Pastor Rick Warren brings light to the often misunderstood concept of meekness, revealing it as strength under control rather than weakness. Explore the journey of making Jesus the manager of your life, and how establishing God’s word as your ultimate authority can simplify decision-making and reduce daily stressors. Through engaging stories and relatable analogies, Pastor Rick guides listeners on a profound spiritual journey towards serenity and fulfillment.
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, hang-ups, and habits that really hold us back. So get ready for some practical insights and powerful truths that can lead to lasting change and freedom in your life. And now let’s jump right in with Rick for part one of a message called Letting Go and Letting God.
SPEAKER 01 :
We looked at the first step a couple weeks ago, which is the reality step. You stop denying that there are areas of your life that are unhealthy. You admit that you tend to do unhealthy things and your life tends to be unmanageable. Last week, we looked at the hope step, which is even though I don’t have the power to change, God does. He has the power to help me change. And there are five reasons for hope. And we looked at that. This week, we’re looking at the commitment step where Jesus gives us the third beatitude in Matthew 5, verse 5. And he says, God blesses those who are meek. God blesses those who are meek. Meekness is the third step to getting healthy again. Now the Bible lists many benefits of meekness. I’ve just listed a few on your outline. The meek shall be satisfied. The meek he will guide and teach. The meek will become wise. The meek will be filled with fresh joy. There are many, many others. The problem is we misunderstand this term. None of us really know what meekness is. In fact, we often confuse it with another word that sounds like it. Meek sounds like what? Weak. And nobody wants to be weak. And so nobody wants to be meek. But the truth is, meekness and weakness are at the exact opposite ends of the spectrum. Meekness is in no way weakness. In fact, it literally means, the Greek word for meekness literally means strength under control. It is the exact opposite of weakness. To be meek is not to be weak. It’s used of a stallion, a wild stallion who was tamed and taught to be ridden, and that stallion still has all of the strength that it had when it was wild, but now it is strength under control. It is strength bottled up for the master’s use. God doesn’t want you to be weak, but he does want you to be meek, and the Bible teaches that it is one of the keys to stress reduction in your life. Now, if I were to give you a simple definition of the word meek, I would give you this phrase. You might write it down. Let go and let God go. Let go and let God. That is the essence of meekness. It is surrendering, submitting, agreeing to what God wants to do in your life. It’s letting God be God in your life. Let go and let God. Now, folks, I don’t know a phrase that’ll do more for your health, physically or emotionally, than this phrase, let go and let God. If you’ll begin to practice this phrase in your life, it will definitely relieve stress when you let go and let God. It will definitely eliminate worry when you let go and let God. It will definitely diffuse anger if you’ll let go and let God. And it will definitely do all kinds of benefits like end your hurt, end resentment if you’ll let go, and let God. So today I want us to look at how do you do that? How do you let go and let God? The Bible tells us you do it four ways. And to help you remember this, I just put it in a little acrostic, M-E-E-K. These are the four ways to relieve stress in your life on the road to getting healthy again. The M in meek stands for the first way you can let go and let God, and it’s this. Make Jesus the manager of my life. Make Jesus the manager of my life. Now, the problem is we want to be the manager of our own lives. So we argue and we disagree with God. We think we know what’s best. We think we know better. And the reason why you’re under a lot of stress is constantly in your mind, you’re fighting God. You don’t think about it, but you do it all the time. You think you know better than God. And so you argue with him. I know God says to do this, but I want to do this. And every morning you get up and you have a decision to make. Who’s going to be in charge of my life? Do you remember that old TV program, Who’s the Boss? Remember that show? That is one of the fundamental questions of life. Who’s going to be the boss in your life? Who’s going to be the manager of your life? You or God? Who’s going to be in control? You or God? Who’s going to call the shots? You or God? Who’s gonna be the one that directs and leads in your life? You or God. And every day, moment by moment, you are making that decision. When you choose to make yourself the manager of your own life, it causes conflict, it causes confusion, it causes stress, and it causes a lot of turmoil in your life. God says, why don’t you just relax? That’s the first step to stress relief. And let Christ be the manager of your life. Look at this first verse, Job 22, verse 21. Read it with me. Stop quarreling with God. If you agree with him, you will have peace at last and things will go well for you. I want you to underline or circle two things in that sentence. Peace at last and things will go well. Peace at last and things will go well. How many of you would like to have in your life peace at last and have things go well? Can I see your hands? That’s what I figured. Everybody would like to have that. Well, he tells us, stop quarreling with God. We say, God, I don’t like the way you made me. You made me too tall or too short, too fat, too skinny. Why didn’t you give me different parents? Why didn’t you give me different talents? I don’t like the way you made me. And God says, I made you because I have a unique plan for your life and I made you that way so you could fulfill the plan I have for you. Now the stress comes when you try to be the manager of your life and you don’t understand the way God made you. And so you start trying to plan your plan for your life. You get under stress. You do not let go and let God. And you’re uptight all the time. God says, I made you, and if you’ll let me, I will manage you in the way that makes the most of what I made you to be. Because God knows how to make the most of your life more than you do. So you need to relax. You need to let go and let God. Notice this next verse, Matthew 16, 24. I love this, and the message paraphrase. Jesus says… Anyone who intends to come to me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat. I am. I like that. He says, you’re not in the driver’s seat. I am. Now, here’s what Christians do. We know that when we become believers in Christ, we say, okay, Jesus Christ, you take over the driver’s seat. We then promptly hop into the backseat and do backseat driving. Oh, yeah, Jesus is in the driver’s seat in my life. But you’re reaching over his shoulders going, no, no, turn this way, turn that way, stop, wait, go forward, faster, slower. Oh, I want to go that way. I want to see that side. Jesus said, am I the driver or not? You have Jesus in the driver’s seat, but you’re constantly giving him advice from the back seat saying, this is the way we ought to go. Now, I want you to circle a phrase in that sense. Let me lead. Let me lead. Do you do that? Do you let God lead in your life on a day-by-day basis? Or are you still trying to lead? Many years ago, Kay and I took dancing lessons from Arthur Murray Studios. We’re special. And the Arthur Murray Studios dance instructor told us that one of the biggest problems couples have is, who’s gonna lead? And when they both try to lead, they just step on each other’s feet all the time and it doesn’t look very pretty. Your life doesn’t look very pretty when you’re trying to lead with God at the same time. You just need to let God be God and make Jesus the manager of your life. Last year, Kurt and Jerry went on an African safari, and they learned a lesson about following the instructions of the guide. One day, a guide took them out to find an elephant herd, but he made them promise in advance to obey his rules before they even went out, and he gave them some very specific rules. He said, first off, he said, if I say run, you run, right? Don’t pause, don’t stop, don’t take a picture, don’t smell the roses, don’t think you can hide, don’t drop to your knees. You run, law number one. You said number two, when you run, when I say run, you follow me, the guide, exactly. Put your feet in my footprints. Follow me step by step. Don’t try to forge your own trail because in a panic, you’ll get lost in the jungle. Or number two, you’ll step on things you wish you hadn’t stepped on. So he said, you run when I say run and you follow my steps exactly. Well, sure enough, they came on an elephant herd and it stampeded. And the guide said, run. And some of the people froze in their tracks from fear, from panic. And the guide said again, run. Run. And Jerry said, at that moment, in spite of my fear, I had to move forward. I had to go forward. If I hadn’t obeyed, I would have been trampled. If I hadn’t followed exactly in the footprints of the guide, I might have stepped on something or I might have gotten lost. But the point was, she said, I had to make a decision to obey before I was in the circumstance. Now, if you wait until you come to the moment of temptation and say, now I’m going to do what God says or not, you’re already a goner. Maturity, spiritual maturity, is deciding in advance to obey God. God, you’re the manager of my life. You created me, you formed me, you shaped me, you’re the potter, I’m the clay, and so I’m gonna trust you. And so I’m already telling you up front, I’ll do whatever you ask me to do. If it says go here, I’ll go there. If it says do this, I’ll do that. But you make it in advance. There’s an old hymn that goes, trust and obey for there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. You need to do that. You need to make Jesus the manager of your life. Look at this last verse. Give yourself to the Lord, trust in him, and read the rest with me, and he will help you. Now, when it says give yourself, what’s it talking about? It means to abandon yourself. It means to let go. It means to surrender, to submit, to say, you know, I’m all yours, God. I’m going to go, I’m going to bend with you. You know, it’s kind of like the trees in my backyard. Kay and I live out in the canyon, and our home is out on a point of a canyon that it’s unobstructed for about a quarter of a mile. And so the gale winds come down and hit our home at full force quite frequently, 60, 70 miles or more an hour. And I’ve had different kinds of trees in my backyard. We’ve lived there about 10 years. And some of them break, and some of them don’t. The difference is, do they bend when the wind comes? There are some that are rigid when the wind hits them. They refuse to bend, and as a result, they pop off. They break. We lose branches. We lose limbs. Some have got uprooted. Because they are stiff. They’re rigid. They resist. On the other hand, the trees in my backyard that bend with the wind, they’re the ones that last. They bend, they give into it, they go with the flow. Now in your life, you can be rigid and you can reject the winds of God, go, I’m not gonna go that way, and you’re gonna break. Eventually, you’re gonna break. On the other hand, if you give in and you submit and you say, God, you know what’s best for me anyway and you love me, I’m gonna trust you, then you will last throughout the lifetime without all these breaks and hurts and pains in your life. It says, give yourself, and it says, trust. You know, in many ways, life is kind of like riding a roller coaster. Now think about this. In a roller coaster, it’s got a beginning and an end, and between those two, there are a lot of hills and valleys. And between those two, there are some times when it speeds up, and there are times when it slows down, and you don’t have control over either of those. And your life is a lot like a roller coaster. What you need to do is you need to let God strap you in to the roller coaster and just go along for the ride. Now, I used to worry and be afraid of roller coasters, but I’m not anymore because I know it’s not just a machine. There is an operator, an unseen operator behind that roller coaster. And they’ve got cameras pointing on all angles of it. And he’s in control the whole time. And I don’t have to worry, because the unseen operator knows where I started, knows where I’m going to end, and he’s going to get me safely to the end. There may be some twirls. There may be some ups and downs. There are a lot of times in my life where I feel like it’s out of control, but it’s not. There are times on a roller coaster you may feel like, this is out of control, but it’s not. There is an unseen operator pulling the switches… and gonna make sure that you start right, you end right, and you go safely through the journey. There is an unseen operator in your life. His name is God. He knows the beginning and the end of your life. And he knows, yeah, you’re gonna have some flips in life. You’re gonna have some twirls. You’re gonna have some mountains. You’re gonna have some valleys, some fast and slow times. But he’s in control. So you don’t need to worry. You need to just sit back, get strapped in, and enjoy the ride. What is that called? It’s called meekness. It’s called letting go and letting God. And that’s the first step to reducing stress in your life. Make Jesus the manager of my life. Number two, this first E in meek stands for establish God’s word as the authority of my life. I make Jesus the manager of my life. Number two, I establish God’s word as the authority of my life. Why is this a stress reliever? Because if you don’t have an authority in your life, you’re going to listen to all different kinds of conflicting opinions. And one day you’ll decide this, another day you’ll decide that, and one day you can’t decide. And indecision causes stress. But if you decide that God’s word is going to be the authority of your life, it’s real simple. It simplifies decision making. We all need authorities in our lives for our own health. Last Wednesday night, after the pastor’s conference that I’d been teaching this week, my family decided to go to the beach at about 9 o’clock at night. Now, that’s real typical for the Warrens. We’ll kind of, hey, let’s go do this. So at 9.30 at night, we’re down at Hole in the Fence, Capistrano Beach, frolicking in the ocean at 9.30 at night. Running up and down in the waves and having fun. It’s almost pitch black, couple of street lights out there. We’re just having a great time. And then all of a sudden, somebody in our family, I think it was Kay, saw this little tiny sign that was posted in the sand. In Spanish and English, it said, contaminated water, stay out. Okay, now. That sign represents an authority. It is saying, don’t you dare put your feet in this water. It’s contaminated. Now, why was that law posted? There is an authority there and why was that law posted? To ruin my fun? To make my life a big bummer? Why was it there? It was there for my own health. Now, how should I react to that authority? How should I react to that sign? Well, I have a lot of options, and you have a lot of options when you react to God’s authority, the word. I mean, I could say, this is a stupid sign. I know better than this sign, so I’m gonna go ahead and play in the water anyway. And I just reject the authority. It’s dumb. I don’t like it, it’s dumb, so I’m gonna do my own thing. Or I could say, this sign is out of date. It was for another time and another age. And it really doesn’t apply to me because it’s out of date, I’m sure. Or I could say, this sign doesn’t really mean what it says. When it says stay out, that’s just your interpretation. I interpret the word stay out as meaning go right ahead. go right ahead that’s just your interpretation or I could say I’m sure God would want me to ignore this sign because God wants me to have fun now all through the Bible God has said things like don’t have premarital sex well now you know that’s out of date it’s wrong I don’t like it that’s your interpretation it doesn’t matter it’s still the truth And why was that sign set up there on the ocean? To keep me from disease, from danger, and possibly even death. It was for my own benefit. Now, the Bible is filled with all kinds of rules, commands, and things. God says, do this, don’t do this, make sure you do this. Why does he do that? Because he is a loving God. And everything that’s in this book is not there to make your life miserable. It’s there to protect you. It’s there for your own health. It’s there for your own good. A loving God who knows more than you is saying, here’s the rules for life. If you ignore them, you only get hurt.
SPEAKER 02 :
What a great message from Pastor Rick. I hope it touched you just like it touched me today. And now Rick’s going to tell you about today’s offer.
SPEAKER 01 :
One of the most powerful ways you can transform your spiritual life is to memorize Scripture. You say, I can’t do that. Oh, yes, you can. The Bible says in Proverbs 7, verse 2, guard my words as your most precious possession. Write them down and keep them deep within your heart. To keep them deep in your heart, you have to remember them. That’s why I’ve had my team create a beautiful scripture box so you can practice memorizing the verses. It’s a collection of spiritual tools that will help you keep God’s Word in you so you have it when you need it most. You know, when you’re tempted, You rarely have a Bible by your side. And when you’re witnessing to somebody who doesn’t know Christ or they’re under stress or they need comfort or they’re in a crisis, there’s not usually a Bible hanging around. So you need God’s word in your mind so you can remember it And then when you need them, the Holy Spirit can bring them back to mind. Now, the Holy Spirit can’t bring up something you haven’t put in your heart or in your mind. So store them in this beautiful box. It’s a real pretty box that will make a great conversation piece. And by the way, this is a skill that you can learn. You say, I can’t memorize anything. Oh, your brain will actually get stronger and you will remember other things better as well. That’s right. Imagine this. If you only memorized one verse a week, that’s a good thing, okay? One verse a week in one year, you will have memorized 52 verses from the Word of God. And you’ll be so much stronger as a believer. So I hope you’ll get this tool. We’re doing it for you.
SPEAKER 02 :
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.
