How To Trust God When You Don't Like the Changes In Your Life—Part Two

Guest (Male): Hello everybody, thank you so much for joining us here on Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren. Well, today we're continuing in this timeless series called Strategies for Stressful Times. In this series, Pastor Rick shares timeless truths from God's word that will help you manage stress, overcome worry, and experience the peace and stability that only God can provide. So let's get to it. Here is part two of a message called How To Trust God When You Don't Like the Changes In Your Life.
Rick Warren: Now here's the fourth thing you need to remember. Write this down. God can use even human error and sin. God can use even human error and sin. I'm talking about when you are the innocent victim of somebody else's bad decision. My family isn't what it used to be because my husband broke it up and left me, or my wife left me, whatever. God can use even human error and the sins of other people, not even just my own, for the good in my life, in His plan to grow your character and make you like Jesus. Do you remember the story of Joseph? Do you remember the story of Joseph? How his brothers were jealous because he was the favorite son? And so his brothers sold Joseph into slavery. And he's taken to Egypt, and for the first 40 years of his life, everything goes wrong. He's falsely accused of rape. He's sold into slavery. He's thrown in jail for a crime he didn't commit. And sitting in a foreign jail 40 years later, he's thinking nothing has gone right in my life so far. First 40 years, his whole life's downhill. But God had put Joseph exactly where He wanted him to be. And in a series of God's circumstances, Joseph is raised up to become the second most powerful leader in the most powerful nation in the world at that time, which is Egypt in the age of the pyramids. And when Joseph later finds—and he actually saves two countries from famine. He saves Egypt and he saves Israel from famine because of his wisdom. But it didn't look like things were going good in his life for a long, long time. One day, though, he finally has his brothers come to meet him. And he confronts his brothers, the guys who had sold him into slavery and the first 40 years of nothing going right in his life. And what was Joseph's attitude? He treats them with grace, not bitterness. Why? Well, Genesis 50 tells us his perspective that God can use even human error and sin for good. And Joseph says in Genesis 50:20, "You," talking to his brothers, "you intended to harm me, but God," and that's the most important thing, "but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives." Two entire nations were saved. So out of the sin of his brothers, two nations got saved from famine and destruction. You intended to harm me, but God intended for good. Friends, I'll be honest with you, there are people in your life who intend bad. You will face people in your life, people who resent you at work, they're in competition with you, they're critical of you, they don't like you, or whatever. They intend to hurt you. They intend it for bad. But God intends it for good. And so God can even use human error and sin in all the circumstances of life. You know, here at Saddleback, we all know the story of how God brought good even out of Danny DeShane's life in prison. How he went to prison for a double murder and was spending all his years in prison, was in there nearly 30 years. But he came to know the Lord and he lived for God and today Danny is a pastor of Saddleback and ministers to prisoners all over America. That's grace. That's grace. And that's the kind of church we are. It doesn't matter what your background is. I don't care what you've done, how badly you've done it, or who you did it with, or how long you did it. What matters is the direction of your feet today. That's all it matters. All right? Now here's the fifth truth that you need to remember when we're going through changes we don't like. It's unavoidable, but God uses it for good and He wants to make me like Christ, and even He can use the bad things that other people do in my life that spread the problems to me that I didn't ask for. Number five, every change is always a test of my faith. Write that down. Every change in your life is always a test of your faith. First Peter chapter one, verse seven says this, "The purpose of these troubles," you know the ones you're in right now? "The purpose of these troubles is to test your faith," circle that, "as fire tests how genuine gold is. Your faith is more precious than gold, and by passing the test, it gives praise and glory and honor to God." Now I've told you before that having faith during a time of change is like a trapeze act and a trapeze artist. You've all seen it when in the circuses and stuff. Trapeze artist swings out on one bar, the other one comes from the other direction, and at one point they let go of this bar and then grab onto that one and swing across the other side. At some point in that trapeze artist, you have to let go of this one in order to jump over and grab the other one. And at that point, you're hanging suspended in space with nothing holding you up. That is the moment of faith in your life. But when you grab onto that, it'll take you to the other side. If you don't take that risk, if you don't step out in faith, you'll get out there and you go, oh, I'm afraid to do that. Then you swing back here and you swing back here, swing back here, swing back here, and pretty soon you're dead center and there's only one way out: straight down. You gotta let it go. You gotta stop wishing for the good old days. They're not coming back. Besides that, the good old days weren't as good as you think they were. There were problems then too, and pressures and struggles then too. Now before we look at what God says to do—and we're going to look at that now in a time of change—I want you to consider how these five truths apply to your life, okay? So let's look at them again. Number one, change is unavoidable. Are you going to just stop complaining and gripe and go, I wish it were like 18 months ago, or whenever your golden days were? They're not coming back. It's unavoidable and you're just going to make yourself miserable looking at the past. It's like looking in the past, like trying to drive looking in the rearview mirror. You're going to crash. But you need to remember, you say, God, I believe you're going to use all of this, even the stuff I don't like, the changes I don't like, you're going to use it for good in my life. Okay. And I know that you want to work on my character. You're more interested in my character than my comfort. So make me like Christ. Help me be more patient. Help me be more loving. Help me be more at peace. Help me be more faithful. Help me to have more self-control. All those nine qualities. And then those people who've hurt you, or how society has hurt you over the past, you just gotta go, okay, they intended it for bad, but God can use it for good in my life. And then to realize that everything in my life that happens, every change is a test of faith. Now let me give you five things you ought to do. These are action steps. How can I trust God when I'm stressed by all the changes in my life? All right, number one, these are very practical. Invest more time alone with God. If you don't get anything else I say, I want you to get this this weekend. Invest more time alone with God. Listen, the greater the changes that happen in your life, the more you need to invest time alone, time alone with God. We're talking about your quiet time, where you read a little bit of the Bible and you talk to God in prayer and you just be quiet and you say, God, is there anything you want to say to me? Time alone with God is the great stabilizer in your life when you're stressed out. It's also the greatest re-energizer when you're worn out. It's the greatest re-energizer of energy. Now have you guys noticed that you don't have as much energy as you did 18 months ago? You don't because chronic stress is draining it out of you every single day. All of the changes that we've seen in our personal lives, in our church, in our family, in the world, in our jobs, all those changes sap your strength. They're like pulling it out of you constantly. So the fatigue that you're feeling, okay, it's natural. Welcome to the club. Welcome to the human race. You get up in the morning and you had a good night's sleep and a couple hours into the day you're going, man, I'm exhausted. Welcome to the club. That's called chronic stress. And it's very normal under prolonged change like we've been through. And so you're just trying to get by. Now what I'm talking about, this lack of energy that you've got, that everything's a little bit—everything's harder for you to do than it was two years ago, that you're just trying to get by. This has nothing or little to do with your age because both young people and older people are feeling this right now. What's the antidote? Isaiah chapter 40, verses 28 to 31. It says this in the New Living Translation, "Don't you know that the Lord is the everlasting God and He created everything on this earth?" Now that took a lot of energy to create everything on this earth and on the planets and in the international space station and everywhere, everything. Anyway, it says, "And He never grows tired or weary." God never gets tired. You say, what about when it says after the sixth day of creation He rested? He was just doing that to model it for human beings. He wanted to create the Sabbath. God does not get tired. He doesn't get worn out. So it says, "He never grows tired or weary," which means the more time you spend with Him, the more it's going to energize you. "He never grows tired or weary. Instead, He gives strength to those who are weary," that's you and worn out, that's you, "and He gives power to the weak," that's you. "Even young people become exhausted and want to give up." Millennials, Gen Z, they're tired too. "But those who trust and wait on the Lord will find new strength, flying high like eagles, and they'll run and not grow weary, and they'll keep going and not faint." So here's the point. When you are stressed by constant, continual major change, like you're going through right now, don't seek a quick fix. It's not in what you drink or the drug you take or what you smoke. It's not a quick fix. Don't look for an escape. Don't look for a shortcut. Don't fight changes that you can't possibly control. Instead, seek the Lord. Seek the Lord on a daily basis. God, I'm plugging in. My battery is empty. I need recharging. Your quiet time is more important to you right now than it has ever been in your entire life. Get back to it. Make sure that if anything happens every day, you spend time alone with God. Whether anything else gets done in your life, you make sure that happens. That's the first key to trusting God when you're stressed by change: invest more time alone with God. Number two, ask God—this is what you do in that time—ask God to help me see His perspective. In that time alone with God as you're reading and praying, reading the Bible and praying, say, God, help me to see everything going on around me from your perspective. Not the way I see it, not the way the world sees it, but from your perspective. You see, if you can begin to see all the changes that are going on in the world and in your life and in our church and in the community and in society, if you can see them all from God's point of view, you're going to be a whole lot—you're going to feel a whole lot better and you're going to be a whole lot less stressed. What I'm talking about here, listen very closely. This is extremely important. What I'm talking here is the difference between seeing everything that's going on in the world, that's one thing, and seeing how God is working through everything that's going on in the world. That's a whole different story. This is the difference between having knowledge of everything that's going on in the world and having perspective of, oh, this is what God is doing. It is the difference between information and wisdom. Today, friends, we're overwhelmed with information. There's an information glut. We're on information overload. There are unlimited channels, millions of channels for you to find out what's going on in the world. You don't need any more information in your life. You could turn off a few of those information channels and you'd actually be healthier. What's missing in your life is not information about the world, what's missing in your life is understanding. Anybody can be informed, but only wise people seek God's perspective on current events and go, God, help me to see this from your point, not from my political viewpoint, not from somebody else's political viewpoint, not from that cultural viewpoint, not from that racial viewpoint, not from that religious viewpoint, but from your viewpoint, God. In the Bible, what separated Moses, one of the greatest leaders of all time, from the people of Israel is what I'm talking about here. The people had knowledge, Moses had perspective. The people could see what was going on, Moses knew why it was going on. During the Exodus, everybody could see the current events. They saw Moses do the 10 plagues in Egypt and the Nile turns to blood and all the other plagues. They saw the Red Sea open. When they got out there in the desert and there was no water, they saw God bring a fountain of water out of a rock. Miracle after miracle. They saw the acts of God, they saw the deeds of God, they saw what was happening in current events. But only Moses understood God's reasons and His perspectives and His ways. Psalm 103, the next verse. Psalm 103, verse seven on your outline: "God let the people of Israel see His mighty actions, but He revealed His ways to Moses." Now why am I teaching this to you? Because friends, as your pastor who loves you, I want you to be better than everybody else. I want you to not just know what's going on in the world. I want you to understand the ways of God. You can get current information from any media source. That doesn't make you better than anybody. But it doesn't make you better. We have tons of information, tons of news, and still are unwise. And my deepest desire is that this church will be filled with women of wisdom, men of wisdom, of understanding, not simply knowledge, with perspective, not just information. People are arguing about information around the whole world and they're missing the wisdom of God. And that's why they're fighting each other. They don't know the wisdom of God. Where does that wisdom come from? Not from the news. And certainly not from social media. You're not going to get any wisdom from that. You get wisdom from two sources. Number one, write this down, two sources. Number one, ask God. Two words, write it down, ask God. Okay. Ask God to help me see His perspective. Ask God to make you wise. James 1:5 says this, "If you need wisdom, just ask God. Ask God." When was the last time you asked God to make you a wise man? When was the last time you asked God to make you a wise woman? Ask God for wisdom. God is generous. He'll gladly tell you what you need.
Guest (Male): Hey, if you're looking for daily encouragement from God's word, I'd like to invite you to download the Daily Hope app. It's designed to help you grow in your faith every day. It has easy access to devotionals, audio messages you can listen to anywhere, and video teaching right at your fingertips. You can even search for topics that matter to you and set a daily reminder so you never miss time with God. Just search Daily Hope in the Apple App Store or Google Play and I hope it's a real blessing to you. 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.