Choosing Your Future — Part 1

Hey everyone. You know Pastor Rick often says you were made by God and for God. And until you understand that, life will never make sense. Welcome to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. And today we're beginning a series called God's Vision for the Rest of youf Life. Now in this series, Rick is gonna help you discover the unique purpose and vision that the Lord has for your life. Alright, well I'm excited to hear what Rick has to say today. This will part one of a message called choosing your future.

One of the greatest gifts that God has given you is the freedom to choose. It's what makes us different from animals. You have a free moral choice. Now the problem is what is our greatest gift is also our greatest curse. Cause we make stupid choices. A lot of times we make dumb choices. Every choice I make is not a good one and neither is yours. And so we often waste that power that God has given us. Now, every year in January, people make new choices which they call New Year's resolutions. The problem with New Year's resolutions is we usually make them about trivial issues, not the most important things in life. And then we try to accomplish them by willpower. And if you set some New Year's resolutions, you try to accomplish them by willpower. I give you to about the end of February, because willpower doesn't last. It's good to get you started, but it doesn't last. And pretty soon you get tired and you give up and you stop that habit, that commitment, that new thing you're trying to do. You need more than simply willpower. We're gonna talk about that today. Now there in your outline, you notice the word to resolve. The verb resolve means to decide. It means to, to settle, to determine, to purpose. You have a purpose for your life. And the word resolution, like a New Year's resolution, means a firm determination to do something. What I want us to do this weekend is look at the four most important resolutions you can make in your life. These are life shaping resolutions. What I'm gonna share with you today. If you will make these four resolutions and depend on God to help you, your life will radically improve. Not just this next year, but the rest of your life. The rest of your life will become the best of your life. These four resolutions will transform you. They will make your life so much better if you'll focus on these. And they come to us from the life of Moses. Now, Moses is the greatest man in the Bible, or at least the greatest man in the Old Testament. Moses is the guy who led the Jews after 400 years of slavery to freedom. He challenged the greatest nation in the world at that time, Egypt and Pharaoh, and set a million people free. Moses is the guy that God gave the ten Commandments to. Moses is the guy who wrote the first five books of the Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. Why did God use this guy in such an amazing way? Because Moses made four resolutions. He made four choices that altered his destiny. You see, these are the things that change your life. What happens to you in life is not nearly as important as the choices you make. We make our choices, and then our choices make us. Your character is the sum total of your choices. So while you don't control all the circumstances in your life, you do control your choices. And these are far more important than circumstances. Now, in Hebrews, chapter 11, if you have a Bible, you might want to open there. All of the verses are on your outline. We have about five verses on the life of Moses that explains the choices he made. The first verse is about the choice his parents made when he was a baby. And then the next four verses are about the choices that Moses made. And if you will make these same choices, you will benefit dramatically for the rest of your life. Now you know the story of Moses. Pharaoh had decided that the Jews were getting too large in number in population in Egypt. So he made a decree that all the baby boys were to be murdered. Moses parents decided, we're not gonna do that. We believe this is a special child. We believe God has a plan and purpose for his life. And so rather than murdering their baby boy, they made a basket, put him in the Nile river as a baby, and shoved him out in the Nile nearby, where Pharaoh's daughter was bathing. Pharaoh's daughter seized the baby in the basket, falls in love with this little baby, decides to take him home and adopt him as her son. So now this baby slave becomes the grandson of Pharaoh. But nobody knows, except Pharaoh's daughter, that he's actually a Jewish kid. Now, the Bible says this here on the screen. Hebrews 11. By faith, Moses parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw he was no ordinary child and they were not afraid of the king's edict. That's Pharaoh's command to kill all the baby boys. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose instead to be known. He chose instead to be mistreated along with the people of God. That's the slaves. Rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time, he regarded disgrace, in other words, being a slave for the sake of Christ, as of greater value than all the treasures of Egypt. Because he was looking ahead to his reward in heaven. By faith, he left Egypt, leading the Jews out to freedom. Not fearing the king's anger, Pharaoh's anger, he persevered because he saw him who is invisible. Now, in this passage, there are four verbs. It says, moses by faith, Moses refused, Moses chose, Moses regarded, and Moses persevered. When you understand the meaning of these four verbs and their implication for your life today, thousands of years later, it'll change your life. Now let's look at these four life shaping choices. Resolutions that will flat out improve your life more than anything else if you'll do what Moses did. Here's the first resolution. Number one. I refuse to be defined by others. I refuse to be defined by others. God did not make you to be what somebody else wants you to be. God didn't make you to be what your parents want you to be, what your girlfriend or boyfriend wants you to be, what your wife wants you to be. God didn't make you to be what your boss wants you to be, what your peers want you to be. God made you to be you. And if you're gonna become all that you're gonna be, and what we're gonna talk about the next six weeks, you're gonna have to deal with this one. I refuse to be defined by others. Now, this is the first issue Moses had to deal with. Verse 24, Hebrews 11. By faith, Moses, when he had grown up, and this is a mark of maturity, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Now, Moses has an identity crisis. As I just explained to you earlier, he's born a Hebrew slave, but he's raised Egyptian royalty, the grandson of Pharaoh. And as he grows up, he's gotta decide, who am I? I mean, really, who am I? It's gonna affect the rest of his life. He's got two choices. One, he can pretend to be Pharaoh's grandson for the rest of his life. And he can live a life of luxury. He'll have fame. He'll have fortune. He'll have all the pleasures he could possibly want in the world. He'll be a celebrity. He'll have power. He'll have prestige. He'll have status. And one day, he'll be the most powerful man on the planet, as Pharaoh of Egypt in its heyday. Or he can admit who he really is. He's Jewish. At that point, they're gonna kick him Out. He's gonna go live with the slaves the rest of his life. He's gonna be disgraced. He's gonna be humiliated. He's going to live a life of pain and sorrow and drudgery the rest of his life. Now, which one would you do? I mean, when you think about that, Moses refused to live a lie. He's a man of integrity. Moses, most people are living lies today. They're trying to be people they're not. You're trying to impress people about things that really just aren't true in your life. And that causes enormous tension in your life. He insisted on being who God made him to be against all kinds of peer pressure. Now here's my first question for you. Who are you letting determine your identity? Your friends? Your parents? Your family? Some of you have parents. They died years ago. You still hear their voices in your mind. You're trying to live up to their vision for your life. Some of you are trying to live out what some ex husband or wife said to you. And you're trying to prove them wrong. You're letting them control your life. Some of you are trying to impress people. You're living a life of culture. Keep up with the Joneses. Impress people. Social media. What culture says, your spouse says. What the competition says. Let me show you some verses from the bible. Romans, chapter 12. Don't let the world around you squeeze you into its own mold. But let God remold your mind from within so that you may prove in practice and that the plan of God for you is good. You might circle that the plan of God for you is good, but you don't know the plan of God. We can't cover it in the next six weeks if you don't deal with this. Where you say, I'm gonna refuse to let the world squeeze me in its mold. I'm not gonna let other people define me. Look up here on the screen. The Bible says in Exodus 23:2, don't follow the crowd in doing wrong. In other words, don't let peer pressure push you into things you don't wanna do. Cause they don't really like you anyway. Those people you're trying to impress, they don't really care about you anyway. The Bible says this. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He is the one who examines the motives of our hearts. And Jesus said this about his disciples. John 17. They are no more defined by the world than I am defined by. By the world. Can you say that about you? No, you can't. Because you've been defined by the people in your life. You see, this is so important that we can't deal with anything else till you deal with this one. Because when you know who you are, it sets you free from the fear of disapproval. And most people are scared to death of criticism and rejection and disapproval. It's so important I wrote a new chapter on it in the New Purpose Driven Life. Because it's one of the two things envy says I must be like you to be happy. And people pleasing says I must be liked by you to be happy. Both of them are wrong. And both of them will keep you from fulfilling the life God intended for you to live. You have to say, I'm gonna resolve that. I will refuse to be defined by other people. And I'm not gonna let other people's approval or disapproval shape my life. I'm gonna live for an audience of one. This is what Moses did. And your first life shaping resolution is to say this. I resolve that. No more will I let other people press me into their mold. I'm gonna be what God wants me to be. I'm gonna do what God wants me to do. And I'm gonna fulfill the plan that God has for my life, not somebody else's plan for my life. Why? Because. Because you can trust God. The Bible says this, Jeremiah 29 on the screen. I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord. They are plans for good and not for disaster. Plans to give you a future and a hope. Now friends, that is real success. Real success. Not phony, fake, artificial success. Real success in life is being exactly what you were created to be and nothing more than that. I want you as your pastor. I want you to succeed in the rest of your life. But the only way you're gonna do that is to be who God made you to be. Not what other people are pressuring you to be. Not what they want you to be. Being who God wants you to be. I refuse to be defined by others. Second, the second resolution that you need to make in life to be all that God wants you to be. A life shaping choice is this. I choose short term pain for long term gain. I choose short term pain for long term gain. Now anybody who's ever played a sport knows this one. You gotta put out the effort to. You've gotta practice, you've gotta work hard. You gotta put out some sweat in order to play in the championship game. You just don't walk out and win the championship. No pain, no gain. You gotta put out to get back. If you're Gonna be good at anything. You've gotta put out short term pain for long term gain. That's not just true in sports, it's true in finances. It's true in relationships. I have a good marriage, but I worked at it. Kay and I have worked at it hard for years. It didn't come easy. Nobody just has an easy relationship. You gotta work at it to make your marriage work. It takes work to make it work. So you put out short term pain for long term gain. Am I grateful for the marriage I've got now? Are you kidding me? I'd pay a million bucks. It's incalculable what my marriage is worth to me. But it wasn't always that way. We had to put out short term pain for long term gain. Why is this resolution important in your life? Because most of the problems in your life come from your inability to delay gratification. Everything in society teaches us I want everything and and I want it now and I want it free and I want it easy. Well, life isn't that way. So every problem in your life comes from your inability to put off the pleasure in order to get a longer amount of it later on. I want it now, I want it free and I want it easy. The reason you're in debt is because of your inability to delay gratification. That's why you're in debt, because you say, I see it and I want it now. Do I have the money for it? No. Can I afford it?

No.

So I'm gonna charge it and I'm gonna put it on a credit card. Every time you use a credit card to buy something you can't afford, you are refusing to delay gratification and you get deeper and deeper in debt. And the reason America is falling off a fiscal cliff is because our government doesn't know how to delay gratification. We want it all and we want it all now, even though we can't pay for it. This is true physically in your health. I don't wanna pay for a good health with exercise and proper diet and getting the right amount of sleep. I just wanna do whatever I wanna do and feel good. It isn't gonna happen. You're gonna feel bad if you don't do the pain to get the gain. It's true in relationships when people go out and say, you know, I don't wanna follow what God says about sex. I wanna have sex now. I'm not married, but I wanna have sex now. It causes problems in relationships because when you have sex with somebody, you give part of your heart to them, there's an emotional attachment and you keep giving part of yourself away. It causes spiritual problems. Would you agree with me that usually the right thing to do is not the easy thing to do? Everybody agree with that? The easy thing to do is typically the wrong thing to do. The right thing to do is usually the hard thing. It's the painful thing. When somebody hurts me, the easy thing is hurt them back. The right thing to do is forgive them. That is not easy. That is not painless. It's painful to forgive. I don't wanna let it go. I don't wanna forgive him. I don't wanna carry a grudge. The right thing is often the hard thing to do. Now here's what happened with Moses. He made a choice. Verse 25. Moses chose. You might circle that. Moses chose to be mistreated. That's painful. Along with the people of God as a slave, rather than to enjoy in the palace of Pharaoh the pleasures of sin for a short time. You know what I love about the Bible? It always tells the truth. It doesn't gloss over anything. In that verse, it says, rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time, sin is fun. Pleasures of sin for a short time. Sin's fun. Even the Bible admits it. Sin is fun. Nobody would do sin if it were painful. We do sin because it's pleasurable. It's pleasurable to break the law. It's pleasurable to eat too much. It's pleasurable to do all kinds of things, things that are not good for you. And even the Bible says that. But it says pleasure in sin for a season. It's short term.

What a fantastic message from Pastor Rick. You know, Daily Hope is changing lives every day. Here's Pastor Rick with a letter from one of our listeners.

You know, I love hearing from people who are growing closer to God through our Daily Hope broadcasts and emails. And it really encourages me when I hear your story. So please send them to me. You know, here's one that I got recently from Suzanne that I think is gonna encourage you too. Suzanne wrote, I've been listening to Daily Hope for over a year, and I get so much out of it. Sometimes it seems as though you're speaking directly to me. Well, I am, Suzanne. Somehow she says, I started listening to your Daily Hope messages, and I feel like that God made that happen because for the first time in my life, I'm understanding the teaching of Jesus. And I feel so alive. My eyes are open and I look forward to each day. I haven't had a boring life, but I was always missing something that I just never could find. Suzanne writes, you know, I was incarcerated as a teen and I was married and I had a baby at 18. And that marriage was terribly abusive. And even at the lowest points in my life, I somehow had an optimism that somehow it would get better. And I now know that God was with me, even though I didn't recognize it at the time. So thank you, Pastor Rick, for spreading the word of good hope. You know, Suzanne, I wanna thank you so much for writing what you just wrote. And I'm so glad Daily Hope is helping you understand the Bible and God is speaking to you through his Word. My friends, this story is what Daily Hope exists for. It's why we exist. We wanna share the hope of God's Word with people just like Suzanne. So I wanna say to all of you, thank you so much. Those of you who generously support Daily Hope so that people like Suzanne can discover God's goodness and God's grace and God's mercy.

Your support of Daily Hope means so much to us. And if you'd like to help support Pastor Rick in this ministry financially, well, go to pastorrick.com or text the word HOPE to 70309. Once again, pastorrick.com or just text the word HOPE to 70309. And from the bottom of our hearts, we thank you so much for your support. We hope you'll join us next time as we continue to look into God's word for our Daily Hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.