Rick Warren - How We're Getting Through - Part 3
Kay Warren: When Matthew’s mental illness took a huge turn for the worst about five years ago, I found myself increasingly panicked, 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».[/b]
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’s, 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 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». I wanted an answer from God that convinced me that he was going to heal Matthew’s mind here. And what I did, I had a little test devised for God, wasn’t literally a fleece, but I had a test devised for God that was gonna prove to me that God was gonna answer this prayer.
And so I prayed this prayer, but before I did, I said, «God, you know, I feel really silly doing this, God, 'cause I’m gonna trust you no matter what, I’m yours, I love you, and whether you answer this fleece thing or not, I’m going to trust you. But God, it would mean so much to my mother’s heart if you would just, in your graciousness, give me a sign that you are going to heal Matthew’s mind here». And within minutes, the very thing I had prayed for happened, and I was completely shocked. I didn’t know what to do. «Is this a fleece? I don’t know, I’ve never done this before, was that really it, was it coincidence, did God do it, am I making this up? Was it just,» you know, I didn’t know what.
So, as I told my older son Josh about it, he said, «Mom, that’s the way the life of faith works, you either believe it or you don’t. You asked God, and then God did exactly what you asked. So, mom, you either believe, you’re either in or you’re not». I mean, I love it when my kids school me in faith. And so I decided, «Okay, I’m in». And so, for several years, that fleece held me on some times when I would doubt that God was gonna heal Matthew’s mind, but I jumped in and believed with everything I had. And then April 5th came, and Matthew died, and with his death my hopes for a healed mind here on earth died too, my playlist of songs seemed absolutely stupid and pointless, my fleece was just a piece of wool after all, my hope box seemed to mock me. There it sat, on the table next to my chair where I had my devotions, and I felt it mocked me, because hope had severely crushed me, I had been crushed by hope, because hope didn’t happen.
There was a month in which I didn’t even open this box, because every time I looked at it, my hopes were crushed. So, what do you do when hope doesn’t look the way you expect it to, what do you do when hope doesn’t turn out the way that you think it was going to, what do you do when this audacious faith that you have claimed boldly doesn’t give or yield the answer that you were believing and expecting? Well, there are a couple of options, one of them is to just give up and curse God and call him a liar and a fake and a phony and a tease, or you can give God an out. If that doesn’t feel comfortable, you can give God an out and you can take the blame on yourself, and you can say, «Well, it was my faith, my faith wasn’t strong enough, I wasn’t bold enough. If I’d just been a better Christian, if I’d been a better mother, if I’d done something differently, Matthew would still be alive,» and you can take it all on yourself.
But I’ve decided that neither of those responses is helpful or adequate, because what I know about God prevents me from concluding that he is fake and phony and a tease, and what I know about myself prevents me from concluding that it was a failure of my faith, that my faith wasn’t strong enough or good enough or bold enough, that my love wasn’t enough. What I’ve come to accept is that my love was not enough to keep him from eventually hitting that mental-illness brick wall, but what am I left with, then? If I can’t blame God and I can’t blame myself, what is there, where do I go, where do I go with this hope that was crushed?
Well, what I’m left with is mystery, a big fat mystery, that I don’t quite know what to do with. And so I have taken everything that I know about God and everything that I don’t know about God, and I’ve put it in just this little sauce pan on the burner of my mind, and I kind of call it «mysteries I cannot solve». It’s not on the back burner of my mind, because I think about it every day, every day I think about the mysteries that I can’t solve, but I’m content to leave them in that little pan, knowing that when I see God face-to-face, that every one of those mysteries will be absolutely, completely, totally, 100% answered.
So, what do we do in the meantime? Well, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9, and verse 14, says, «We often suffer, but we’re never crushed. Even when we don’t know what to do, we never give up. In times of trouble, God is with us, and when we are knocked down, we get up again… Because we know God raised the Lord back to life. And just as he raised Jesus, he will also raise us back to life, and will bring us into his presence together». He says we don’t know what to do, but we don’t give up, we are knocked down, we get up again. So I’m getting up and I’m rebuilding my hope, I’m in the process of creating a new playlist on my phone, it’s called «Kay’s Picks 2».
Right now it doesn’t have as many songs in it as the first one did, but as I gradually hear songs that rebuild my hope, I add them to that playlist. It’s got a song by Meredith Andrews, called «Not For A Moment,» we sing it here at Saddleback, and one of the lines in that song, one of the lyrics is, «Not for a moment will You forsake us». Not for a moment did God forsake Matthew, not for a second, even though Matthew often, obviously, felt forsaken by God, but not for a moment did God forsake him, and not for a moment has God forsaken me or my family. I’m rebuilding my hope box, I took out the verses, eventually, that were in here, that I’d read for a couple of years, not because the verses weren’t true, because the verses are absolutely true, they just didn’t apply in the same way anymore. They were about healing and about deliverance, and about restoration, and that isn’t what happened.
So, if I’m instead filling the hope box, again, with other verses that build my hope for the better things that God has. 1 Corinthians 15:43 is one of the verses that’s come to mean so much to me in the last few months, it says, «Our bodies are buried in brokenness, but they will be raised in glory. They are buried in weakness but they will be raised in strength»! When I leave the cemetery, where I go frequently, because I’m comforted, I mourn there, and I get in touch with God, and I express my grief and I receive his comfort, and I say that verse, Matthew’s body is in the grave, he is with Jesus, but his body is in the grave, and I say, «Matthew, 'You were buried in brokenness, but you will be raised in glory. You were buried in weakness, but you will be raised in strength! '»
I can do this because April 5th is not the end of the story. 1 Corinthians is a verse that you need to have as a verse that’s in your heart. Hope may not look the way that you thought it would, it sure didn’t turn out the way I thought it would, but hope is alive in me because of what I know. Some of you, you’re in the place, right now, where we were for such a long time. And if you don’t have a hope box, either figuratively or real, a real box, please build one, please, please, because you keep praying audaciously, boldly, completely confidently, you pray God’s Word, where he promises for healing now, for deliverance now, for victory now. God is still the Red Sea God, he still parts the waters, he still allows us to walk across on dry land, he still heals people, he still restores marriages, he still puts things back together that seem irreparably broken.
Please, I urge you, I beg you, to have audacious hope and faith for what God can do in the broken places of your life. If, like us, your hope is in a different place because the person has died or the situation is not going to change, or because the answer is terminal, or because of a million different things, and hope hasn’t turned out the way that you expected it to, the way that you believed it would, I beg you to do what we are doing, which is to build a new hope box, you cannot live without hope. Even if your hopes have faded and died, go for it again, with audacious faith that whatever has been broken, whatever the ruins are in your life, that they will be rebuilt. This is not the end of the story, it’s not the end of Matthew’s story, it’s not the end of my story, it’s not the end of your story, no matter what it is, God can be trusted. God can be trusted, and because of that, there is hope.
Rick Warren: Now, to live with hope in a life of pain, and by the way, I’m sorry to say this to you, you’re gonna have pain the rest of your life, but in that pain, you can have hope, how? You’re gonna have to get a bigger perspective, you’re gonna have to have a longer view, you’re gonna have to refocus your attention, you’re gonna have to stop thinking about just here and now and you’re gonna have to start living in light of eternity. This is not all there is, and if you just look at today and what’s happening right now, you’re gonna be hopeless, but if you can see in light of eternity, you realize that this life is preparation for the next. You get at the most 100 years on this planet, but you get trillions and trillions of years in eternity, this is simply the get-ready stage for the real show.
Here’s what the Bible says, there on your outline, 2 Corinthians 4:18, «So we don’t focus on the troubles we see right now; instead we look forward to what we don’t see yet. For the troubles we see now are temporary». Thank God they’re only temporary. I mean, even if I had a problem my entire life, it’s only temporary, 'cause it’s not gonna last an eternity. «For the troubles we see now are only temporary, but the joys to come will last forever».
Matthew’s life was not a happy life, in many ways it was a tragic life, he was tortured, he had a tender heart, but he had a tortured mind. He was very… Matthew had an ability to walk into a room at a party and instantly know who was in the most pain, and he would make a beeline for that person and spend the entire evening with them, comforting, consoling and encouraging, he would have made an incredible counselor. He had a very, very tender heart, but he had a tortured mind. You know, for the last two years, over here at the bridge entrance, there’s been a lone protester, and those of you who come across the bridge have seen that guy, he’s been there every week. He’s a very sad situation, a very broken man, and some real resentment in his life.
And I think about the fact that every Sunday, thousands of people drive across that bridge, not even caring about that guy, seeing him there week after week, and not even knowing his story. As far as I know, outside of myself, and a few other pastors on staff who’ve actually taken the time to talk to him and hear what his hurt is, most people couldn’t care less. And I remember, one day, and this was just in the last months of Matthew’s life, I happened to mention something to Kay, and Matthew’s ears picked up, «What»? And he hears about it, he gets in his car, and drives down and spends two hours with that guy, talking to him, why? Because he had a tender heart, but his life, in many ways, was very tortured and very tragic.
And so, as a father, my comfort doesn’t come from thinking about the happy moments of Matthew’s life, there were some, but not that many. My comfort comes not from thinking about happy moments on earth, but holy moments in heaven he’s having now, and that is a comfort to me. You see, friends, the biggest epidemic in our society, in our world today is hopelessness, it’s an epidemic proportion, it’s the biggest problem on the planet, people are living and dying without any hope. You know, the week Matthew died, I was in a massive battle for hope and against hopelessness. Let me tell you the behind-the-scenes story that happened that week. Matthew lost his battle with mental illness five days after Easter.
Last Easter, I spoke, I don’t know, 13, 14 times, about 50,000 people, and I preached on the hope of the Resurrection, that we know there’s a life hereafter 'cause Jesus came back from the death, the hope of the Resurrection. On Monday, we announced, nationally, that after 33 years of saying no, I was gonna allow my sermons to be put on the radio, and we started a nationwide radio program called «Daily Hope». That’s Monday. On Tuesday, I announced that I was gonna take a four-month sabbatical and write the first major book in eleven years, since «Purpose Driven Life,» and it was gonna be called «The Hope You Need». You can see a pattern here, Sunday, the hope of the Resurrection, Monday, «Daily Hope,» Tuesday, «The Hope You Need». On Wednesday, I sent out the newsletter, I sent it to all of you who are signed up for it, «News and Views,» and I announced, «This next weekend, the weekend after Easter, we’re gonna start a series on hope, and the first message I’m gonna do is out of 2 Chronicles 20, on when you feel like you’re under attack».
That was the message I announced on Wednesday. On Thursday, «Christianity Today» released a major article on our peace plan, and to mobilize churches and organizations to take down the final frontier, the last 3,000 tribes in the world that don’t have hope, that don’t have a Bible, don’t have a believer, and don’t have a body of Christ. And the title of the article was called «Rick Warren’s Final Frontier,» and there’s an article on taking hope to the final people who still don’t have any hope at all, haven’t heard the message of Jesus. That was on Thursday. Friday was the day Matthew died, the message that was playing on «Daily Hope» all across America that day was this, «Winning the Battle For Your Mind».
That was the message I was teaching on the radio across the world or across America. I got up Friday morning not knowing what was gonna happen that day, and my chest was caving in, and Kay goes, «Are you having a heart attack»? I said, «No, no, no, I got a strong heart, I think I got bronchitis». So David Shaun takes me to a doctor, and he does an x-ray, and he says, «You got double pneumonia». Now, I couldn’t count the number of times I’ve gotten double pneumonia or pneumonia after a Christmas or Easter, 'cause I preach 13, 14 times, wear myself out, hug 3,000 people, pick up your germs and get pneumonia, okay? It’s the cost of being a hugger, okay, so what? You’re worth it, you’re worth it, believe me, okay? But really, I’ve gotten upper respiratory and pneumonia, I couldn’t count the number of times, so it’s not a big deal to me, after Christmas or Easter.
But I’m sitting in the doctor’s office and I call Pastor Tom, our Senior Teaching Pastor, said, «Tom, I’m not gonna get to start the series on hope this weekend, you’re gonna have to preach, but I don’t want you to preach my message on when you feel like you’re under attack, I want you to preach on 1 Samuel 30, where David, King David, goes back to his hometown, Ziklag». He goes to that town and the enemy has burned the town down, and they’ve taken all of the women and children and residents captive. And David and his men are devastated, and they sit down on the ground and they just weep, and they grieve, and then they do certain things. And I said, And I want you to call the message «What to Do On The Worst Day of Your Life».
Little did I know, a few hours later, it would become the worst day of my life. We are in a battle against hopelessness. Now, when something happens and you have a major loss in your life, you tend to think, «This is the end of the world». No, it’s not the end of the world, it’s an end of the moment, and in your life, you’re gonna have many ends of the moment, it’s not the end of the world. I don’t know what you’re going through and I don’t care how… or, I do care, but I don’t know how important, it doesn’t matter how deep you think your problem is right now, the one you’re going through right now, it isn’t the end of the world, why? Because when the real end of the world comes, Jesus shows up, then you know it’s the end of the world.
But one day, Jesus is gonna settle the score, even the odds, pay off the debts, and heal the hurts, and the Bible says what it’s gonna be like in heaven when it’s all over here on earth. Revelation 21, verse 4, says this, «Then God,» this is in the future, «Then God will wipe away every tear from their eyes». This is in heaven, «Wipe away every tear from their eyes. And there will be no more death,» and there will be no more «mourning,» and there will be no more «crying,» and there will be no more «pain, for the old order of things will pass away».
I’m looking forward to that day, but we’re not there yet. And what do we do now, in this little parentheses between the sweet by-and-by and the nasty now-and-now, where everything is broken and life doesn’t make sense, and it’s an incredible battle? What do we do during this middle time? We live in peace, even when life doesn’t make sense, because we know that God is with us, and God loves us, and he’ll never stop loving us, and he’ll never forget us. And we live with joy, even when everything on this planet is broken, because we know that God is good, and God has a good plan, and God has a plan that is greater than the problem you’re going through, his purpose is greater than your problem. And we live with hope, why? We live with hope even when we know life is a battle and everything is hard, and there’s a lot of conflict, but we live with hope because we know there’s more to the story than just here and now.