Learning to Live Wisely — Part 2

Hey, everybody. You know, Pastor Rick Warren often says you were made by God and for God. And until you understand that, well, life will never make sense. Thank you for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and in our series called God's Vision for the Rest of youf Life. Today, Rick will continue in his effort to help you discover the unique purpose and vision that the Lord has for your life. Now let's jump in and join Pastor Rick for the final part of a message called Learning to Live Wisely.

Now, the next category of stuff you can put in your mind is junk food. Junk food is neither good nor bad. It's just junk. There's nothing wrong with junk food except that it has no nutritional value to it. And most of the stuff you see on tv, it's not evil, it's not bad, it's just junk food. It's what I call stuffing. And the problem with stuffing is when you stuff yourself with stuffing, you have no hunger for truth. When you feed on trash, you're not hungry for truth. If you go watch the television for four hours, you don't wanna go read the Bible. Cause you're full, your mind is full and you filled up on empty calories. Stuff that doesn't help your body, it doesn't help your mind. A lot of things aren't necessarily wrong to watch or read. They're just not necessary. And so you have to. The wise person says, I'm not gonna stuff my mind with stuffing. It's neither good nor bad. But it's just. Do I really need to know this? Not really. You stuff your mind with stuffing. You have no hunger for truth. The wise person feeds on truth. That's brain food. That's soul food. That's nutritional food. It makes you wiser. Wiser in your relationships, wiser in your time, wiser in your money, wiser in your business, wiser, wiser in your parenting, wiser in your marriage and all these other areas because you're feeding on truth. So number one, if I wanna learn, I've gotta every day spend time connecting to the truth. I've gotta listen to God every day. We're gonna do that. Develop that habit. Number two, the E in learn how you learn to be wise. The E is enlist a friend or enlist friends who challenged me. If you're gonna be wise, you gotta get some wise people in your life. It's like that old phrase, if you wanna fly, soar with the eagles. You can't run with the turkeys. You gotta put some smart, wise, godly People in your life. And if you don't have any of those people in your life, you need to enlist them. You need to get a few. You don't need a lot of friends in life, you guys. You don't really need to be popular. You just need a few good friends. Friends that build you up, not tear you down. Friends that are wise, not fools. If you hang around with fools, that's what you become. Now, we always grow in community. We always grow in connection. That's why we talk about small groups all the time. You cannot grow to spiritual maturity by yourself. Sorry, you just can't do it. You could go become a hermit or a monk and move to the top of a mountain and spend your life in silence and reading books, and you would not grow in wisdom. You can grow in knowledge, but you won't grow in wisdom. Why? Because wisdom is all about relationships. The Bible says wisdom is all about love. The Bible says God is love. Wisdom shows up primarily in relationships. That's why a lot of people have great educational degrees and their marriages are falling apart. They're educated, but they're not wise. You look at the relationships of a person to see if they're wise or not. Let me just pause there for a minute. You look at a person's relationships to see if they're wise or not. It's all about love. So if you don't have any relationships, then you don't have any love. And if you don't have any love in your life, you are not wise. Wisdom is about love and relationships. The quality of the rest of your life will largely be determined by the people you choose to keep close to you. The quality of your life for the rest of your life will be largely determined by the friends that you choose, the kind of friends you choose, and how close you keep them to you. If you build wise friendships in your life, you're gonna get wiser. So I need to enlist friends who challenge me. You need a group in your life. Look at what the Bible says here on the screen. 1 Corinthians 15. Bad company corrupts good character. We know that doesn't just happen with teenagers. Happens with all of us. Peer pressure. Bad company corrupts good character. You need friends who build you up, not tear you down. You know, if I come over here to the edge of this stage and I'm trying to pull you up and you're trying to pull me down, which is it easier to do? Yeah, it's obvious. It's always easier for somebody to pull you down for Them to pull you up. You need to not have friends in your life who pull you down. People who pull you down are not your friends. They're not. They're not your friends. If they're pulling you down, they're not your friends. Friends pull you up. And so you need to get wise people. You need a small group is what you need. The Bible says this, Proverbs 13:20. Spend time with the wise and you will become wise. But spend time with friends. Be friends of fools will suffer. Do you have anybody in your life who is giving input for good, for God in your life on a regular basis that's called a small group. And you need to, like, hey, you meet with them once a week. You don't need to meet with them every day. But once a week, you get a small group of friends and they're building you up. They're encouraging you to do the right thing, not the wrong thing. If you don't have that, you're gonna give up. So what I want you to do, then, during the next six weeks, everybody in our church, I want you to get in a group. Now, how big is a group? I'm not talking 10 people. I'm not talking eight people. Actually, in a small group, small is better. All you need is three. Now, if you only have two, that's a duo. That's not a group. That's a date is what that is. Okay? If you wanna go on a date, that's fine too. Go ahead, go on a date. But that's not your small group, okay? And be sure. Make sure you're having personal devotions on your date. Okay? I'm just kidding. Just how many do I need to group? Jesus said it like this. Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them. Now, there's a third key if you wanna learn wisdom first. Every day I listen to God for a very short time. I just read the Bible or listen to the Bible. I connect. That's the L. Then I enlist some friends. I get some wise people around me in my life for input that encourage me, keep me going. The A stands for ask questions and accept correction. If you were gonna be wise in life, you're gonna become a wise woman. If you're gonna become a wise man, if you're gonna be known, that guy's wise, you're gonna have to learn how to ask questions. Wise questions. And you're gonna have to learn how to accept correction. Look up here on the screen, the Bible says people's thoughts can be like a deep well, but someone with understanding can find the wisdom there. In other words, everybody's got something to teach you. Everybody has something to teach you, but it's like deep water in a well and you gotta draw it out of them. How do you draw the wisdom out of every person? By learning to ask smart questions. I can teach you how to do this in the next six weeks. I can teach you how to ask smart questions. I have a list of them that I use myself. And as I've traveled all around the world, I can learn. You can learn from anybody if you know the right questions. Everybody's brilliant just on different subjects and everybody's ignorant just on different subjects. You know some things that I don't know. And if I had time to sit with you, I. You could teach me. If I know the right questions to ask. I know some things you don't know. And if you knew the right questions, I can teach you some things you don't know. The person sitting next to you right now, they know some things that neither of us know. You can learn from anybody if you know the right questions. And so asking questions and accepting correction is a key to wisdom. The Bible says, by the way, you know, as I've traveled around the world, I've talked to, I've asked questions of taxicab drivers and prime ministers and they've both taught me. I've learned from hotel maids and I've learned from presidents because you can learn from anybody if you ask questions. Proverbs 18:15 says this. Intelligent people are always open to new ideas. In fact, they look for them. That's a sign of intelligence that you look for new ideas. You're an entrepreneur, you're an innovator. You're always looking for a new idea. That's a sign of intelligence. But when you look for em, one of the keys is listening. If you don't listen, then you're not going to grow. One of the things I've learned is that I have never learned anything while I'm talking. If my mouth is moving, I'm not learning. I'm only learning when I'm listening. You don't learn when you're talking, you learn when you're listening. So you gotta learn to listen. You know, I've done an awful lot of interviews. Abc, cbs, NBC, pbs, BBC, cnn, on and on and on. And what I've noticed is that the interview shows have changed. They're no longer about the guest, they're about the interviewer. And the whole goal is the Interviewer wants to draw attention to himself. The interviewer wants to explain his or her opinions. And you're just the foil. I long for the old Larry King days. Larry King. I didn't agree with everything, but you know what I'm saying? Larry King. He would ask a question and then he'd let you talk. And he realized that the interview people weren't going to listen to Larry King. They were going to listen to all of the different fascinating guests that he had. And learning from them. Larry said in an interview show, if the host is talking 50% of the time, something is terribly wrong. The host listens the most, the host talks the least. The host sets up the question and then just listens. That's what a good TV host does. It's same thing is true in a small group. The host listens the most, the host talks the least. So if you're shy, you should ask to be the host of your small group. If you don't like to talk, you wanna be the host. The host of a group is not the teacher. The host is the one who says, now the next question is. And you read it and then you let everybody else talk and you don't have to say anything. How cool is that? So the host listens the most. You're not the teacher, you're just listening. What I'm talking about is leadership. All leaders are learners. For 30 years I've been training leaders around the world. Business leaders, church leaders, government leaders. In 164 countries, all leaders are learners. The moment you stop learning, you stop leading. Growing businesses require growing businessmen. The moment you stop growing, your business stops growing. Growing families require growing parents. Growing churches require growing pastors. Anything that wants to grow, the leader has to be outgrowing it or the growth stops. Does that make sense? So all leaders are learners. I'm constantly learning. I learn from churches that are smaller than Saddleback. I learn from churches that are larger than Saddleback. I learn from people who agree with us. I learn from people who disagree with us. I learn from enemies. I learn from critics. That makes me wiser than my critics. Why? Because I learn from them. So I know what I know, then I learn what they know. All they know is what they know. They don't learn from me, but I learn from them. So it makes me smarter. Because I learn what I know, plus I learn what they know. You can learn from anybody, but you gotta be willing to listen. You must ask questions and accept correction. That's the mark of a wise man. That's the Mark of a wise woman. You're always in learning mode. Proverbs 19:27 says this. If you stop learning, you will forget what you already know. Boy, ain't that the truth. Some of you, the moment you got your graduate degree, graduation degree, you walked out and said, thank God my education is over. And it shows. Okay? Thank God I won't ever have to open the book the rest of my life. It shows. It shows. Because if you stop learning, you not only stop learning, you start forgetting what you knew. Because you're not exercising your brain. And the brain is a muscle. And if you're not continually learning, growing, developing, then your brain actually starts shrinking. You know less than you used to know. You don't want that. So you gotta keep on learning and learning and growing. And if you keep growing, then you keep learning. And if you keep learning, you don't forget all the stuff you did used to know. The R in learn how to learn wisdom is remember, remember and reinforce what I learned. You can't just learn it, you gotta remember it. And you can't just remember it, you've gotta reinforce it. Because if you don't remember and reinforce it, you end up having to learn the same lesson over and over and over. Have you ever done that? Yeah. You've had to relearn the same lesson over and over and over and over. Cause you may keep making the same stupid mistake. Cause you don't remember and you don't reinforce. Which, by the way, is why we hand out these little handout things every week. The United States Air Force says you forget 90 to 95% of everything you hear within 72 hours. That's the most depressing statistic possible for a pastor. Cause what it means is, by Wednesday, you're gonna have forgotten everything I've just taught you. You're not gonna remember.

Shoot.

You don't remember what I said last week. I don't remember what I said last week. And I taught it five times. The shortest pencil is longer than the longest memory. So you can be sitting there looking all real spiritual, but if you're not writing down, it's just going whoop, right through your mind in one ear and out the other. We don't remember. You have to retain it to remember it so you can review it so you can apply it. And that's why we do these things. Now, the Bible says this about wisdom, prophecy, Proverbs 22. Listen and I'll teach you what the wise have said. Study their teachings and you will be glad if you remember them. And can quote them. Now, I want you to circle the four verbs on that sense, listen, study, remember, and quote. Those are marks of wisdom. Did you know that memorizing actually improves your brain power? Doesn't even matter what you memorize, it improves your brain. You could go memorize the phone directory, but memory is actually like an exercise for your mind. You get smarter when you attempt to memorize something. People say, well, I can't remember anything. Oh, yes, you can. You remember what's important to you. You remember what you love. You remember what matters to you. For instance, a lot of people say, well, I can't memorize the Bible, but they can give you every baseball or football statistic for the last season. I can't remember the Bible. But they can quote all kinds of lyrics to songs, popular songs, or they can give you a recipe for something, or they can give you the stock market quotes, or they can give you statistics on something. They care about you. You remember what's important to you. And if the truth becomes important to you, you will remember it. You will remember, and you will rehearse it, and you will reinforce it and you will review it in your life. Not only interesting studies have shown not only when you memorize something does it help you improve your memory. Memory helps you improve your memory. It actually helps every other area in your brain. Same thing. Synapses are developed and blood flows, and your brain has a plasticity that it's the opposite of Alzheimer's. When you stretch your brain, Social relationships and memorizing are two things that actually are preventatives from Alzheimer's and other dementias in life. So you wanna have that in your life. So in each weekend, we're gonna memorize together. And you'll not only be closer to God, but you'll have a healthier brain. And your wife will thank you for that. Now people say, why should I memorize the Bible? I'll tell you why. Cause every time you need the Bible's truth, you don't have one near you. You go to work this week, somebody's gonna criticize you and they're gonna say something mean and you're gonna feel discouraged. You need to be encouraged. There are thousands of verses in the Bible that would encourage you. But if you don't have it memorized, they can't come to mind. Well, I know somewhere in the Bible there's a verse that would encourage me. But if you've got it memorized, God can bring it to mind. Go, Pop. He brings it to mind. Go. Oh, wow. I'M not so discouraged anymore. Memorized verses are the best thing for overcoming temptation. Cause when you start to be tempted to be jealous, or you start to be tempted to be insecure, or you start to be tempted to lose your patience or to get angry or to lust or any kind of temptation in life, you start temptation to overeat or over exaggerate. Or if you've got a verse memorized for that, God could go boom. And it brings it to mind, and it helps you resist the temptation. Now, if you don't have anything in there, there's nothing for God to bring to mind. So it actually helps you that way. Here's what the Bible says. Proverbs 4. Don't lose sight of my words. That means memorize them, retain them. Let them penetrate deep within your heart. If you put it in your mind, God can cause you to think about it seriously. For they bring life and radiant health to anyone who discovers their meaning. So you want radiant health. You want life. You want. Then you need to fill your mind with the truth. Let it penetrate your heart so God can bring it to mind. That's the fourth thing we're gonna do. The fifth thing we're gonna do during the next six weeks is the fifth thing on Learning to be wise. And it is this. The N is now do it. Now do it. Okay. I listen to the truth. I enlist friends to discuss the truth. I ask questions about the truth. I remember and reinforce the truth. And now I do the truth. You don't just talk about it. You gotta do it. Cause if you don't do it, you're not wise, no matter how much you know the Bible. I mean, I told you last week because of my back surgery, and I was unable to do all the exercise, and I gained about 10 pounds this fall. And I thought, I wanna get this back off. I wanna get these pounds back off. And so let's say I go home and I pull out one of my favorite diet and exercise books, and tomorrow I sit back in my La Z Boy chair to read the word about diet and exercise. And I get my guacamole and chips, my ham Sandwich and my 36 ouncer, okay? And I'm reading and I'm going, this is so inspiring. I love this. I did. Look, man, look at that guy. Look at the abs on that guy. I love that picture. Oh, man, that's me. Oh, man. And have a little more guacamole, you know? And I go, that is such a good passage. I think I'm gonna underline that. Passage in the book, I'm gonna highlight it. In fact, I'm gonna write a little note out to the side and see, this is good. And you know, and right on. In fact, this passage here, on getting in shape, it's so good, I'm gonna memorize it. But if I stay in the La Z Boy chair, it doesn't matter. I'm a fool. I'm fooling myself. I'm deceiving myself because I'm reading the Word. I'm listening to the Word, but I'm not doing the Word. And it's self deception. Here's what the Bible says. Look here in your outline. James, chapter one. Don't deceive yourselves by just listening to the Word. Instead, put it into practice. If you listen to the Word, but you don't put it into practice, you're like people who look in a mirror and see themselves, but once they walk away, they forget what they look like. But if you look closely into the perfect law that sets people free. That's the Bible. If you look closely at the Bible and you keep on paying attention to it and you don't forget it, but you put it into practice, you will be blessed. Notice the blessing comes from not reading, but from doing these other things. You will be blessed by God in what you do. I said it earlier, wisdom is a choice. You can choose to be wise. Happiness is a choice. Being close to God is a choice. Being honest is a choice. So I just shared with you the five ways to become wise for the rest of your life. Question. Are you gonna do anything about it? Are you gonna now do it? Are you gonna do anything about it?

You say no.

That was a nice message. Let's go home. If you're not gonna do anything about what I just told you, I just wasted an hour of your life and I just wasted my breath. God does not bless good intentions. God blesses wise choices. God says, it's your move, it's your choice. Will you do the wise thing? Father, I wanna thank you for everybody who's here today. Those who are watching online, those in our venues, those on our campuses. Your word is very clear that you have blessed us with so many blessings and you have promised so many benefits if we will simply stop being foolish, if we'll simply learn to be wise. I pray that many people here today will not just listen, but will take these five steps to L E A R E in to be wise. If you've never opened your life to Jesus Christ, say, Jesus Christ, come into my life right now. Make yourself real to me. Say, I wanna learn to love you and trust you. And I don't understand it all, but God, I wanna begin a new relationship with you this new year. Father. For those who prayed this prayer, I commit as a pastor and I commit this church to. To helping them and to helping each of us become wiser in the days ahead. I pray that you'll protect them from distractions and disturbances and delays and difficulties. Protect their hearts and minds from conflict. And I pray that together we may become wiser so we can experience all you want us to experience and that we would all experience what on earth we're here for. Pray this in Jesus name. Amen.

Hey, if you just prayed that prayer along with Rick to accept Jesus in your life, wow, Rick would love to hear about it. Please email rickastorrick.com and let him know about it. He'd love to send you free tools that will help you on your spiritual journey. And now let's hear how lives are changing through Daily Hope. Here's 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 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 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 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 and 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.

SA.