The Hope You Need for Change - Part 1

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, hangups and habits that really hold us back. So get ready for some practical insights and powerful truths that can lead to lasting change and in your life. All right, here's Rick with part one of a message called the hope you need for change.

We talked last week about how we all have unhealthy areas in our lives, habits, hurts and hangups that mess us up. We talked about how the cause of the hurt in your life is when you try to play God, denying your humanity, trying to control everything. When you try to control everything, it causes frustration, it causes fatigue, it causes failure. And we talked about the first step last week, which is to realize I'm not God. I admit that I am powerless to control my tendency to do things that I know are unhealthy. I do them anyway. And my life tends to be unmanageable. Now, if you take that first step, and last week I said that is the most difficult step for many people because it means being honest about your pain, honest about your hang ups, your hurts, that you don't have it all together, that there's some emotional stuff in your life that needs to be cleaned up, that there's some bad things that need to be reorganized and refixed, and that all of us have broken areas in our lives. That's painful. In fact, it can be downright devastating because if you've carried a hurt for a long time, you often begin to get your identity from that hurt. I'm a victim. I'm this. And it's very, very painful. And as you begin to take first step, you start grieving over your past. Man, I wish that hadn't happened. I wish I hadn't done those dumb decisions. I wish I hadn't had that bad response. And you start to grieve over wasted time, wasted energy, wasted guilt and shame and resentment. And you start to grieve. And so God takes us to step two, which is the hope step, and God helps us. And In Matthew chapter 5, verse 4, the second beatitude says, God blesses those people who grieve. They will find comfort. Now, what God is saying here is when you do the painful work, and it is painful of owning up to your problems, of owning up to the health issues that are not correct in your life, physical Emotional, spiritual and every other way. When you actually face your hangups, your hurts, your bad habits and you face that pain, God says, I will be right there to give you hope. Now you cannot get healthy without hope. You can go 40 days without food, you can go about 8 days without water. You can go, I don't know, I think about three minutes without air at the maximum. But you can't go one second without hope. You have to have hope in order to get healthy again. You'd never go on a diet if you didn't hope it'd make you look better, feel better. You hoped it would work. And so we all need hope. You cannot live without hope. The verse there on your Bible, on your outline, Proverbs 18:14 says, no one can live with a broken spirit. Now what is hope? Hope is the light at the end of the tunnel that all this effort I'm making into honestly face my past and my hang ups and the things in my life that aren't right, that there's a light at the end of the tunnel. There is hope that you. It's the expectation that things are going to work out, that it's going to get better. Hope is the energy that helps you keep going on as we take these eight steps to getting healthy again together. No hope. You won't last this series, much less last through what God wants to do in your life. The issue then becomes how do you have hope? Or where do you get hope when change seems hopeless. I've worked on my marriage, it didn't get any better. I've worked on these things in my life that I know I don't like and I want to change in my life, but I don't know how to get better. And when you feel hopeless about a relationship, about a problem, about a situation, about a characteristic of your life that you really don't like, about something that's happened to you in the past that you can't seem to let go of and you feel hopeless. Where do you get hope in those situations? Well, the Bible tells us where. And the Bible says that there are five things that you need to remember that will give you hope in a hopeless situation. In fact, let me make you a guarantee this morning. If you will memorize these five things and if you will remember them on a day by day basis and you really let them enter into your heart and your soul, you will never again feel hopeless. I can guarantee that on the basis of God's word, if you will remember these five things and apply them every time you start to get in despair, you will never again feel hopeless. Now, these five things build on each other. The first one's pretty obvious. And as we get a little bit further and further, it becomes more and more powerful in your life. What are they? Number one. If I want to have hope to change, first I must remember God is with me. I remember that God is with me. Because the first reason we often feel hopeless is we forget about God. We think we're on our own. We think, if it's to be, it's up to me. We think I have to solve all my problems myself. God isn't there, and we forget God. The Bible says this in job, chapter 8. Read it with me. Those who forget God have no hope. Well, of course, folks, if there were no God in this world, we'd have a lot of reasons to be discouraged. We'd have a lot of reasons to feel helpless and hopeless. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize winner, wrote an article a while back in National Review magazine, and he said, if you want to summarize all of the problems of the 20th century, all of the bad things that happened in the last 100 years, you can sum it up in one phrase. That was the title of his article. Men have forgotten God. When we forget God, we tend to act like animals. When we forget God, we tend to be selfish. When we forget God, we tend to lose hope. Now, a definition of an atheist is someone who is living as if there is no God. Now, if that's the definition, I know a lot of Christians who are atheists, because even though we believe in God, we often act when it comes to our problems, like God doesn't exist. I gotta solve this problem on my own. I've gotta do this on my energy. I gotta figure it all out myself. We don't consult God. We don't pray to God. We don't think of him first. We think, well, I just gotta figure this out. That's called practical atheism, and a lot of Christians do that. In fact, pastors can do it. In 1980, at the end of the first year of this church, my health hit the wall. I had a health crisis, and I just lost all my strength. And I went through a year in 1981 of depression for almost a year. And I was very weak. I didn't have much energy at all. And I was filled with doubt and filled with anxiety about the future of this church.

And.

And I thought, what if I don't get my strength back? What if I don't regain my health? What if I don't have the energy to lead this church? What will happen to the church? Will it crumble? Will it fall apart? Will it blow away? What's going to happen? And I was filled with a lot of doubt and a lot of despair. God said to me, not literally, but in my mind, gave me an idea. He said, an impression. He said, rick, whose church is this? I said, well, it's your church, God. He said, then it's my responsibility, not yours, so don't worry about it. And I took my Bible and I began to read through the book of Psalms. And I took an underline highlighter, and I underlined all of the verses that dealt with either despair or depression. And in that study, I found this verse, the next verse, in your outline. Lord, when doubts fill my mind and when my heart is in turmoil, quiet me and give me renewed hope and cheer. Some of you are feeling hopeless about changing your life right now. It's never gonna change. You need to memorize this verse. You need to pray it to God. You need to pray. Lord, when doubts fill my mind and when my heart is in turmoil, quiet me and give me renewed hope and cheer. It's like the old Amy Grant song. You've got to remember you're not alone in this world. The first thing you remember when you start to feel hopeless is God is with me. But that's not all. Number two. I remember not only that he's with me, but I remember that God cares about me. He cares about me. He loves me. I matter to him. And the Bible's very, very clear about this in Lamentations, Chapter 3. Let's read it together. I have hope when I think of this. The Lord's love never ends. His mercies never stop. They are new every morning. Now circle the phrase never ends. How is that possible? How is it possible for God's love for you to never end? I mean, obviously, human love ends. We see it all around us. People fall out of love all the time.

Why?

Because human love is conditional, and God's love is unconditional. And therefore it never ends. There's a verse in the Bible where God says, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have loved you with an everlasting love. Now, here's my question to you. Have you ever let God love you? Oh, you know about God's love. But I've said this before. But many Christians have never felt the unconditional love of God. In your mind, you still think God's love is conditional, that he loves you on your good days, and he frowns on you on your bad days. And there are areas of your life you don't even know about. There are areas in your mind, closets and doors and rooms that you don't know about. God wants to fill every area of your mind, heart and soul with. With his love. And that takes time. And you have to learn to let God love you. Why? Because when you let God love the ugly things in your life, you have to first admit it's ugly. And that's tough. In fact, it's far easier. Listen. It's far easier for you to love God than it is for you to let God love the unlovely parts in your life. Henry Nouwen wrote a book called the Return of the Prodigal Son. And in that he talks about Rembrandt's famous picture of the prodigal son. You know that story, the son went to his dad one day. It's in the Bible. And he said, dad, I want half my inheritance. And he went off and blew it. On wine, women and song. Mostly on women. A few years later, he comes back home. He's broke, he's busted, he's destitute. He goes, I blew it, dad. And his father, instead of rejecting him, giving a scolding or a lecture, welcomes him home with a warm, loving, forgiving embrace. Rembrandt painted this painting of the loving father welcoming the son home. And that's the center of the picture. But over to the side, there are some bystanders who are watching, who are looking on as observers. And Nouwen says this. For years, I instructed students on the different aspects of the spiritual life. But one day I realized that I had never, ever really dared to step into the center of the picture, kneel down, and let myself be held by a forgiving God. Have you ever done that? Have you ever let yourself be held by a forgiving God? I needed to move from a bystander to a participant, from a teacher about love to being loved as the beloved. But I didn't have an inkling of how difficult that journey would be and how much longer it would take to complete. Why is that? Why does it take so long to really understand the unconditional love of God? Because it's a process. Because God has to open up areas of your life that you really don't wanna look at, areas that you don't like about yourself. And God says, you know what? I want you to know that I love you. Even in that area, even in the area that you can't stand about you. Notice this next verse on your outline. Psalm 103. He is like a father to us, tender and sympathetic. For he knows what we are made of. Dust. We are just particles put together. And God says, I want to be a father to you. Tender and sympathetic. God wants to be the father that you may have never had. A different kind of father than the one you may have had. A tender, a sympathetic, an understanding father. Because he knows all about you. He knows why things happen to you. He knows why you chose to do, the choices you made. And he loves you. Many people, if not most people, have never really felt that they matter to God. They've never really felt that God loved them unconditionally. This week I talked to a woman who was radically changed when she finally experienced the unconditional love of God. And she told me about her past and how it caused enormous shame in her life. She said she felt guilty, she felt ashamed. She felt self loathing. She felt disgust with herself about some decisions that she had made and some actions she had taken and regrets. And I asked her, I said, what was the breakthrough? What was the turning point? And this is what she said. I wrote it down when I realized that God loved every part of me. Every part of me. Not just now, but even at the very moment I was making ugly, sinful choices. He even loved me. Then when she understood that her life was changed by the unconditional love of God. That's what Romans 5:8 says. The next verse. God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us. You want to know how much you matter? Look at the cross. That's how much you matter. Jesus Christ came to earth to die for you. That's a reason for hope. Not only is God with me, but he cares about me. Number three. And it gets even better. Not only is he with you and care about you, I need to remember that. He knows my situation. He knows my problem. He knows my pain. He knows the things that hurt in my heart. How is that possible? Well, obvious. God knows everything. He knows your habits. He knows your hangups. He knows your hurts. Psalm 56, verse 6 says, you know how troubled I am. You have kept a record of my tears. Did you know that? Did you know that? The Bible says God has kept a record of every tear that has fallen down your cheek. That's what I call getting up close and personal. You have never, ever even shed a tear that God missed. Nothing is beyond his love. Nothing is beyond his compassionate gaze. He's with you, he loves you and he sees everything you have gone through are going through and knows what you're going to go through. He knows you up close and personal. You've all heard people say, nobody knows what I'm going through. God does. Nobody knows the hell I'm in at home. God does. God knows exactly what you're feeling. In fact, he knows. Listen to this. He knows it better than you do. Because you don't even understand some of the pain you go through. You don't know why all the time you hurt, but God does. In fact, did you know that the Bible says when you are in so much pain and you are so confused about something in your life that you don't even know how to put it into words. You can't even pray about it cause you can't verbalize what you feel. The Bible says God prays for you. He talks to himself about your pain. In Romans chapter 8, it says, when we don't know what to pray, when we're in pain, when we don't know which way to turn, the Holy Spirit prays for us. God talks to himself about your pain. That's how much you matter. Even when you don't know how to pray, he's praying for you to himself. That's how much you matter to God. That's how intimately he is aware of what's going on in your life. Psalm 31, verse 7 says, you have seen the crisis in my soul. Some of you are in a crisis right now. God sees it, he knows about it, he cares about it. And there is hope for change if you will trust Him. I want you to hear Carl's story. Would you welcome him?

Hi, my name is Carl and I'd like to share how Jesus Christ changed my life and set me on the path to getting healthy again. When I finally realized how much I matter to God. I've spent most of my life pretending that I'm braver than I feel. I've struggled all my life with feelings of worthlessness, insecurity, fear, panic and anxiety. You see, I was raised in a very ultra strict family where my father's motto was children are to be seen and not heard. There was no physical abuse, but my parents used rage to control us and fear to intimidate us into submission. I was never allowed to voice my opinion. In fact, I never really felt my feelings mattered as a child. My spirit was broken through a lot of frightening incidents. For instance, when I was about seven, our family was driving home from visiting my grandparents when I offered a stick of gum to my siblings. Dad immediately knew that I had stolen the gum from my grandparents and confronted me. I admitted it and expected a good spanking. When we got home, however, dad pulled over and asked if I knew what happens to thieves. I said no and he replied that they go to prison. He then pointed to a big, dark, scary looking building and told me that it was the prison I would be staying in for the next 20 years. He made me hand over all my possessions and said I should beg God's forgiveness. My brother and sisters and I were screaming in fear. That was the beginning of my lifelong struggle with fear of others and of God. I became a people pleaser. Unfortunately, my fears and insecurity were reinforced by my religious upbringing. I was taught that my salvation was based on how good and perfect I was. But even if I led a perfect life and then committed one mortal sin and died without confessing it, I was told that God would send me to hell for all eternity. I'm sure many of you were brought up this way too. Grace, love and forgiveness were foreign concepts to me. I was expected to perfectly keep the Ten Commandments and under my own power. Since there was no provision for failure or progress, I could never admit my struggles. So I learned to put on a mask of self righteous piety. While inside I was consumed by the terror and guilt of my inability to live up to a perfect standard. I thought God, like my dad, was unpleasable. So I tried to appease the wrath of both God and my dad by going to seminary to study for the priesthood. I wanted to escape my feeling of self condemnation and earn the love I desperately desired. But there was no escape there either. From day one, I compared myself with the other seminarians and felt that I came up short. Not only did I feel that they were all more godly than I, I felt that God himself viewed me as a hypocrite. I wanted to leave after the first six months, but it took two more years to build up the courage to face my dad's disappointment of not having a son as a priest. Then in 1968, I got married. My wife was very controlling and I was very controllable. We fought often, but I'd feel fearful and guilty and give in. We both were miserable. Over time, she gained 120 pounds. Instead of lovingly confronting her, I had a pity party and started going to prostitutes. After 19 years of misery, my wife left me. I spent the next three months in severe depression and isolation. To add insult to injury, when I finally went to a Counselor to deal with my deep feelings that I was worthless and didn't matter to anyone. My therapist fell asleep while I was talking to him. That was the final straw. I did a complete 180 and decided I would start living solely for myself without regard for others approval. So I partied hard for the next four years and went to the opposite extreme of my strict upbringing. I got addicted to prostitutes and pornography, tried drugs and became an alcoholic. But no matter what I did, I couldn't escape the feeling that I didn't matter and the childlike fear and panic that still often gripped me. So I tried confronting my fears. I decided to act tough on the outside. For three and a half years I worked as a bouncer at a bar, smuggled steroids across the border for my own use, took karate and got tattoos. But all these remedies were only skin deep. My heart was still fearful inside. Gradually I realized how I had traded one form of bondage for another and how empty it was and I was. Then God lovingly reached out to me in grace. A fellow bouncer began to talk to me about God. Then God used a beautiful dancer to invite me to church. I guess God knew what it would take to get my attention. It was here at Saddleback that I heard for the first time that I really mattered to God. And for the first time I heard what Jesus is really like. I'd been taught that Jesus was a victim. Here I learned that he chose to die and he did it for me. He did it because I mattered that much to him. This was truly amazing grace. Then eight years ago, Pastor Rick began a series on recovery principles from the Beatitudes of Jesus. So the following Friday I went to celebrate recovery to let God start healing my hurts, habits and unhealthy attitudes. From the moment I walked in the door, I knew that I was home at last. Nobody tried to judge me, fix me, use me or shame me. Instead, they gave me what I'd been looking for all my life. Unconditional love. That started my process of getting healthy again in regards to my hurts. As I began to feel and experience God's deep love and grace, I old wounds began to be healed, including closure with my ex wife and a new relationship with my parents in regard to my habits. Through God's power, I recently celebrated eight years of moral purity and 10 years of sobriety. But to me, the most incredible change as a with the fear that I've carried all my life. Growing up, I was a victim. I didn't even have ownership of my own feelings and opinions. I had no problem embracing the first step that Pastor Rick talked about last week. I felt powerless all the time. Unfortunately, I was stuck there. What I needed was the hope of Step two. As I learned more about how much I mattered to God and how much Jesus Christ loves me, my fears, panic and insecurities began to decrease. As First John 4:13 says, There is no fear in love. Perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment. You see, at the root of all my insecurity and fear was my fear of God. I had a God problem, but here I learned about God's amazing grace through Jesus that freed me from my terror of God. Rather than working against me, God wanted to help me and give me the power I needed to do the right things. My works oriented perfectionism has convinced me that I was powerless. But Jesus did for me what I couldn't do for myself. He loved me and his love and power transformed my life. I now have the privilege of serving as one of the leaders for a men's recovery group and as leader of Teens and Temptations, a group to help teens get healthy again. In closing, I want to share my life verse. It has given me the hope to get healthy again, especially in the area of perfectionism. Romans 8:1 says, Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If you're struggling with insecurity, fear and feelings of worthlessness, I urge you to turn your life over to Jesus. His love will give you the hope you need to get healthy again. Thank you.

If you feel you're in a hopeless situation, you just need to remember these things. God is with me. God cares about me. God sees what I'm going through and it even gets better. Number four, I need to remember he has power I don't have. He has power that I don't have. Luke 18 says, what is impossible for men is possible with God. Did you know that the sun radiates more power in one second than has been used by all of mankind throughout history? In one second. Did you know that the sun has enough power to burn constantly for the next 30 billion years? And that, son, is just one of gazillions of them that God created. Suffice it to say, God has more power than you can comprehend. You just need to realize he's got enough for your problems now. Because God's power is unlimited. Two things are true. Number one, he never gets tired. He never gets fatigued. He never runs out of energy. And number two, he never calls rolling blackouts. He doesn't say now. For the next hour of your life, my power will not be available. I'm sorry. You're on your own in this situation. Forget the temptation. He has more power than you could possibly imagine. And what's impossible for men is possible with God.

Foreign.

You are listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and I want to share something that can bring hope and healing to your everyday life. Yeah, no matter what challenges you face, you can find peace and strength by immersing yourself in God's Word. And that's why we're so excited to introduce the Life's Healing Choices Scripture Box. This is a unique resource and it's designed to inspire and uplift you, helping you trust in God's promises through every high and every low. It features 52 beautifully designed scripture cards that offer encouragement straight from the Bible. And these Scripture cards come in a beautifully crafted, high quality leather like box with enough space to add more sets of Scripture cards as your collection grows. The Life's Healing Choices Scripture Box is a perfect tool to deepen your faith. It fills your mind and heart with God's truth one uplifting verse at a time. And today, when you support Daily Hope with a gift, please request your very own Life's Healing Choices Scripture Box. You know, your donation really helps us share the hope of Jesus Christ with people all around the world. And this beautiful Scripture box is our way of saying thanks. 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.