In today’s enlightening message, Pastor Rick emphasizes the importance of letting God expand your imagination and vision for the future. He challenges listeners to dream big and to approach the next ten years with confidence and creativity. This episode also delves into practical steps for mind management—such as testing thoughts and nourishing a godly mindset—ensuring that everyone can plan for a future aligned with God’s will. Tune in to gain profound wisdom and prepare your mind for action.
Hey everyone, welcome to Pastor Rick’s Daily Hope. And whether you listen every day or you just found us, we are so glad you’ve joined us. Today, Rick wraps up his series called Preparing for Your Future. Rick shares how God’s destiny for your life is good and how you get to choose much of your destiny. And now here’s Rick with the final part of a message called Making the Most of Your Mind.
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Now, how do I store up knowledge? There are two ways. Just write these down. One is by reading, and two is through relationships. Reading and relationships. Now, if you don’t like to read, fine. You don’t like to read. You can listen. And today, you can listen to audiobooks, and you can listen to podcasts, and you can listen to MP3s, and you can listen to CDs of sermons and all kinds of things. So you don’t have to read, but reading, which is individualized input, and relationships, which is communal input. And you need them both if you’re gonna be all you’re gonna be in the next 10 years in the decade of destiny. Wise men store up knowledge. You know, when I was 16 years old, I read a book, and in that book, the one thing I got out of that book, it said this. Your life will be largely influenced and determined by the books you read and the people you meet. The books you read and the people you meet. So I decided I’m gonna be intentional about both of those. Who I meet, who I get to know and there are a lot of people I just like to get to know and I just write to them. And it was before anybody knew who I was and I would just take the effort to reach out to people, to learn. And I started collecting books. When I was just 16 years old, there was a period of my life I was reading a book a day. I didn’t, I don’t do it anymore. And you say, how do you do that? Little skinny books. Okay, big print, lots of pictures. Okay. And so, but I started collecting books. You know, I would suggest that one of the great legacies, if you’re a mother or a father, one of the great legacies is to build a family library. that you can pass on to the next generation. That is part of your legacy. What is your doing? You’re storing up wisdom. You’re storing up knowledge. You get good, solid Christian books, classics, and things like that. And I decided I was going to do that, and that I’d leave it to the next generation. I decided this as a very young man. Now I’ve bought almost, well, most of those books I bought by used books. You just go online and there’s lots of used bookstores now. You don’t ever have to pay new for almost anything today. And I bought, and today I have almost 20,000 volumes in my library. Okay, now, twice in the book of Proverbs… God says, store up my commands within you. In other words, put them inside. That means think about them, memorize them, and put them inside of you. Why? Because it helps you get on the right path. Proverbs 19, verse eight. Those who get wisdom do themselves a favor, and those who love learning will succeed. Now, how many of you, I’d like to see your hands on this, would like to succeed, would like your life to be successful in the next 10 years? Can I see your hands? Yeah, I hope that’s all of us, because what’s the alternative? Failure. I don’t understand, well, I don’t want to succeed. Oh, what do you want to do, fail? You think God put you here on earth? No, no, I want you to succeed as your pastor. Okay, and the Bible says, those who love learning will succeed. And how do you learn? Two ways, reading and relationships. There are things you will learn in a small group you will never learn in a book. It’s wise to learn from experience. It’s wiser to learn from the experiences of others. And it’s a whole lot less painful. I don’t have time to make all the mistakes myself. So I’d like you to go out and make a few and then tell me what doesn’t work. And that’s what we do in a small group. In a small group, we learn from each other. That’s why you need to be in a small group. You need to have a regular reading program to build your mind. You need to be in a small group for relationships to build your mind. Now, there are two other ways that we grow. Okay, so we wanna keep on learning. The fourth thing we need to do is to renew your mind daily. Renew daily. your mind daily with God’s word. It is God’s word that has the power to renew our minds. You see, your mind gets tired. Your mind runs out of energy and it needs to be renewed. It needs to be transformed. And if you’re gonna change anything in your life in the next 10 years, it’s gonna start in your mind, doesn’t start in your behavior, it starts in your thoughts. Romans 12, verse two, do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world. In other words, all of the things, you know, materialism, secularism, hedonism, things like that, but be transformed, by, read it with me, the renewing of your mind. Then you’ll be able to test and approve what God’s will is, his good and pleasing and perfect will. You say, I really wanna know God’s will for my life in the next 10 years. What does God want me to do with my life in the next decade? Well, how do you know that? You have to be transformed. And how do you be transformed? By the renewing of your mind. How do you do that? By daily engagement with the word of God. Now listen to the word I just said. Engagement with the word of God. I didn’t say daily reading of the word of God. I don’t care if you read it or not. You may not be a reader. If you don’t like to read, don’t read. Listen. There are lots of ways to listen. You can get the Bible on MP3. You can get the Bible on cassette or CD. You just need to have your mind in contact with the word every day. If you’re not a reader, don’t sweat it. You can be a hearer, not a reader. But you need to get the word engaged in your life on a daily basis. The Bible in Ephesians calls it the washing of the water of the word, which it washes the filth out of your mind. It washes the filth. It washes the pollution out of your mind. Now, why do we do this? Why do we renew our minds with the word? Look at the next verse. Isaiah 26, three. You will keep… In perfect peace, all who trust in you, whose thoughts are fixed on you. Let me ask you, what do you think about most in your life? Think about this for a minute. What do you think about most? Whatever you think about most in your life is your God. Some people, they think about golf all the time. Golf is their God. Some people think about their boat all their time. The boat is their God. Some people, all they think about is their work. Their work is their God. I don’t care what you say is number one in your life. Tell me how you spend your time, spend your money, and what you think about most, and I’ll tell you what’s most important in your life. Now, you need to fix your mind every day on God. And what I suggest you do is that you start your day with God, either listening to the word or reading the word before anything else. His word is the first word in my life. Why? Study after study has shown that the first five to 10 minutes of your day determines your mood for the rest of the day. So you don’t wanna start with bad news. You wanna start with good news. You wanna, this is good news, not bad news. I mean, you can get up in the morning, you can get up and say, good morning, Lord, or good Lord, it’s morning. And then you’ve just set the attitude for the rest of the day. And so you start by renewing your mind every day with God’s word in building your mind. Okay, there’s one more. This one’s the fun one. Number five in managing your mind is let God stretch your imagination. Let God stretch your imagination. What I’m talking about here is what we talked about a little bit last week. You’ve gotta have a dream. You’ve gotta have a vision. You’ve gotta have a goal for the next 10 years. God cannot fulfill your dream if you don’t have a dream. God cannot help you reach your vision if you don’t have any vision for the next 10 years. God cannot help you accomplish your goal if you don’t have any goal. You’ve got to have a dream. You’ve got to have a vision. You’ve got to let God expand your imagination. Acts chapter two, verse 17. We looked at this passage a couple months ago. In the last days, God says, I will pour out my spirit on all people. Your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. Visions and dreams. Last week, we talked about that verse that says, where there is no vision, the people what? Perish. Where there’s no dream, people are not living, they’re just existing. If you don’t have a dream, you’re not living. If you don’t have a dream, you’re just existing. You’re not really living. You gotta have a dream. And I don’t want you to go into this next decade without a dream. You gotta let God expand your vision. Where there’s no vision, the people perish. Remember I said that word perish means out of control. My life’s out of control if I don’t have a guiding vision, a guiding dream. Nothing happens until somebody starts dreaming. Everything that’s ever been accomplished in the world started because somebody dreamed it up first. Every building started as a dream in an architect’s mind. Every piece of art, every piece of music started as a dream in an artist’s mind. They believed it before they saw it. Some things have to be believed before they can be seen. Every athlete who won the Super Bowl ring or championship or a gold medal dreamed it first. It all starts with dreaming. And your life and the quality of your life is gonna be largely determined by the dreams you allow God to give you for the next decade. Imagination is the preview of tomorrow. And God says, let me help you. You learn from yesterday, you live in today, and you dream about tomorrow. That’s how you do it. You learn from yesterday, you live in today, and you dream about tomorrow. I think it was Napoleon who once said, imagination rules the world. Einstein said, imagination is more important than knowledge because knowledge is limited, but imagination goes on. It’s unlimited. In fact, he also said, imagination, not knowledge, is the sign of intelligence. And so you need to let God stretch your imagination. So let me ask you, what do you believe in God for in the next 10 years? What’s your dream for the next 10 years? Let me give you a question. Ask yourself this question. What would I attempt in the next 10 years if I knew I couldn’t fail? What would I attempt if I knew I couldn’t fail? If you took away all the fear, You see, most people set their dreams too small and try to accomplish them too quickly. What I’m challenging you to do as a pastor is telling you set a bigger dream and then take 10 years. When I started Saddleback, I set a dream to have 20,000 members in 40 years. The problem was we reached that in 20 years. My dream was too small. Typically, God will excel beyond your dream. And one of the areas I really want you to grow in is this area of imagination and dreaming. Because what we need are great Christian dreamers today. Where would the world be if we didn’t have C.S. Lewis and all of the imagination he had in the Narnia series? Or J.R.R. Tolkien, the Christian writer who wrote the Lord of the Rings series? Or Tolstoy? Or Dostoevsky? Or you know, so many of the great novelists, Christian novelists that were out there, Chesterton and others who, he wrote a whole series of mystery novels. Why, because of imagination. You see, the Bible says, God created you in his image. God is a creator, you are most like God when you’re creative. God is a creator and you are most like God when you are creative. And when you go out and there’s lots of ways to be creative. You may be creative in a craft. You may be creative in making a meal. You may be creative in raising children. You may be creative in closing deals. You may be creative in making sales. You may be creative in creating marketing campaigns. When you do what God wired you to do, God looks down and goes, that’s my boy. That’s my girl. They’re doing what I made them to do. They’re being creative. If you’re not being creative, you are dying. I don’t want this to be the decade of dying. I don’t bet this to be the decade of drifting. I want this to be the decade of dreaming. And you get God’s dream for your life. And what we need today are great Christian thinkers who are out there thinking about new answers, new solve the problems, new ways to solve problems, looking at new angles, finding new solutions, asking new questions. We need Christian entrepreneurs who are creating new products and new services. That brings glory to God. It brings glory to God. When we create new, we’re most like God when we are creating. Every scientific breakthrough that’s ever happened in history happened because somebody dreamed it first. And we need the Bacons and the Calvins and the Pascals and all these others, these great scientists who dreamed up stuff that we enjoy today, that were revolutionary. You see, really, when you think about it, innovation is not that big a deal. It’s just asking the right questions. The difference between an innovator and everybody else is innovators see what everybody else sees in life. They simply ask, what if and so what? That’s it, that’s how you become an innovator. You see what everybody else sees and you go, well, what if we did this and why not? And you ask those two questions and you’re gonna come up with all kinds of innovations. Now, why am I saying this? Because if you’re going to be a leader and our world desperately needs leaders in the next decade, if you’re gonna be a leader, what you don’t see is far more important than what you do see. And imagination is seeing with the eyes of the heart. It’s seeing with spiritual eyes. It’s seeing, you know, it’s an overstatement that what the mind can conceive, the hands can achieve. That’s an overstatement. But it is true that according to your faith, it will be done unto you. That all things are possible to him who believes. That without a vision, the people perish. And that you can’t live out of your past. You gotta live out of your imagination. So what I’m saying to you is as your pastor, I am begging you to dream great dreams, to let God stretch your imagination. Yeah, you need to challenge your thoughts and test them because not everything is true. And yes, you need to protect your mind like a helmet. In fact, the Bible calls it the helmet of salvation. Why is it called the helmet of salvation? Because it protects your mind. And you need to guard your mind from bad thoughts and bad ideas. But you need to never stop learning. And you need to renew your mind every day by getting alone with God and the word. And you need to let God stretch your vision. Because if you do, the next 10 years will blow your mind. They will be the best 10 years of your entire life to date. Now, why do we do this? We do it for the glory of God. Look at this next verse. Ephesians 3, now glory be to God who by his mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of. You see what he just said there? He says, you think of the biggest thing you can do and God says, you can dream. God says, I can top that. I don’t know about you, but I’m a pretty big dreamer. I can dream up some pretty big things like let’s be the first church to go to every nation in the world. You know, stuff like that. I’m a pretty big dream. God says, Rick, you think up the biggest thing you can ever think I could do in your life and I can top it. Let me read that again. He is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask because we’d be embarrassed or even dream of infinitely beyond our highest prayers and our desires and our thoughts and our hopes. May he be given glory forever. This is why we do it, for his glory. And ever through endless ages because of his master plan of salvation for the church through Jesus Christ. This is what God wants to do. You bring glory to God by protecting your mind, by expanding your mind through learning, by renewing your mind through the word of God, and by letting God expand it through imaginations. Now, every one of us here tends to be either a thinker or a doer. Some of you are much more happy with the thinking area and you really do enjoy thinking and you do enjoy learning and all of that. And some of you are really more doers and you’re more in the doing zone and you like to get things done. Now, as a pastor, let me say this. Those of you who are thinkers, You need to do more. You need to do more. Those of you who are doers, you need to think more. You need to think more. Because it’s not one or the other, it’s both. We find both in the last verse there on your outline. The Bible says, Prepare your minds for action. The preparing your mind, that’s the thinking. For action, that’s the doing. And in the next 10 years, you’re going to have to do both, thinking and doing. Job once said, I made a covenant with my eyes not to look upon a woman lustfully. That’s in the book of Job. I like that idea of making a covenant with your eyes. So I wanna give you a little covenant as we close to help you remember these five things to help you maximize your mind in the next 10 years. Write down this little acrostic, T-H-I-N-K. T-H-I-N-K, think. And what I did is I took these five truths that we just looked at from the word of God and put them in little cross. What does it mean to really think? Here are the five things I want you to covenant with me to do. T, test every thought. Don’t automatically think it’s true just because you thought it. It could be from the devil. It could be from the world. It could be from you. It still doesn’t mean it’s true. The Bible says, search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. And see if there be any wicked way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. Test every thought. Number two, the H stands for helmet your head. Put a helmet on your head. Helmet your head. You gotta guard your mind. And what does the helmet do? It protects your mind. You remember these old movies where the guys were afraid of the UFOs so they like covered their mind head with tinfoil? You know what I’m talking about? You remember those guys? Okay, it’s like they’re trying to protect their minds. You don’t have to do that. But the Bible says put on the helmet of salvation. The only protection you have from Satan is the helmet of salvation. Otherwise he’s gonna attack your mind. I stands for imagine great thoughts. Imagine great thoughts. The Bible says everything is possible to him who believes. And I’m going to help you set some goals and do some planning in Decade of Destiny in our small groups. N stands for nourish a godly mind. Nourish a godly mind. And how do you do that? Daily time with God. Psalm 119.15 says, I will study your commandments and reflect on your ways. Nourish a godly mind. And K stands for keep on learning. Keep on learning. Be diligent in these matters, the Bible says in 1 Timothy. Give yourself wholly to them so that the people may see your progress. Keep on learning. How do we do these five things? Reading and relationships. Getting in a group and getting God’s word and God’s truth into my mind by hearing and reading. Let’s bow our heads. Heavenly Father, we look forward to the next 10 years with great anticipation because we know we’re gonna be better prepared for this one than we were for the last decade. And I pray that the rest of our lives will be the best of our lives And no matter what stage we are in life, just starting out or moving to retirement, that in the next 10 years, we will master our minds the way you want us to. Forgive us for all the times we believe stuff that we thought that really wasn’t true. Forgive us for the times we’ve allowed garbage into our minds. Help us to never stop learning. Help each of us to spend time with you every day to renew our mind with the word of God. And in that quiet time alone with you, Lord, stretch our imagination. Give us your dreams. Give us your vision. Give us your goal and your plan and your purpose for our lives that we might not waste the next 10 years. If you’ve never invited Christ in your life, say, Jesus Christ, come into my life right now. Save me. Change me. I want to repent. I want to turn to you. And I want to go your way and trust you. Father, I thank you for our church family. I thank you for the journey we’re getting ready to go through. I pray a blessing on each family member and each individual. that we might become what you want us to be. In Jesus’ name, amen. Hi, everybody. This is Rick, and I hope you enjoyed today’s broadcast. You know, if you just prayed that prayer for the very first time or you just recommitted your life to Jesus again today, would you let me know about it? There’s something real about sharing your commitment. So write me, Rick, at PastorRick.com and say, Rick, I prayed that prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ. And I’ll send you some material that will help you on your journey with Jesus, and I’ll also pray for you. God bless you. Did you know that gratitude is good for us? The Bible tells us in 1 Thessalonians 5, 18, give thanks in all circumstances for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. You wanna know what God’s will is for you right now? It is that you learn gratitude in all circumstances. There’s always something you can be thankful for. In fact, I’ve discovered and I’ve read many reports that experts have told us that gratitude is the healthiest human emotion. Did you know that gratitude makes you more resistant to stress? Did you know that gratitude makes you less susceptible to illness? Did you know that gratitude increases your overall happiness and satisfaction? That gratitude gives your life more meaning and significance? I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that the more grateful a person is, the happier they are. That’s the power of gratitude. So I want you to live with the attitude of gratitude, the attitude of thankfulness. Now I’ve put together a brand new Bible study called The Power of Gratitude. And in it, you’ll find scriptures and teaching and exercises that’ll help you develop the habit, cultivate the habit of gratitude. You’ll discover how to stay in God’s will, how to defeat discouragement, how to conquer complaining, how to reduce stress, and how to experience God’s blessing through gratitude. Friends, I wanna help you develop a deep and a profound attitude of gratitude. The world is craving people like this, and you will be able to experience all that God has for you. So today, When you partner with me by giving a gift, a financial gift to Daily Hope to help us take the certain hope of Jesus to people all around the world, I’m gonna have my team send you the Power of Gratitude Bible Study. I just wanna say thanks to you. I wanna be grateful for you. You know, your support is essential for us taking the Daily Hope message of Jesus all around the world.
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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. And thank you so much for your support. Your gift to Daily Hope helps us share the hope of Christ with people everywhere. 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.
