Seeing Yourself As God Sees You — Part 2

SPEAKER 02 : 0:02

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. And now, here’s Rick with the final part of a message called Seeing Yourself As God Sees You.

SPEAKER 04 : 0:32

God says, you are acceptable and you are valuable. And the cross proves your value. And the people who told you growing up, you’re worthless, were liars. They were wrong, dead wrong. They were lying. You were of infinite value. And if God says you’re of value, it doesn’t matter what anybody else has said to you. Notice this verse on the back of your outline. God says in Isaiah 43, four, read it with me. You are precious to me. I want you to hear joke story. Give him a warm welcome.

SPEAKER 03 : 1:19

I grew up in a very unstable and dysfunctional home. My mother married five different men and had numerous boyfriends. In addition to that, she was constantly in and out of mental hospitals. When I was in kindergarten, my dad hooked up his boat, the Dreamer, and never came home. That sent my mom back into the mental hospital. Growing up, I lived in 28 different homes, sometimes with my mom and sometimes not. And due to all the shuffling around, I went to 16 different schools by the time I graduated high school. There was zero stability in my life, and I grew up feeling unloved, unworthy, and uncared for. I saw very little value in myself, or anyone else for that matter. I would often cry myself to sleep and wondering why my dad had abandoned us kids and wondering if it was my fault. When my mom wasn’t in the hospital, she would often be so depressed that I rarely saw her out of her room. We were on welfare, and I did the grocery shopping with food stamps. That wasn’t any fun for a 13-year-old. Then in the summer of 1976, my little sister Jody drowned in the Chena River. She was on shore, some friends and I were on a little island, which we had canoed over to. One of the guys, as a joke, pushed the canoe off the island. Jody waded in after it and got caught in the current below the island and was swept downstream. The river was high and muddy. I swam straight across the main stem of the river. I was afraid of swimming right towards her that I would also get caught in the current and drown too. That left me with many years of regrets. I can still remember seeing the look on her face and in her eyes. She was totally panicked and at the mercy of the river. When I reached the other side, I ran downstream as she was approaching a bend in the river. There was an eddy in the bend. I was 25 feet from her when I dove in. The eddy pulled me upstream and her downstream. That was the last I saw of her. I kept diving down and feeling around with my hands because I couldn’t see under the water. It was too muddy. After a while, a guy nicknamed Cowboy dragged me up on a canoe and took me to the other side of the river and told me to go home. There was nothing more I could do. She was gone. I can still remember walking and running, stumbling home and crying, and screaming in rage and anger in a total sense of loss. I felt worthless, hopeless, helpless, and angry. Standing in the shower watching Mudderwater, Blow down the drain, I blame God. Wondering how something like this could happen. I wished I had died instead. That day, my life took a turn for the worst. I went down by the river and smoked my first pot and drank my first beer to deal with the pain. By the time I was a senior in high school, pot was a daily habit. It was a self-medication that dulled the pain and emotional turmoil, so I didn’t have to deal with it. My life continued the pattern that I learned as a child, run from responsibility. After high school, I joined the Navy but was irresponsible and went AWOL for six months. When I finally turned myself in, I was discharged with an other-than-honorable discharge, just another reinforcement that I was a loser and a victim. I was a very unhappy camper. So I continued escaping through my habits of drugs, sex, lying, cheating, and stealing. And I continued running from city to city. Nothing worked. While bartending, I went to bed with so many different women, it’s all a blur. On Christmas of 1994, I visited my sister here in Lake Forest, California. I ended up at Celebrate Recovery here at Saddleback Church. The warmth, welcome, and unconditional love I felt here was so overwhelming. I bawled my head off, kind of like now, at my first small group meeting. So I moved to Lake Forest and began attending Saddleback and Celebrate Recovery every week. I’d come to church here, listen to the wonderful music, and feel like Pastor Rick and the pastors were talking right to me, but then go home and get high because I was suicidal. I was unconnected, not involved. I don’t know how many times I’d start towards recovery and then go somewhere else. Then I got another wake-up call. In 1996, a tumor on my neck proved to be Hodgkin’s disease, a type of cancer. During all the treatments, I lost almost 30 pounds from throwing up. Somewhere in the middle of one of my ralphing sessions, I started laughing and crying and ralphing and realized that I didn’t want to die. I decided I wanted to live, so I got involved in the cancer support group at Saddleback, and once again I experienced God’s grace and kindness through other people. It was in my despair the second time I had cancer I turned my life again back over to Jesus Christ. I had made a simple commitment as a child, but never grew because of all the chaos in our home. Now as an adult, I begin to get to know the real God, loving, caring, forgiving, and full of grace. As I read the Bible, I learned how God sees me, which was very different from the way I’d always seen myself. And I learned that although I was abandoned over and over growing up, God would never abandon me or leave me. As Pastor Rick often says, God wants to take our greatest hurts and turn them into our greatest ministry. Today I can relate to a lot of people because of the pain I’ve been through and the way God has worked in my life to heal me. One of my favorite verses is Hebrews 13, 5, where God says, Never will I leave you. From experience, I can tell you this. I’ve tried going to counselors, psychiatrists, depression groups, staying busy, staying high, taking prescription meds and all other kinds of solutions to relieve my depression, but nothing worked, as well as committing my life to Jesus Christ. Pills and pot didn’t do it. I was treating symptoms, not the root cause. I needed to face all the wreckage of my past, things done to me, things I have done to others, and the bad choices that I’ve made. Learning to see myself as valuable to God helped me break out of the vicious cycle of depression and disconnectedness. Now, through our Saddleback Church family and our Celebrate Recovery program, I have a group of men who are true godly friends and brothers. Every day, I thank God for the people he’s brought into my life through Saddleback. Most of all, I thank Jesus for accepting me and loving me and forgiving me. And I thank him for considering me valuable and capable of being used by him to help others now. It is such a blessing to be of service to others. I serve out of a grateful heart and for all the miracles God has given me through my relationship with him. And I thank God for my wonderful wife that I met here at Saddleback and married here on April Fool’s Day two years ago. In closing, let me say that if you felt rejected or abandoned in your life, there is someone who understands. He loves you, he wants you, and he thinks you are valuable. His name is Jesus Christ, and he is waiting for you to come to him. Thank you.

SPEAKER 04 : 10:27

Friends, this is why we have Saddleback Church. Because nobody can change lives like that except Jesus Christ. No therapy, no pill, no fad, no getting high. Nothing can change you like Jesus Christ can. How many hundreds and hundreds of stories like that have we seen come across this stage year after year after year? It’s all about changed lives. That’s why we do what we do. And that’s why we bring people to Saddleback, so they can hear the good news. Now, I don’t know what hurt you’ve been through. But I do know this, God says in his eyes, you are valuable, you are acceptable, and number three, you are lovable. God sees me not just as acceptable and valuable, but lovable with a deep, deep love. The most famous verse in the Bible talks about this, John 3, 16. For God so loved He gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. God so loved the world. It doesn’t say God so loved people who are beautiful. God so loved people who were intelligent. It doesn’t say God so loved people who were cool. It doesn’t say God so loved people who were religious. It doesn’t say God so loved people who were perfect, because there aren’t any. It says God so loved the world. That means me, you, and everybody that the world considers unlovable. God so loved the world. Everybody in it because he made them all. And as I said earlier, Jesus said, I’d rather die than live without you. That’s the kind of love God has for you. Look at the next verse. God says this in Isaiah 54. The mountains and hills may crumble, but my love for you will never end. So says the Lord who loves you. Now, there are two characteristics of God’s love you need to never, ever forget. Number one, it is consistent. God is not fickle. He is not capricious. He does not have good days and bad days and good moods and bad moods and bad hair days and say, oh, you know, I don’t like everybody today. God is consistent in his love. He never stops loving you. That’s different than people love. All human love, all, is inconsistent. I was talking on the patio one time after a service and a woman said, my mom was such a moody person, I never knew from day to day whether I was going to be hugged or slugged. I just didn’t know. Because, you know, I didn’t know what mood she was going to be in. God is not like that. He doesn’t get moody. He is consistent in his love for you. And number two, his love is not only consistent, it is unconditional. Unconditional. God doesn’t say, I love you if, and here are the conditions. I love you because, and here are the conditions. He just says, I love you, period, because it’s not based on your performance. It’s based on his character. He just says, I love you. You’re mine. I made you. I saved you. I bought you. I want you with me for eternity. You’re mine. You wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for God’s love. You see, you never need to ask yourself, is God going to love me today? Did I pray enough today? Did I do all the right things? Did I cross the T’s and dot the I’s? Did I do everything just right? God will never love you more than he does right now. He will never love you any less than he does right now because his love is consistent and unconditional. Now why is this important? Because we always get into trouble when we doubt God’s love. Every time you sin, it’s because you doubt God’s love. you’re doubting that God has your best interest at heart. This Bible, this book is full of rules that will make your life successful, healthy, happy. But we ignore them because oftentimes we think we know better than God. And in that case, we are doubting God’s love. I mean, there’s a lot of stuff in the Bible where God’s real clear. Like, you know, I mean, he says, don’t have sex outside of marriage. That’s real clear. He says it all over. Well, anytime I ignore that, what am I doing? I am doubting that God knows what’s best for my life and that he loves me. I think I know what’s best. I think I know what will make me happy more than God does. That’s doubting his love. When God says something else in the Bible, he’s very clear about what he says. And he’s not saying it because he’s an angry, mean God, but because he knows what’s best for you. He knows what’s best for you better than you do. That’s why we have to remind ourself every day that God will never stop loving me. He is consistent and it is unconditional. Pastor Tom’s gonna come and talk about the next two steps.

SPEAKER 01 : 16:02

There’s a fourth way that God sees you. God sees you as forgivable. Now that word forgivable, it’s easy. We’re in church to think, oh yeah, forgiven. We hear that all the time. Very easy to pass right by that one because we do not realize how forgiven we really are. Look at this next verse in your outline, Ephesians chapter one, verse four, where the Bible says, long ago, even before he made the world, God chose us to be his very own through what Christ would do for us. He decided then to make us holy in his eyes without a single fault. We who stand before him covered. By His love. What an incredible verse that tells us how forgiven we are by God’s love and what He is willing to do in us. Before God made you, He knew everything you were going to do in your life. He knew all the mistakes. He knew all the sins. He knew the worst thing that you were going to do. There is one thing you will never hear God say. You’ll never hear God say, I didn’t see that one coming. You’ll never hear that. Because He sees it all. And God who sees it all says in advance… I’m willing to forgive you no matter what. No matter what. I am willing to forgive you. That is good news. If I receive Christ, my sins are wiped out. They are erased. That is what God’s grace, the good news of God’s grace, his gift is all about. And it is such a great gift. We have a tough time receiving it. We have a tough time believing it. I don’t know if you read in the newspaper about the guy… who was driving up to Big Bear to his cabin. And just before he got to his cabin, he had an oil slick and his car slid off into a ravine. Away into the bottom of the ravine, car was just devastated. He was alive, but scratched up and got out, climbing out of the ravine. Just then a storm came over and just, he got drenched, just totally drenched. So he’s climbing up out of this ravine. He’s drenched, he’s shivering. He sees his cabin just in time to see a lightning bolt hit his cabin and it burst into flames. He looks up to heaven and he says what all of us would say, why me, God? Why me? And he hears a voice from heaven come back and say, because some people just tick me off. That is typical of what we think about God. That somehow God is mad at me. That somehow God is getting even at me. He is getting back at me. We think every little thing that happens in our lives is something, I must have done something wrong. That’s why God’s doing this. I mean, you go into Taco Bell, you order a taco, you get it, it doesn’t have any meat in it, and you think, what did I do? God’s getting back at me, what did I do? The vegetarian sitting across who got your taco is thinking, what did I do? We’re all confused about this. Now listen, listen. Would God treat his children that way? Look at the next verse in your outline. Would you read with me Isaiah chapter 43, verse 25? I am the God who forgives your sins. I do this because of who I am. I will not hold your sins against you. I will not hold your sins against you. God doesn’t carry grudges. You might, I might, but God does not hold grudges. We looked at the verse last week at Easter, Romans 8, verse 1, which says, there is no condemnation. for those who are in Christ Jesus. God is not sitting up in heaven rehearsing your sins, looking at them in this little personal VCR again and again and again. He erased your sins. He doesn’t rehearse them. He releases them. Maybe you’re here and you’re one of those 2,000 people who last week stepped across the line and said to Jesus Christ, for the first time, I want a relationship with you. Let me say something to you. Let me tell you something about what changed in your life when you came to know Christ. You’ve had probably your whole life this picture of what it’s going to be like when you get to heaven. You know the picture I’m talking about. It’s this long line heading up toward the pearly gates. And you’re in this line hoping you’re going to make it in. You know what I’m talking about? And you’re just stepping forward one little step at a time, hoping that when you get to the front, you’re in heaven. You’re not in hell. Want to hear some incredibly good news? The minute you got to know Jesus Christ, it means you don’t have to stand in that line anymore. You get a fast pass into heaven immediately. You’re there. Because there is a judgment for those who don’t know Christ. That’s why Jesus came into this world. So we wouldn’t have to face that judgment. You do not have to face that moment. You’re already in God’s family. You’re already in. It’s already settled. God has erased your sins. That is worth just right now taking a deep breath in and going, ah, thank God. Thank God that I am forgiven, forgivable because of what Jesus has done. And there’s a fifth thing about you and I. Fifth way that God sees you. God sees you as capable. He sees you as capable. Second Corinthians chapter three, verses five and six talks about this one. It says, the capacity that we have comes from God. It is he who made us capable of serving the new covenant. There is an epidemic of low self-esteem in America. One study shows that it is the number one problem among women in America. And even in our area, where many of you are very, very successful, the truth of the matter is that deep down in your heart of hearts, in your quiet moments, there is still in your life a gnawing sense of insecurity. Why is that? Why can’t we escape that sense of insecurity? Well, one of the reasons is what Pastor Rick talked about earlier. You’re continuing to replay those old tapes in your memory of what people said a long time ago about you. You’re still living by what 10, 20 years ago somebody said. The studies show that the younger you were when you were rejected, the greater an impact it has on your life. And in a sense, for some of you, you had people in your life that cursed you. They cursed you with words like, you don’t matter, you’re a failure, you’ll never amount to anything, you can’t do anything right. So here’s the question. How do you release a curse? Well, you don’t do it by focusing on the curse. You don’t do it by thinking about what they said all the time, or you don’t even do it by thinking, I’m going to prove them wrong. You’re still trying to build your life on a negative. You do it by building your life on a positive. You begin to focus instead on the truth. You start affirming the truth. You start believing what God says about you. And God says you’re capable. I don’t care what anybody else says. I don’t care what you think. God says that you are capable, that he’s created you for a purpose. He has a purpose for your life. In fact, the next two verses in the outline talk about two reasons why every one of us is capable. Number one, we are all capable because we have God’s word for insight and wisdom. Would you read with me 2 Timothy 3, verse 17? Using the scriptures, the person who serves God will be capable, having all that is needed to do every good work. What a gift God has given us in this book, the Bible. It’s given to help us to live the kind of life that he wants us to live, to make us capable. to live that life. This is an incredible gift, but he’s given us an even bigger gift than that. Not only has he given us his word, the Bible says he’s given us himself to make us capable. Maybe you’ve heard people talk about how God sends his spirit into our lives when we trust him. That sounds a little strange. What does that mean? That just means that God sends himself. He gives us his strength, his ability, his insight. He is willing to come into our lives. That’s how much he loves us. That’s what the Bible is talking about in Philippians 4.13 when it says this. I have strength for all things in Christ who empowers me. I am ready for anything and equal to anything through him who infuses inner strength into me. That is, I am self-sufficient through Christ’s sufficiency. Through God’s word, through God himself, you are capable.

SPEAKER 04 : 24:13

Now psychologists say, that your self-concept, your self-worth, the way you see yourself, is largely determined by what you think the most important person in your life thinks about you. Let me say that again. Your self-worth, the way you see yourself, is largely determined by what you think the most important person in your life thinks about you. Now if that’s true, I wanna highly recommend that you make Jesus Christ the most important person in your life. Because in Christ, he says, you are valuable, you are acceptable, you are forgivable, you are lovable, and you are capable. You see, it really doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks about you. Who are you gonna believe, God or that funhouse mirror, that imperfect person? And the bigger question is, who are you going to live for? The approval of other people who aren’t going to give it? They’ll be inconsistent? Or will you live the rest of your life for a God who says you’re lovable, valuable, capable, forgivable, acceptable? Fred Craddock tells this story about the time he was vacationing in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. Fred and his wife were seated at a table in a restaurant when an old man came up to them and asked, are you folks on vacation? Yes, said Fred, and we’re having a good time. What do you do for a living, the old man said. Fred was trying to get rid of the guy and he said, I’m a preacher. Oh, the old man said, then let me tell you a preacher story. And he pulled up a chair and sat down. The old man said, I was born an illegitimate child. I never knew who my father was. And that was very hard for me. The kids at school made fun of me and they called me names. And when I walked around our little town, I always felt that people were staring at me and asking that terrible question. I wonder who’s the father of that little boy. I spent a lot of time by myself and growing up, I didn’t have any friends. One day a new pastor came into town and everybody was talking about how good he was. Well, I’d never gone to church, but one Sunday I decided I’d go hear him speak. And he was good. And so I kept coming back. But each time I went to church, I’d come in late and I’d leave early. Sounds like some of you in the bleachers. Never mind. Just a little sub point there, okay? All right. All right. Each time I went to church, I’d come in late and leave early so I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody. Then one Sunday, I got so caught up in listening to the sermon, I forgot to leave early. Service ended, people stood up, and I couldn’t get out the door. Suddenly, I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I turned, that big, tall pastor was looking down at me and he asked, what’s your name, boy? Whose son are you? When I heard that question, I just shook. But before I could say anything, the preacher said, I know who your family is. There’s a distinct family resemblance. Why, you, you’re the child of God. You know, mister, those words changed my life, he said. The old man got up and left. The waitress came over and asked me, do you know who that was? No, said Fred. That’s Ben Hooper, two-term governor of Tennessee. A man learned he was the child of God and it changed his life. And all the depression and all the cuts and hurts and rejection he had had through his life was eliminated by the power of God’s love. And no longer could people diminish his sense of dignity because he was a child of God. Now, I don’t know how you’ve been hurt. I know you have because you’re a human being. And I don’t know what people have said to you that hurt you and crushed you and caused rejection, but I will tell you this, they were liars. They were not speaking the truth. And I would say to you that when you’ve been hurt by parents or by your peers or by an ex-spouse or by a brother or a sister or a neighbor or kids on the playground, That hurt, God cares. And I care. And this church cares. We have a family here called Saddleback that wants to help you get healed of all those hurts in your past. And it starts by making Jesus Christ the most important person in your life and caring more about his opinion than anybody else. And then you start filling your mind with the truth. And here’s your homework this week. I want you to take those verses on that outline and go home and you write them on little cards and you write above it, I am acceptable, I am valuable. And you start affirming those every day and you take them with you to work or to school or wherever. Let’s bow our heads. Father, I thank you that you can heal broken hearts. and bitter memories, and damaged self-esteem. Thank you that patterns can be erased and reversed. Thank you that you turn nobodies into somebodies. Jesus, I ask you to help people to begin seeing themselves today through your eyes of love. Now you pray. In your mind, say this. Dear God, help me to see myself the way you see me. Thank you for loving me and sending Jesus Christ to die for me so I could be forgiven. Jesus, today I accept your love and forgiveness, and I want to learn to trust you. Help me to care more about what you think of me than what other people think. May the truth set me free. Now with our heads bowed, I want you to repeat these truths after me aloud. Would you just follow me in this? Just say, because of Jesus, I am acceptable and I am valuable and I am lovable and I am forgivable and I am capable. Jesus, help me to see myself through your eyes of love. Amen. Hi everybody, today I wanna share with you a special testimony from Delia. Delia says that Daily Hope has helped her with deep anxiety. But then she also shared about what happened as she began to share Daily Hope with her parents. And she writes this, Pastor Rick, a couple years ago, I found myself pretty lost. My company had a merger and all the senior management were changed overnight and I was among them. At the same time, my long-term relationship ended. Then a couple months later, my father was diagnosed with colon cancer. I was in shock and I fell into a deep depression from all these changes. In fact, every day I experienced a panic attack. But then I found your teaching on Daily Hope. And it just seemed that you understood every emotion that I was going through, emotions that I didn’t even know how to verbalize to other people. but it was Daily Hope that helped me get out of bed every morning and gave me the strength to get through each day. Through your teaching on Daily Hope, Pastor Rick, I was able to experience God’s love and power like never before. You know, I even translated the Daily Hope devotional for my parents who don’t speak English. And they accepted Jesus too. That’s amazing, Delia. I am so grateful for you and the team at Daily Hope because it has become the morning routine that I can’t live without. Now, Delia, you have been through more pain than I can possibly imagine. Some very, very challenging times. And I’m sorry. I really am. I’m sorry. Sometimes we experience multiple traumas at the same time. And when that happens, that’s when we really need the hope of Jesus Christ. And I’m so glad you experienced that, that you found God’s love and found God’s power. And what a blessing that you translated the Daily Hope devotionals for your parents and then they accepted Christ. That’s amazing. I am celebrating with you that they are now in the family of God.

SPEAKER 02 : 34:37

To sign up for Rick’s free daily devotional, go to PastorRick.com. That’s PastorRick.com. We hope you’ll 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.