In this uplifting episode of Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope, we delve into the keys of maintaining and nurturing relationships despite life’s challenges. Pastor Rick Warren shares profound insights into how opposites attract – and sometimes attack – when life doesn’t go as planned. Learn about the importance of small groups in preventing bitterness and embracing forgiveness. Experience how turning to God and implementing biblical principles can lead you to freedom and joy, empowering you to live life with purpose and resilience. Tune in for a message of hope and transformation.
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, Pastor Rick with the final part of a message called What Destroys Relationships and What Builds Them.
SPEAKER 02 :
Now, the Bible tells us, and even history and personal experience tells us, that opposites attract. Opposites attract. And then when they get married, opposites attack. What fascinates you now irritates you. This happens all the time. You see, when you are single and you look out there and you see somebody that’s not like you, that is fascinating. You know, like a person who’s kind of quiet says, look at that person, how boisterous, how loud, how full of life and vivacious they are. And you find it attractive because it’s not like you. And so then you get in a relationship or you get married, and then after about a year you’re going, do you have to be loud all the time? And it starts getting on your nerves. It starts irritating you. And as I said, you attract and then you attack. I mean, if you have been married at any point in your life, how many of you had unrealistic expectations in your marriage? Can I see your hands? Yeah, the rest of you are liars. Okay? It’s true. It’s a setup for resentment. Now often, it’s not the big things in life that make us resentful. Those can, obviously, and do. But it’s also a lot of little things that just pile up. And you just start piling them up. And a lot of little things can break the camel’s back. And so we get irritated. And those irritations, when we hold on to them, turn into resentment. Now again, since we’re all in small groups, I wrote some common irritations in life to be looking out for in small groups. First is the person who’s always late. And then they take 10 minutes to explain why they were late in the middle of the group. The person who talks too long. They love to hear themselves talk. The TMI, the too much information person. Especially about a surgery of a relative. You know, it’s an organ recital. The guy who has to check the score of the game during the group. The person who’s dogmatic and says, this is the way it is. You say, well, I guess the discussion just ended. The person who is insensitive and joking. The person who turns every statement into a wisecrack. He thinks he’s a stand-up comedian and that the group is comedy club. The guy who forgets the guacamole. You know, in every group, there is somebody who’s just a little bit off. You know, they don’t catch all of the social signals. They’re heavenly sandpaper. You know, I call them the EGRs, the extra grace required. Right now, you’re thinking of that person in that group right now. In fact, if you can’t think of it, guess what? You’re it. You’re it. Okay, so if you don’t know who it is in your group, it’s you, friend, because it’s real obvious to everybody else. Now, what do you do with these little irritations in a small group? Well, you do two or three things. First, you ask God to fill you with so much love that their irritation doesn’t bug you anymore. Remember, one of the things that group does is it’s not just to learn content, it’s to learn to get along. It’s to learn relational skills. That’s why we believe everybody needs to be in a small group. You don’t learn it on your own. You don’t learn it sitting here in a big crowd. It’s you learn relational skills. So ask God to fill you with love so that person doesn’t bug you. Second, you can go to that person and talk to the offender personally, you know, in love. You know, you say, you know, it just may be me, but I’ve noticed you’re a jerk. No, just kidding. Just kidding. Just kidding. No, you know, you say, you know, I, you know, it may be me. I’m sorry. Maybe I’m a little extra sensitive, but this kind of bugs me. And can we talk about it? You know, you talk too much or, you know, whatever. But what you don’t do is say nothing. Right? What you don’t do is sweep it under the carpet, hide it, go home and complain about it to everybody else. Talk to everybody else in the group about it, but not that person. No, you don’t do that because it quickly turns into resentment. And resentment is always wrong. Now let me clarify something. Anger is not always wrong. Resentment is always wrong. There is a right kind of anger and a wrong kind of anger. When I see injustice in the world, I better get angry. Sometimes anger is a result of love. If you hurt my kids, I’d get angry. That’s a legitimate anger. In fact, the Bible says, be angry and sin not. In other words, there’s a way to get angry and not sin, and there’s a way to get angry and sin. But resentment is always wrong. It’s when you pile up anger in your heart. It’s frozen anger. Now, why does God say, don’t do this? Two reasons. First, when you get resentful, you stop thinking clearly. You don’t, your logic goes out the door. Your logic gets distorted, your perspective gets clouded, your vision gets all mixed up and you don’t think rationally when your emotions are involved and you’re resentful and the adrenaline’s running and you just don’t think straight. Not only do you not think straight, you start acting in self-defeating ways. The most foolish things that have ever been done in history have been done in revenge. or in retaliation, or in resentment. And when you get resentful, you tend to do a couple things. First, resentment doesn’t work. It never hurts the other person. It only hurts you. It’s like, you know, shooting yourself with a gun to hit them with the kick of the recoil. You know, it doesn’t work. You see, when you’re resentful, you’re stewing on the inside, you’re all upset, they’re oblivious to it. I mean, they’re all on their happy merry way. Your stomach’s tied in a knot and they’re happy as a clam. They’re not even aware of it. You’re not hurting them with resentment. You’re hurting yourself far more than you’re hurting them. Notice what the Bible says, Psalm 73. Since my heart was embittered, that means resentful, I’m bitter, and my soul was deeply wounded, I was stupid and I could not understand. In other words, I didn’t think straight and I started doing self-defeating behavior. God says, I don’t want you to do that. I don’t want you to do that. Now one of the purposes, listen to this, it’s real important. One of the purposes of a small group is to help you think straight when you’ve been hurt. Because when you get hurt, you need other people around you who can think unemotionally and more rationally. And you come to a group and you go, you know what, I had this thing today. It was just so, I wanted to wring that guy’s neck. And they’re going, now did you really want a lawsuit? And have you thought about this? You need other people. You’re going to be hurt in life. And when you start to get bitter and you don’t think straight, you need people who are not bitter around you to help you think it through and keep you from doing dumb things. Does that make sense? Now that’s what the Bible says. Look at the next verse. Look after each other, okay? That means watch out for each other. Watch out that no bitterness, that’s resentment, takes root among you, that’s in your group. For as it springs up, it causes deep trouble, hurting many in their spiritual lives. So when somebody’s hurting in a group, you gather around them and you help them and you keep them from getting bitter against it. See, this is how we grow. And by the way, when you see a personality clash in your small group, you don’t sweep it under the carpet. You don’t pretend like it doesn’t exist. You don’t ignore the big pink elephant in the middle of the room and keep quiet about it. No, you deal with it quickly. This is how we grow. We learn to be honest in groups. And that’s the only way you grow. You never grow from dishonesty. You only grow from honesty. And I have discovered that most people are about 95% honest.
SPEAKER 1 :
95%.
SPEAKER 02 :
There’s that 5% that they’re afraid to say to their good friend. And they know they need to say it to their friend, and they know it would help their friend. They’re just chicken. They’re afraid to say it. So they’re 95% honest. They almost go all the way, but they don’t go that last 5%. And it’s that last 5% of speaking the truth in love that helps us grow up and helps us mature and helps us become more like Christ. You see, the reality is the people that we want to love the most, we often end up resenting the most. like parents or somebody else. Those we want to love the most, we end up resenting the most. So what’s the antidote? The antidote to resentment is forgiveness. Forgiveness. Forgiveness builds relationships just like resentment tears it down. And if you’re going to have a long-term lasting marriage that lasts your entire life, you’re going to need massive doses of forgiveness. Massive doses of forgiveness. Colossians 3.13. Would you read this verse aloud with me? You must make allowances for each other’s faults and forgive the person who offends you. Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must forgive others. Now, why should I forgive other people? Well, there are three reasons. First, resentment doesn’t work. It only makes you miserable. So holding on to a grudge, you’re only hurting yourself with your anger. It doesn’t help. So you forgive for your own benefit. Because resentment doesn’t work. It just makes you upset. Second, you have been forgiven by God. And third, you’re going to need more forgiveness in the future, and so you better offer it to others. We pray the Lord’s Prayer. Forgive us our debts, our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us. God, I want you to forgive me as much as I forgive everybody else. Do I really want that? You see, we forgive because God says you need to forgive for your own sake. You say, Rick, I can’t do it. I just, I cannot forgive that person. That’s why you need Jesus Christ. That’s why you need Jesus Christ. Because you can’t do it, you’re right, you can’t do it on your own. Human love runs out. You need God’s supernatural love in you. Look at this next verse, Titus chapter three. Once our lives were full of resentment and envy, But then Christ saved us. Not because we were good enough to be saved, because we’re not, but because of his kindness and love, that’s his grace. By washing away our sins, everything forgiven is wiped out. And giving us the new joy of the indwelling Holy Spirit. God puts his spirit of love in my life. All because of what Jesus our Savior did on the cross so he could declare us not guilty in God’s eyes. You need to experience God in your life. You’ll never be able to let it go until you get God’s love in you every day and every moment. Now let me explain what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not making excuses for that person who hurt you. They hurt you and it was real. Forgiveness is not minimizing the hurt. It hurt. Forgiveness is not justifying it and saying it’s no big deal. It was a big deal. Forgiveness is not saying it wasn’t wrong. It was wrong. So what is forgiveness? Forgiveness is letting go of the pain and letting go of my right to get even. And why would anybody do that? For your own sake. because you are living in misery the longer you hold it on. Some of you are still allowing people from your past to hurt you in the present, and that’s dumb. They cannot hurt you anymore. The past is past. And every time you hold onto that grudge, you are perpetuating your own pain. That’s stupid. They can’t hurt you anymore. The past is past. They only hurt you if you refuse to let it go. If you hold onto it as a grudge in resentment, you are hurting yourself. And God says, you gotta let it go. You gotta let it go. Forgiveness is the only way to get on with your life. They don’t deserve it. Did they deserve it? No. Do you deserve to be forgiven by God? No, but God did it anyway out of his grace and kindness. You see, resentment turns your heart into a desert and it dries you up emotionally and you don’t have anything to give to anybody else. Your boyfriend, your husband, your girlfriend, your wife, your parents, your kids, you don’t have anything to give because you are so stuck in the past, you can’t get on with the future. and it turns you into a desert, and you’re dried up. But God brought you here this morning because he’s got some good news for you. Look at the next verse. Here’s what God says to you. The Lord says, forget what happened before, and don’t think about the past. I’m gonna do something new in your life. and I will make rivers on a dry land. I’m gonna turn that desert into an oasis. Now you may have had some relational disasters in your life. Welcome to the human race. Everybody has had some relational disasters, everybody. What are you gonna do with them? God wants to start something totally new in your life today and it starts with opening up your life to Jesus Christ and letting him fill you with his love on a moment by moment basis. Let’s bow our heads. As we close, let me ask you four very personal questions. First, who do you need to be more unselfish with? Who have you been critical or judgmental of? Have you been unwilling to admit, I was wrong, I’m sorry, please forgive me? Who do you need to say that to? I was wrong, I’m sorry, please forgive me. Have you been afraid of being real with other people and you’ve held your cards close and you’ve denied your emotions and you’ve hidden your emotional nakedness? Is there anybody in your life that you have shared that secret with? You’re only as sick as your secrets. Who do you need to forgive? You know, all four of the antidotes to resentment and insecurity and selfishness and pride. All four of the antidotes are found in a relationship to Jesus Christ. You get that relationship lined up, all your other ones will fall into place. You need to allow Jesus Christ to be the Lord, the manager, the boss of your life. Let him fill you with his love and you’ll start to have great relationships with other people. So pray this prayer in your heart. Dear Jesus, You’ve seen every relationship I’ve ever had, the good, the bad and the ugly. And you know how selfishness and pride and insecurity and resentment messes them up. I admit that I need your help Jesus in my life and in my relationships. So as much as I understand, I ask you Jesus to come into my life And live through me. And put your love through me. I want that fresh start that you offer. In your name I pray. Amen.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hey, if you’ve just prayed along with Rick to accept Jesus in your life, Rick would love to hear from you. Just email rick at pastorrick.com. Here’s Rick with a very encouraging letter.
SPEAKER 02 :
You know, I love getting these letters from you. And let me just read one for you today. It’s from a woman named Lauren. She says, Pastor Rick, every day when I’m doing my routine tasks or I’m commuting to work, I’m listening to the Daily Hope podcast online. I listen and I re-listen and I re-listen again to all the messages, knowing the value that they’ve had on my life. Rick, these messages have transformed my heart from a bitter, hardened, distrustful place toward not only people but God to being in a place where I now have joy daily. I’ve got a joy that is not possible without God. And not only has my life been transformed, I’ve seen my family’s life transformed. Rick, it is through all that God has done and continues to do in this broadcast and through your life and ministry that my family has been transformed. I am excited to say that I’m now a donor to your podcast, starting with this paycheck. I’ve been so blessed by all you’ve given to us as listeners that I’m now blessed to give back. God bless you, Lauren. Well, Lauren, by the way, Lauren, if you were my daughter, you’d be Lauren Warren, right? Thanks for the encouragement. I’m so glad to hear how God is working in your family. And by the way, thank you for your contribution. It allows us to take this good news to other Laurens around the world and other people around the world. Your prayers and support matter. Thank you for listening. And by the way, everybody, God bless you. And join me next time as we continue to look into God’s word for our daily hope.
SPEAKER 01 :
This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope and your generous financial support.
