Life’s challenges can often feel overwhelming, but Pastor Rick Warren reveals how these very trials are opportunities for divine growth in this episode of Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. With insights from biblical stories, Pastor Rick elucidates how God uses problems to direct, inspect, and even correct us, steering us towards a life that’s aligned with divine purpose. Through understanding the spiritual significance of problems, we learn that pain is not a punishment but a powerful motivator and indicator of God’s transformative work in our lives. As Pastor Rick takes us through the wilderness of biblical figures like Elijah and
Hey there, everybody. Welcome to Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. We are so glad that you’ve tuned in. You know, today, Pastor Rick Warren is going to continue a brand new series called Seeing Through God’s Eyes. Now, in this series, he’ll dive into the Bible to help us discover how God sees us and how we can start seeing life from his perspective. Okay, let’s dive right in. Here’s Rick with part one of a message called
SPEAKER 03 :
You know, when a lot of people have problems, they think God is mad at them. They think God is angry, God’s mad, God is getting even, God is punishing me. Something must be wrong in my life. I must be out of God’s will because I’ve got all these problems. And the truth is, no. In fact, a lot of times problems are God’s will for your life. He uses them and we’re gonna look at how he uses them today. Now would you write this down in your outline? God doesn’t cause my problems, but he uses my problems for good. God doesn’t cause my problems. I mean, I cause most of my own problems and so do you. and then other people cause problems, and the devil can cause problems, and the world can cause problems, and nature can cause problems. There are a lot of reasons. It really doesn’t matter why or who caused the problems in your life. Regardless of the source, God wants to use them for good in your life. You’ve heard me say many times, anybody can bring good out of good, but God knows how to bring good out of bad. And today, we’re going to look at the five ways God uses problems for good in your life. And I hope this will be an encouraging message. If you felt a little down or discouraged, you picked a good week to come to church. Look at 1 Peter chapter 4. There on your outline, the first verse says this from the Bible. Friends… When life really gets difficult, don’t jump to the conclusion that God isn’t on the job. Instead, be glad that you are in the very thick of what Christ experienced. This is a spiritual refining process. Would you circle that? A spiritual refining process with glory. Just around the corner. The Bible says God has a long-term benefit planned for those of you who handle problems correctly. Now, if you’re a believer and you’ve opened your life to God’s Son, and you know that you’re going to heaven when you die, the Bible says that rewards in heaven are going to be based, for one thing, on how you handled your problems. Did you learn to handle them correctly? And those rewards that you’re gonna get are gonna go on and on and on and on and on and on and on forever and ever and ever in eternity. So it makes sense that we figure out what God is doing in our problems here on earth. He doesn’t cause them, but he certainly uses them in our lives. Now, God doesn’t enjoy problems in your life. He’s not a cosmic killjoy who sits up in heaven thinking, you know, I just love seeing people be frustrated. He’s not that way at all. In fact, notice what the Bible says, the next verse on your outline. Lamentations 3 says, he takes no pleasure in making life hard, in throwing roadblocks in the way. So God doesn’t get his joy out of giving you problems, but he does have a purpose. Behind every problem, the big ones, the middle ones, and even the little ones, there is a purpose behind every problem in your life. What are those purposes? Well, we’re going to look at them. Number one, God uses problems to direct us. God uses problems to direct us, to point us in a new direction, to give us a different path. Sometimes you’re headed down one direction and God says, I don’t want you going that way. So he puts a roadblock there. And it forces you to go a different direction. And you’re all very familiar with the roadblocks of life. Proverbs 16, verse nine says this. Let’s read this verse aloud together. A person may plan his own journey, but the Lord directs his steps. Now notice what it says there. Humans plan, God directs. How does that work? Humans plan, God directs. Well, you know what it means to plan. You can make all kinds of plans. You can set your goals, establish your objectives, lay out your priorities, clarify your values, set some dreams. You can go do a life plan and figure out everything you wanna do and accomplish in your lifetime. And you set up all your plans. But then it says, but God directs. How does God direct when you’re making your plans? One word, problems. Problems. Have you noticed that problems often change your plans? Has anybody ever noticed that? Yeah, you make all these plans and then very few of them actually happen the way you plan them. Why? Problems come in the way and problems change your plans. So you can make your plans, the Bible says you ought to plan. But God is gonna direct your life and one of the ways he does it is he puts up a little or allows a little roadblock here when God has a better idea for your life. Notice the next verse from the Bible, Proverbs 20. Sometimes it takes a painful experience to make us change our ways. Would any of you like to give a testimony on this verse? We’ve all had this. You see, you’ve heard me say it many times that we don’t change when we see the light. We change when we feel the heat. And pain is a very powerful motivator in our lives. It gets us going. It gets us moving. It gets us off of our blessed assurance. By the way, you know, this week I was in South Africa and I didn’t know that the word for steak in South Africa is the word rump. Yeah, rump. And so a waitress came up to me in the middle of the evening and I’m sitting there at the table. She says, sir, how would you like your rump? I said a little smaller and firmer. Sometimes God wants us to get up off our rump and get moving and so he lights a fire underneath us and he gets us going. Things become uneasy and things become uncomfortable and you’re not so satisfied and settled. If everything was comfortable in your life, you’d never change. Sometimes it takes a painful experience to get us to change our ways. Aristotle once said, we only learn through pain. Well, you see, some of the things in life you learned by being burned. That’s how you learned them. You learned by being burned. And so God says, I’m gonna use problems to direct you. Do you remember that famous story in the Bible of the prodigal son, where the young boy comes to his dad one day and says, dad, I want you to give me my inheritance now. And so his father gives him his inheritance then, and he goes off and he totally blows it in Vegas. Actually, it was Jerusalem. And he spends it on wine, women, and song, primarily on women. And eventually he runs out of all his money, and he ends up living in a pig pen with pigs, which is not a good thing if you’re Jewish, and he’s eating pig food, and he’s in the down in the dumps, and he has hit bottom. And the Bible says, and when he came to his senses, well, I guess so, when he came to his senses, he said, I’m gonna get up and go back home to my father. And that’s so typical, we often never change until we hit bottom, until things get really bad. We rarely think about the tough questions of life. Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going? Where am I gonna go when I die? What is the purpose of my life? You would never think about those things if your life was totally comfortable. It’s in the tough times when things aren’t going well, you’re going, what is this all about? What is life all about? Why am I here and what is my purpose? And am I gonna go to heaven when I die? We don’t think about our direction. until we’re in a tough spot. This is what happened to David in the Bible. He went through a major crisis and then he starts thinking the important things of life. Notice the next verse. David says, “‘I have thought about my life “‘and I have directed my feet back.'” to your written instructions. There’s that word directed. He says, I turned around and went back to where I knew I ought to be when I began to sit down and think about what was going on in my life. You see, one of the ways the benefits of problems is they never leave you where they found you. A problem picks you up over here, but when it finishes with you, you’re over here. You’re never the same after you go through a problem. Do you remember the story of Jonah in the Bible? You might say he was swallowed up by a big problem. And this problem just kind of overwhelmed him. He’s engrossed, he’s enveloped, he’s swallowed up by a big problem. But when that problem spits him out, he’s not at all where he was when he started. He had been heading that way, and God said, no, I want you to go this way. And between that way and this way, there was a giant problem. It was kind of a fishy story. And when he gets over here, he’s spit out, and he heads the right direction, doing the right thing. That’s a parable of life for us. that God will use problems in your life to say, you’re headed the wrong direction. I want you to go this way. So I’m gonna swallow you up and then I’m gonna spit you out over here and you’ll be headed in the right direction. You see, we’d rarely change if we didn’t have any pain or problems in our lives. We’d postpone all the difficult decisions. We’d put off getting things right in our lives and right with other people and all these things. We’d ignore illnesses if we didn’t hurt people. You see, anytime you have emotional pain in your life, depression, worry, stress, guilt, anger, loneliness, fear, resentment, anytime you have any emotional pain in your life, it is God saying to you, hello, I want to direct you in a new way. It is a warning light to say, you are not doing it the way God wanted you to do it. And so he allows these little warning lights of emotional pain in our life to say, this is not right. Now, we only change when our fear of change is exceeded by our pain. Isn’t that true? Okay? Because none of us really want to change. We’re afraid to change. We’re afraid to change. And yet, when the pain gets worse than the fear of change, all of a sudden we go, you know, I think I’ll change. And it motivates us. And so God uses problems to direct us. And that’s why Paul in the Bible is talking about some friends who had gone through major pain and he says this, the next verse. He says, I’m glad, not because it hurt you, but because the pain turns you to God. God uses problems to prod us and to push us and to prompt us to change. One of my very favorite stories in the Bible is a story about a guy named Elijah. He was a prophet, a great man of God in the Old Testament. And he had gone through some really tough times and he was kind of hurting. And so God put him over by this little brook and said, you take a little R&R, Elijah. Just relax, get rejuvenated, refresh yourself. And there was this beautiful bubbling brook with fresh spring water, which gave him all the water he need. And there were birds and God provided food for him supernaturally. And so everything he needed, he’s just having a good time. It’s like Elijah’s spa. and he’s just relaxed here by the Brook Cherith Spa, and he’s having a really good time. But one day, it says in the Bible, a little sentence, and it says, and the brook dried up. Have you ever had a brook dry up in your life? Something you were depending on, and all of a sudden it wasn’t there anymore, like a job or a relationship? or a friendship or something you were depending on for emotional strength or spiritual strength or physical support, something that you had counted on and all of a sudden it’s not there anymore and the brook dries up. That source of income isn’t there anymore. That source of support isn’t there anymore. Many times in your life, the brook will dry up. Count on it, it’s gonna happen. because things change. So what did Elijah do? He did exactly what we do. He complained. Hey, God, what’s wrong? What’s up? Don’t you love me anymore? Don’t you care about me? God, haven’t you promised to meet all my needs? I’m thirsty, God. There’s no water here anymore. What’s up? Don’t you love me? And God says back to Elijah, you know, Elijah, of course I love you. And of course I’m going to care for you. Of course I’m going to take care of your needs. And I’ve promised to always provide for you. There’s just one little problem. I don’t want you at the brook anymore. And the only way I can get you to move is dry it up. Sometimes God wants to put you in a different job. He wants to put you in a different relationship, in a different situation, in a different circumstances. And as long as everything’s hunky-dory and comfortable, you’re gonna stay there. God says, Elijah, I never intended for you to live the rest of your life at this Brooks Spa. No, no, I’ve got something else for you to do. And so I had to dry it up. Now was God being mean? No, God was being loving because God uses problems to direct us. Now here’s the first question you wanna ask. When you go through a problem, we’re gonna give you five questions to ask today. Number one, where is this problem leading me? Where is this problem leading me? Pastor Tom’s going to come and talk about the second way God uses problems in our lives.
SPEAKER 01 :
God uses problems to direct us, and then God uses problems to inspect us. He uses problems to check out our character, our integrity, our motives, our thoughts, to show us what’s inside of us. The Bible says this in Jeremiah 17, verse 10. In fact, would you read this with me in your outline? The Lord searches our hearts and examines our deepest motives so he can give to each person his right reward according to his deeds, how he has lived. God uses the problems in our life to show us what’s in our hearts. to show us what’s really important to us. In fact, he does this all the time. It’s constant. Look at the next verse in your outline from Job 7, verse 18. You, God, inspect them every morning and you test them every minute. Now, my question is why? Why does God do this? Why does he feel it necessary to inspect us, to get us to inspect what’s happening in our lives? It’s because of this. God is more interested in your integrity than in your image. He’s more interested in what’s on the inside than what’s on the outside. You and I, we would be fine with our image most of the time, with what’s on the outside as long as we’re looking good. But what’s important to God is what’s on the inside. Look at this next verse in your outline from Proverbs 16, verse 2. Let’s read this verse together. Humans are satisfied with whatever looks good, but God probes for what is good. And he’ll keep probing. He will often take us through the same problem numerous times to probe to make sure that what is good is what eventually comes out of our lives. Do you remember the story of the children of Israel in the Old Testament when Moses was taking them from Egypt to the Promised Land? They came out of Egypt, they went through the Red Sea, they went to Mount Sinai, got the Ten Commandments, and then they had a desert to cross that should have taken them maybe a couple of weeks to cross that desert. Do you remember how long it took them to get across that desert? 40 years. Why did it take so long? Because God kept testing them and they kept failing the test. And every time they failed the test, it was another lap around Mount Sinai. They just kept doing this for 40 long years, going through the same problem, same wrong reaction, same circle. Any of you relating to this at all, by the way? You ever gone through that in your life? We all have. And God loves us enough to keep testing us in our lives. God takes us through wilderness experiences too. Places where we feel alone, where we wonder where God is, where we wonder what’s next. And when you’re going through that experience, some of you are going through it right now, God is asking, will you trust me? God is asking, will you obey me? Even when you don’t understand everything, will you obey me? He’s seeing what’s inside of you. People, all of us, are like tea bags. To see what’s inside of us, you’ve got to put us in hot water. When you go to the grocery store and you’re going to buy some fruit and you want to inspect it, what do you do? You just squeeze it a little bit, don’t you? You ever feel like God puts the squeeze on your life just a little bit? He’s doing that because He loves you. When He puts the squeeze on, it shows you something about what’s inside of you. Your reaction to that difficulty reveals a lot about your faith. It shows you a lot about your commitment, your integrity. It shows you a lot about your maturity and who you are. The Bible tells us that When God puts the squeeze on, when we go through difficulties, it’s an inspection process, but it’s also a refining process. He uses those circumstances to do something in our heart that refines us. Look at Isaiah chapter 48, verse 10, where the Bible says, I have tested you in the fire of suffering. Just like heat burns off the impurities of gold or silver when it goes through the heat, God uses the suffering of life to burn off the impurities in our life. I know that some of you are going through suffering right now. And I don’t know why. You may have caused it. Someone else may have caused it. You may not know why it was caused. But my encouragement to you would be instead of thinking of who to blame and what fault to put on who caused it, to ask God this question. God, through this time of suffering, what impurities do you want to burn off in my life? What do you want to do in me through this difficulty of life? Maybe God wants to burn off the impurity of selfishness. We all have that. Or maybe it’s pride. Or maybe it’s materialism. Or maybe it’s impatience. What does God want to do in you? Life is a test. And one of the things that God tests when we go through problems and struggles and difficulties, he tests whether what we say we believe is really what we believe. Because I say I believe a lot of things, but when the problems come, I discover, is that really what I believe? When the struggles come, I may say God is first in my life, but when the pressure is on, Does my commitment to him get sidetracked? Does he get off to the sideline of my life? If so, it’s another lap around Mount Sinai, isn’t it, in that circumstance? I might say that I have integrity, but when the pressure is on, are you always willing to take a lower standard? Or I might say that I’m committed to this marriage, but when the pressure’s on, I feel like giving up. I feel like walking away. God is testing through the inspection of his problems in our lives. So ask yourself this question when problems come. Ask, what does this problem reveal about me? What does this problem reveal about me?
SPEAKER 03 :
God uses problems to direct us. He says, I want you to go in a new direction, so I’m going to put a roadblock here. God uses problems to inspect us. He says, let’s see what you’re really like on the inside. Like when toothpaste, you push a toothpaste bottle, what comes out? Whatever’s inside it. So he directs us, he inspects us. Number three, God uses problems to correct us. To correct us. Now this is a very important verse from Hebrews chapter 12, 8 to 10 out of the Bible. So I’d like for us to read it aloud together. God corrects all of his children. And if he doesn’t correct you, then you really don’t belong to him. God corrects us for our own good because he wants us to be holy as he is. Now, first you need to understand the difference between correction And punishment, they are not the same. Punishment looks at the past. You did something wrong, you’re gonna be punished for it. Correction looks at the future. Here’s how to do it differently. Punishment is past-oriented. It’s about guilt. You did wrong, you did bad, so here you’re being punished. Correction or discipline is future-oriented. It says, this is the path I want you to go on. Let’s do it different next time. Now listen, God never punishes his children, those who have accepted the forgiveness of Jesus Christ. He never punishes them. Why? Because Jesus Christ took all our punishment on the cross. If Jesus died for my sins, he paid for them. That means I don’t have to pay for them. Does that make sense? And so God does not punish people who have put their trust in him for forgiveness. He never punishes because it’s already been punished, and that would be double jeopardy to punish me for something Jesus already took care of. So he never punishes you if you’re a true believer, but he does correct you, which he says, this is the way I want you to go now. In fact, the Bible says that the motive for correction in your life is God’s love. He does it for your own good. It’s not because he likes to correct you. It’s because he loves you enough to correct you. How many of you are parents? Can I see your hands? All right. How many of you would rather not have to correct or discipline your children? Yeah. How many of you often did it anyway because you loved them? It needed to be done. Yeah, right. And the same is true with God. God doesn’t enjoy correcting us, but he does it because he loves us. An uncorrected child is an unloved child. In fact, the Bible’s real clear. It says that correction is proof that I’m a part of God’s family. What does that mean? If you intentionally ignore God in your life, and you do your own thing, and God tells you to do something, you say, I’m not gonna do that, I’m gonna do what I wanna do. If you ignore God and you’re disobedient and you sin, and God doesn’t correct you, you see no evidence in your life of God’s discipline on your life, it means one thing, you’re not really a believer. It means you need a personal relationship to God through Jesus. You’ve never stepped across the line. You see, I don’t discipline my neighbor’s kids, they’re not my kids. I don’t discipline or correct the kids down the street playing in the road. They’re not my kids. But I correct my own children when they were growing up because I loved them and they were in my family. And the proof that you’re in God’s family is that sometimes God corrects you and he disciplines you. And if you can sin and sin and sin and get away with it and you don’t see any evidence in your life of correction, then you need to check out, do I really know God? Am I really a part of God’s family? Am I really on my way to heaven? It’s the proof. Now sometimes, parents, you know this, sometimes the only way to train is through pain. And you have to let kids experience the consequences of their own stupid decisions. And that’s how they learn. You train sometimes through pain and let them feel the consequences of it. Look at the next verse, Job 5, 17. The Bible says, consider yourself fortunate if God all powerful chooses to correct you. He said, it’s a privilege to be corrected by God. It’s an honor. It shows that God loves me. C.S. Lewis once said, God whispers to us in our pleasure, but he shouts to us in our pain. Pain is God’s megaphone. Pain is God saying, hello, wake up. Something’s out of whack in your life. Hello, I’m trying to get in touch with you. You see, often we avoid the truth until we are forced to face it. We don’t want to face the truth about ourselves because it scares us to death. It makes us feel bad. I’ve said many times, you’ve heard me say this, the truth will set you free. But first, it will make you miserable. I remember when Kay and I were having such bad marriage problems in our early years of marriage. And we wanted to keep it inside and not tell anybody about it, and we were too proud to go get counseling. And finally we just said, look, this pain is unbearable, we’re gonna go get counseling. And so we went and found a Christian counselor, and you know the story how I was making $800 a month, and my counseling bill was $100 a week. and I racked up a $1,600 counseling bill on my credit card. I’ve often said, I should do a commercial. MasterCard saved my marriage. And so we went to that counseling, and I have to tell you, it wasn’t all happy, sappy, wonderful, cuddly, isn’t this great? We’d come out of that session more mad at each other than before. for about four or five times and then the walls began to break down as we began to face the truth. I began to face the truth about me and she began to face the truth about her. And she discovered and I discovered that I married a sinner. And she discovered that she married a bigger one. And we began to learn the truth and the truth did make us miserable. but it also set us free. And today my wife is my best friend. She’s my lover, my companion. I’d rather spend time with her than anybody else in the whole world. And I know some famous people like Billy Graham and the President of the United States and others. I’d rather spend time with my wife than anybody else. When I hear people say, well, I can’t afford to go to counseling. I say, you can’t afford to not go. How much is it worth to you? I’d pay a million bucks for what I’ve got today. I’d be in debt the rest of my life. But God says, I want to correct you, and correction means sometimes facing the truth about me.
SPEAKER 02 :
Pastor Rick, thank you so much for that great message today. Hey, do you know someone who’s graduating this year? Maybe it’s your son or daughter, a grandchild, or even a neighbor or family friend. Well, as you celebrate this important milestone and they begin the next phase of their journey, they need to know that God created them, loves them, and has a plan for their life. And that’s why Rick Warren created a special resource just for graduates called The Purpose Driven Life. Selected thoughts and scriptures for the graduate. It’s filled with inspirational scripture, biblical wisdom from Rick, and beautiful imagery. This unique hardcover gift book provides a priceless reminder of the bountiful life God has planned for your graduate, and it will inspire them to seek his unique plan and purpose for their life. Please don’t miss this opportunity to minister to the graduate in your life today. Be sure to request your copy of The Purpose Driven Life for Graduates when you give a gift to Daily Hope to help share the hope of Jesus Christ with people around the 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. Again, that’s the word HOPE to 70309. 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.
