Rick Warren - How We're Getting Through - Part 2
Now, the fact is, since sin entered the world and evil entered the world, everything was broken, nothing works perfectly on this planet. Now, if you want a chapter of the Bible that explains modern culture, it’s Isaiah 24, let me just show you a couple of verses. Isaiah 24:5, 19, «The earth suffers for the sins of its people,» in other words, the earth has been damaged by our sins, «For they have twisted the instructions of God, violated his laws, and broken his covenant. Therefore…the earth has broken down and has utterly collapsed. Everything is lost,» we’re lost spiritually, we get lost emotionally, we get lost everywhere, «Abandoned, and confused».
Everything in the world is confused, there’s confusion about money, there’s confusion about sexuality, there’s confusion about time and place, there’s confusion about your purpose, «What on earth am I here for»? There’s confusion about relationships, in every area of life there’s confusion. We should accept this fact that everybody’s broken and everything is broken. You said, «Well, why is there so much brokenness and suffering in the world»? Because of sin and evil. «Why is there sin and evil in the world»? Because God gives you and me a choice, and we can choose to do wrong, and we often do, and usually choose to do what we want to do rather than what God wants to do, and that just breaks the world and breaks us even more. You don’t break God’s laws, they break you.
If you jump out of a building, you say, «I’m gonna break the law of gravity,» it’s gonna break you. You don’t break God’s laws, they break you, and everything’s broken. You say, «Well, all of the sin in the world, couldn’t God just get rid of all the sin in the world»? Sure, get rid of you, you’re the sinner, I’m the sinner, we’re the ones who… rabbits aren’t sinning, they’re not messing up the environment, okay? They’re not racist, they’re not bigots, they’re not raping people. No, sin comes from us, and God could easily get rid of all the sin in the world, get rid of all the people who do it, which, sorry, I’m one of them, and so are you. You say, «Well, if everything’s broken, how in the world can we have joy in a broken world»? Because we know that even though life isn’t always good, God is, God is always good, and he has a good plan for your life, and he has a greater purpose.
God’s purpose for your life is greater than the pain you’re going through, God’s purpose for your life is greater than the problem you’re going through. That gives me joy. One of the greatest verses in the Bible is Romans 8:28, it’s a great verse of comfort and a great promise, and it says this, «We know that in all things,» not some things, not most things, not the good things. «We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,» that’s a great promise, «And have been called according to his purpose».
Now, this verse is one of the most misunderstood, misused and misapplied verses in the Bible, so I need to tear it apart to show you what it doesn’t say. First, this is not a promise for everybody, it’s only a promise for a select group of people. It says in all things, God works for the good of those who love him, and are following his purpose, are called to his purpose. If you don’t love God and you’re not trying to live for his purpose, all things are not working together for good in your life, in fact, all things are working together for bad in your life, because God owes you nothing if you’re out there doing your own thing. And if you’re out there, you don’t love God, you’re not trying to fulfill his purpose, all things are working together for bad, why? Because you’re in conflict and rebellion with your Creator, and your arms are too short to box with God, you’re gonna lose that one, you’re not going to win in a battle against God.
So it says this is a promise only for those who love him, but if I love him, then I know that God will take even the bad in my life and use it for good. God specializes in turning crucifixions into resurrections, he specializes in bringing good out of bad. Anybody can bring good out of good, God can bring good even out of bad. Now, what does it not say? It doesn’t say that everything that happens is good. That’s obviously not true, there’s a lot of bad in the world, there’s a lot of evil in the world. Rape is bad, leukemia is bad, a fire sweeping through a town and destroying, all right, bad, terrorism is bad, bigotry is bad. There’s a lot of bad things in the world, and God is not the author of evil, so don’t blame God for those things. It doesn’t say everything that happens is good, a lot of things aren’t good in life. It also does not say that everything that happens is God’s will. No, this is not heaven.
A lot of people confuse heaven and earth, and they want heaven to be on earth, it isn’t gonna happen, why? Because there’s sin and evil here. Heaven is heaven and earth is earth. Now, in heaven, everything is perfect in heaven, why? Because God’s will is done perfectly in heaven. On earth, everything is broken, why? Because God’s will is done rarely on earth, God’s will is rarely done on this planet, why? Because we’re always choosing our will and other people are choosing their will, and we hurt each other, sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally. That’s why Jesus said we are to pray, in the Lord’s Prayer, «Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven».
Why are we to pray that? Because in heaven, God’s will is done perfectly, and on earth, God’s will is done rarely. In heaven, God’s will is done instantly, on earth, God’s will is done delayed. So, we’re to pray, «Thy will be done on earth just like it’s done in heaven,» that’s how we are to pray. Sometimes I’m doing funerals for people and I’ll hear people say, you know, if somebody dies in a horrible accident or they get blown up in the war in Afghanistan or something, and you’ll hear some pious person go, «Well, it must have been God’s will». Really, is that your kind of God, really, you don’t think God’s grieving over this? You know, or people say, «Well, you know, God must have needed Matthew more than you».
There’s a word for that, nonsense, it’s nonsense, God didn’t take my son’s life, mental illness robbed my son’s life, because he had a broken brain in a broken world, because when humans do sin enough for generation after generation after generation after generation, and for thousands of thousands of years, it affects the climate, the economy, the environment, and even our DNA. Nothing works perfectly. It wasn’t God’s will. When Matthew died, God wept too, because he knew how it would hurt those of us who loved him. You have an enemy, and you need to wake up to the fact that you have an enemy on this planet who wants to destroy your life, he wants to mess it up, he wants to waste your life, and he wants you to keep you from knowing God and loving God as much as God knows and loves you. His name is Satan, Satan is not your friend.
I don’t care how much Hollywood makes sin look attractive, Satan is not your friend, he wants to destroy your life, and Satan wanted to destroy my life, and Matthew’s life, and everybody else’s, why? Because Satan hates whatever God loves. God created you and God loves you, so Satan hates you and wants to destroy you, because he hates everything God loves and God creates. And his plan is to get you to waste your life, to mess your life, and if he can, destroy your life, do drugs or STDs, or any kind of anything else. And so, Satan, and the reason why he does is because Satan can’t hurt God. So, what do you do if you can’t get somebody? You hurt their children. If you can’t get to me and hurt me, the quickest way to hurt me is to hurt my kids. You hurt my kids, you hurt me.
When God sees his children hurt, it causes him to grieve, he cries. Did you know that the Bible says that God has a record of every tear you’ve ever cried? You don’t even know every tear you ever cried, God knows you better than you know yourself, and he cares more about your pain than you even understand. When Matthew died, I’m sure Satan thought that he had won, but he had lost big time, why? Because Satan, I mean, because Matthew is now out of reach of Satan’s torture, he can’t be tortured anymore, he can’t be hurt anymore, he can’t suggest thoughts like, «You’re worthless, you don’t matter, you’re depressed, life isn’t worth living, there is no reason at all». He can’t put any of those thoughts in his mind anymore, he’s out of reach, so he lost, he lost big time.
You know what Matthew’s doing right now? He’s sitting in the grandstands of heaven, cheering his daddy while he’s preaching. The day that Matthew died, Kay and I had not heard from him all day, and we are a very close family, and we call each other and we talk, and we see each other almost on a daily basis, and we definitely text all the time. And we would text back and forth and we hadn’t heard a text from Matthew all day, and we began to wonder, «Has our worst nightmare happened, the day we prayed would never happen, and the day we feared one day might happen»?
And when we went over to his house that evening, and we could not get in, we didn’t have a key to his house, but his car was in the driveway and he wasn’t answering the door, and the slow realization that maybe our greatest fear had happened. And as we are waiting for the police to come and break down the door, and go in and find that our greatest nightmare had actually taken place, Kay and I standing up in the driveway of Matthew’s house, and we are embracing and hugging each other, and we are sobbing uncontrollably from this incredibly painful knowledge we’re about to know. And we are crying, and Kay all of a sudden looks up at me, and she’s wearing a necklace, and she holds up her necklace to me, about this close to my face, and it had two words on it, the words were the title of a book she wrote two years ago, that said this, «Choose Joy».
How do you choose joy in the middle of your worst nightmare, how do you choose joy when your heart is exploding in pain, how do you choose joy when you just wanna fall into a puddle of grief, how do you choose joy when every worst fear you’ve ever had is coming to realization, how do you choose joy? Well, I’ll let Kay tell you about it, give her a warm welcome.
Kay Warren: Thank you, thank you, Saddleback, I’ve missed you. As Rick said, I was wearing a necklace that day that said, «Choose Joy». After I’d written that book a couple of years ago, I needed something that would remind me on a daily basis of the truths that I was learning about how to choose joy, because I’ve struggled with low-level depression for most of my life. And I wrote the book because I would read the Bible and see this gap between what the Bible seemed to say that Christians could experience on a daily basis, that they could experience a life of joy, and I looked at my own life and it didn’t match up. And so, on that search, in that study of how to choose joy, I wrote the book. There were verses like this, Romans 5:3-5, that impressed me and I wanted to learn how to live them out.
Romans 5:3-5 says, «We can have joy even in our troubles because we know that these troubles produce endurance. And endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And this hope will not disappoint us, because God has poured his love to fill our hearts». So I’ve been wearing this necklace almost every day for about six months. And the day that Matthew passed away I had a very strong sense of foreboding, I knew it in my heart, there were very strong reasons, even beyond what Rick has shared with you, of why I was very certain that what we had dreaded was going to take place and had probably already taken place, that something catastrophic had happened to our boy.
So I deliberately picked this necklace out of my jewelry box that morning with shaking hands, a pounding heart, a heaving stomach, not thinking clearly at all, but somehow knowing that by putting it on I was fighting back against the horror that I was sure was gonna unfold that day. And later, as we waited at Matthew’s house for the police to confirm what I felt certain had happened, and we were hugging each other, as Rick said, I didn’t mean to, I didn’t think about it ahead of time, I just looked down, I saw the words and I lifted it up to him with the look on my face of, «Really, how do we choose joy in this situation»? But I was saying to Rick what I knew he believed as well, what the scripture says, that we can have joy even in our troubles, even in our deepest, darkest, most anguished moments. Why didn’t he push it away, why didn’t he look at me and say, «Are you kidding me? That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard, what in the world are you talking about? Get that out of my face»?
How could I lift it to him, and how could he, through his tears, accept it and acknowledge it to be the truth? It’s because of what we know, it’s because of what we know about God, because we do know that joy is possible, not happiness. That was the worst moment of our lives, there was no way that we were happy, but we knew that God was good. And because, for more than 50 years, both of us have sent our spiritual roots deep down into the rich soil of God’s grace, his mercy, his faithfulness, and his goodness, and because of that, it has produced endurance in us, and hopefully character. And then, from that character, hope has begun to grow inside of us. So joy is possible, and you must know, that has to be one of the things that you become absolutely convinced of, that even though life is difficult and life doesn’t always make sense, that God can be trusted, that God is good and that God has a better plan.
But there’s this little phrase in the middle of that verse, at the end of that verse actually, that I wanna focus on for just a few minutes, because it takes us to the third thing that you have to know. That last section of that verse says, «And this hope will not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love in our hearts». I would be lying to you if I didn’t tell you that my hope was incredibly disappointed, my hope was severely crushed. For weeks, I couldn’t even look at a verse that said something like that. But this third thing that we have to know moves us into a place where we can keep going. Life is a battle, but we can have hope because we know that there’s more to the story.
So I wanna talk to you very honestly about hope, I wanna talk to you about my disappointment, but I wanna talk to you also about that it becomes something that we know. When his mental illness, when Matthew’s mental illness took a huge turn for the worse about five years ago, I found myself increasingly panicked, sleepless nights, frantically trying to find doctors and therapies, and psychiatrists, and medications, and hospitalizations, and treatments, and people that I could talk to, and books that I could read, and websites I could go on, because my son was struggling and I was doing everything I knew how to do, and he wasn’t getting any better, and it was so painful. And I eventually realized that I was gonna need a stronger spiritual approach because this was a long-haul issue, I couldn’t see a day in which things were going to be different, no matter how much I hoped for it.
There was that period in which I couldn’t see it being any different and I knew I needed some spiritual support. And so I enlisted a group of confidential incredible people who agreed to pray for Matthew and for us on a regular basis, and I would send them very specific updates, very specific requests, and I would tell them what I was asking them to pray for on that day or that week, or that moment, «Would you lift him to Jesus»? And they would send me encouraging emails back, supportive emails, they would send me scriptures that, they said, «God told me to pray this for Matthew, and this is what I’m praying for him and for you».
And I began to underline those in my Bible and read those verses over and over and over again. And if you were part of that confidential, very small group of people, either here or online, and you’re watching, I want you to know that there’s no way I can ever thank you enough, I cannot put into words how grateful I am for the ways that knowing your prayers and your encouragement kept me going through some very, very dark days. And then, about a year ago, this drumbeat of mental illness, this steady downward spiral and this drumbeat just intensified, and it moved to the place of where we never knew, from day to day, «Could this be the day, will this be the day that Matthew finally gives up»?
And I wrote some of those verses out because a friend gave me, a year ago, this box. You know, it looks kind of like alabaster, marble, I don’t know, but it’s got the word «hope» engraved in it. And I took this box and I took all of those verses that people had been sending to me, all those verses that I’d underlined in my Bible, and I wrote them on little cards and I stuck them inside this box, and it became part of my daily ritual, my time with God. As I would spend time with God, I would open that box and I would read through those cards of those verses. That built my hope, those verses like Psalm 116 and Psalm 18, that talked about, so clearly, it says there in those two Psalms, «The cords of the grave wrapped themselves around me, and held me tightly». And I would say, «God, yes, that is the way Matthew is, the cords of the grave are firmly bound around him».
But then the next few verses would talk about how God lifted him up, and it would say, «He delivered me from, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling, so that I could walk in the land of the living again». And I found verses that would say that, that made these promises like that my child would stand in the congregation with his arms raised, praising God again, verses like in Isaiah 54, that say, «No weapon formed against you will stand,» verse after verse that built my hope, that built my faith, that built my conviction that God was going to heal Matthew’s mind, that that was going to be part of life here on this earth. I mean, I went out on a very audacious faith limb, I was all in, completely believing that God was going to heal Matthew’s mind here.
I created a playlist of songs on my iPhone, «Kay’s Picks,» and in that playlist I have about 50, I had 50 or 60 songs, some of them gentle songs when I just needed to be calmed down, some of them were like fight anthems, and I would sometimes whisper the quieter songs and shout the anthems. And I listened to them in my car every day, in the mornings when I got up, when I went to bed, when I had sleepless nights, when I was at work, when I was doing the dishes, I listened to those songs over, and over, and over again, because they built my faith and my hope that God was going to heal Matthew. I even did a fleece, I even put out a fleece. And if you don’t know what that is, I gotta tell you what this is, it’s out of the scripture, but it comes from Judges chapter 6 and Gideon. God talks to Gideon, and he tells Gideon, «Gideon, I’m going to use you to defeat the Midianite army,» that was coming against Israel.
Well, Gideon doesn’t believe that God is gonna do this, because Gideon knows that he’s just an average guy and there’s no way that God would ever use him to do something so magnificent as defeat the Midianite army. And so, he lays out a fleece, he takes this piece of wool and he lays it out on the ground, and he says to God, «Okay, God, if you mean this, if it’s really you’re gonna use me in that way, then I’m gonna leave this piece of fleece out on the ground overnight. And in the morning, God, I’m gonna check, and I’m gonna ask that the ground all around this fleece be completely dry but the fleece be totally wet». And so, the next morning, the ground was completely dry, but this piece of fleece, this wool was completely soaked, so much so that he could squeeze water out of it, Judges 6 says.
Well, I don’t know about you, but for me that would be pretty convincing, but Gideon goes, «Well, I don’t know, I don’t know, let’s try this again. I don’t wanna make you mad, God». I mean, it says this, «I don’t wanna make you mad, God, but could we do it again? And this time, let’s reverse it. So, God, this time, I’m gonna lay this fleece out overnight, and this time, God, I’m asking that all the ground around that fleece be soaking wet and that fleece be completely dry. And God, if I find it that way, I’m gonna know you’re telling me that you’re gonna use me». The next morning, the ground is completely wet and the fleece is totally dry, and Gideon believes that God is going to use him to defeat the Midianite army, and in fact, that is exactly what happened.