually Isaiah 61. And in Luke doesn’t actually give the rest of the passage. Because in Luke 61, verses one to four, he mentions the other things that aren’t mentioned in Luke. It said he preached good news to the poor, he gives freedom to the captive, he gives recovery of sight to those who can’t see where they’re going, and to proclaim that this is the year of the Lord’s favor, that’s grace, and to set the burden and battered free. But let me show you what else is in 61. Isaiah also says, and he sent me to heal the brokenhearted. That’s recovery. And to comfort all who mourn. That’s recovery. And to give beauty for ashes and joy for gladness instead of grief. That’s recovery. And then he says, what about these people who have recovered? Here’s what he says. They will rebuild the ancient ruins. They will restore the devastated places. And they will renew the ruined cities. Yes! Everybody raise your hand. Say I do. I am commissioning you as a rebuilder, a restorer, and a renewer in America and around the world. That is the commission of the recovered. To rebuild, to restore, and to renew.
SPEAKER 02 :
What a great message today from Pastor Rick. There’s something I always can use in my own life after listening to this show. And now here’s Pastor Rick with a letter from one of our listeners.
SPEAKER 01 :
So many of you have written to encourage us here at Daily Hope. And not only me, but our entire staff are encouraged by your notes, your letters. And I’m so grateful for your trust in this ministry. It’s your prayers and it’s your support that help us tell people around the world about the hope of Jesus Christ. Now, one of the ways I can give back to you is through my free daily devotionals. You can sign up for them. If you’re not getting them right now, go to PastorRick.com. That’s PastorRick.com. And sign up to get the free Daily Hope devotionals. By the way, here’s a letter from Holly, who reads the Daily Hope devotionals every day. And she says this, Pastor Rick, I’ve been receiving your daily devotionals for several weeks, and I’ve been overwhelmed by how positively my life has been impacted. My faith has been growing greatly these past couple of years, and now it is growing exponentially. People say they notice joy shining from me, and I know it’s because my heart is being fed every day. And she writes, you know, my story is one that I rarely tell, but as God has brought me through hell and now is showing me the why I went through it all. and it’s beginning to make such perfect sense. She writes, I stand behind you, Pastor Rick, along with thousands of others holding you up in prayer during those moments that maybe even you have second thoughts. Blessings 1,000-fold. Wow. Thank you, Holly. I mean, Holly, you know, everybody needs encouragement, including me, and I especially need your prayers as much as you need encouragement and prayers from others and from God’s Word. You know, I’m always so encouraged when I hear about how God is transforming lives. I love these stories. So tell me your story. You can email me, rick at pastorrick.com. Just email me, tell me your story. And thanks for listening today to Daily Hope. Let’s be on the lookout for how God is working in each of our lives.
SPEAKER 02 :
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.
