A (0:02)

Hey.

B (0:02)

This is Pastor Rick Warren's Daily hope. And whether you listen every day or you just found us, we are so glad you're here. Well, today, Rick begins a series called preparing for your future, where he shares how God's destiny for your life is good and how you get to choose much of your destiny. Now, let's jump right in. Here's part one of a message called processing my destiny.

A (0:27)

Now, most people misunderstand the term destiny. They think that it means unalterable conclusion, that it's a fate, it's kismet, it's karma, that you can't change it, that you can't control it, that you don't have anything to do with it, that God just determined your destiny and it's gonna happen no matter what you do. Nothing could be further from the truth, folks. That's what Islam teaches. That's what Buddhism teaches. That's not what Christianity teaches. In fact, the Bible teaches two very important truths about your destiny. And you might write these down on your outline. The first one is that God's destiny for my life is good. A lot of times people think their destiny is bad. It's negative, it's bitter. But the Bible says in Jeremiah 29:11, for I know the plans I have for you declares the Lord, plans to prosper. Circle that word, prosper. Plans to prosper you and not harm you. Plans to give you hope. Circle that word and a future. He says, my plan, my destiny for your life is a good plan. Now, you may have had a terrible past, you may have had a painful past, but the truth is, the story isn't over. You haven't come to the end of the movie yet. And God says, my plan, my destiny for your life is good, and it's gonna give you hope. Now, the second thing is just as important, and it's this. I get to choose my destiny. Did you know that the Bible says that you and I get to choose our destiny? God gives us a choice. In fact, you can miss the good destiny God has planned for you. It's not automatic. It's not just gonna happen whether you want it to or not. It's not involuntary. You get to choose your destiny. Now, what I want us to do today is I want us to look at an event in the Old Testament that illustrates these two facts. That God's plan, God's purpose, God's destiny for your life is good and that you're gonna get to choose it. And we're gonna look at the story of Joshua leading the children of Israel into the promised land after 40 years of wandering in the desert. Now, let me give you a little bit of background. Moses leads them out of 400 years of slavery in Egypt, and they're crossing around the desert. It should have taken 11 days to walk from Egypt to Israel. But because they didn't have the faith, they sent in some spies after about two weeks. And the spies, 10 of them, came back with a negative report and said, we can't do it. There are too many tribes there already. They're too big. We're like grasshoppers in their eyes. We can't do it. Only two guys, Caleb and Joshua said, we. We can do it. And as a result, they said no. They were afraid to take the risk, and they spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Now, in the two passages we're gonna look at, in Deuteronomy, the Bible tells us and in Joshua, the Bible tells us that Moses is about to die. He's 120 years old. Joshua is the young recruit who actually is a whole lot older now. And he's gonna replace Moses in. And he's gonna lead them across the Jordan river into the promised land. And right before that happens, God says, your destiny is your choice. Look at this verse, Deuteronomy 30, 15. Following God says, I set before you today life and prosperity or death and destruction. That's the destinies. You get to choose. Life and prosperity or death and destruction. If you love the Lord your God and you walk in his ways and you keep his commands, then you'll live and you'll increase. Circle the word increase, you'll live and you'll increase, and the Lord your God will bless you. Circle the word bless in the land you are entering to possess. Now, here's my question. Would you like to live the kind of life where God says, you're gonna really live? I'm gonna increase what you do, and you're gonna be blessed by me. Would you like that destiny? I would like that destiny. And God says, it's your choice. Look at the rest of it. He says, but if your heart turns away from me, you will not live long in the land. In other words, what you do isn't gonna matter a hill of beans. You will not live long in the land you're crossing the Jordan. To enter and possess. I have set before you. And here are the choices. Life or death. Blessing or curses. Now choose life. Underline that. Choose life so that you and your children may live. Now, I want you to notice two things about this very powerful verse. First, God had prepared a destiny for the children of Israel. He said, I've already chosen this land for you. I'm gonna give you this land. It's gonna be the Promised Land. But he says, you're gonna have to possess it. I'm not just gonna hand it to you on a platter. You're gonna have to possess it. And he says, you have to make a choice. And he says that the choices we make, notice, affect our children too. The last phrase, choose life so that you and your children may live in the next 10 years. It's gonna be the most critical 10 years in your life so far. Some of you are gonna get married in the next 10 years. Some of you are gonna retire in the next 10 years. If you have a second grader, she will be graduating from college in the next 10 years. In 10 years, I mean, a lot of things gonna happen. This is gonna be a critical junction in your life. And so we're gonna look today at how do you possess your destiny? How do you prepare for the future that God wants you to live so that you're choosing life rather than death, you're choosing blessing rather than cursing. If you wanna possess your destiny, you're gonna have to do three things. If you wanna do what God made you to do, if you wanna have everything God made for you to have, and. And if you wanna be what God made you to be, you're gonna have to do three things. They're all in this very important chapter called Joshua, chapter one. If you have your Bible, you can open to Joshua, chapter one. The fact is, you have to do the same three things that God told Joshua to do in order to possess the promised land. Now, if you're interested in success, and I hope you are, I mean, what's the alternative? Failure. God did not make you to be a failure. God does not sponsor flops. God wants you to succeed in your life being what he made you to be, doing what he made you to do, and having what he made you to have. But it's not automatic. You're not automatically gonna be, do and have what God made you to be, do and have. You have to make choices. And if you're interested in success, you need to study Joshua chapter one, because in it it mentions the word success three times. And two guarantees of success are actually in this chapter. So you need to study it if you wanna be successful in your marriage, in your family, in your career, in your education, whatever it is. Now, here's the first thing God tells Joshua to do in Order to possess his destiny. Number one, prepare a plan. That's it. He said, you've gotta prepare a plan. The future belongs to the person who plans for it and who prepares for it. It's that old cliche that we've heard over and over. If you fail to plan, you're planning to fail. Planning is a spiritual activity. The Bible has a lot to say about it. The Bible tells us it's foolish not to plan, not to think ahead, not to know where you're going. And In Joshua, chapter 1, God starts out with this, verses 1 to 4. After the death of Moses, the Lord said to Joshua, moses, my servant is dead now. Then get ready to cross the Jordan river into the land I'm giving you. And I will give you every place where you set your foot. Just as I promised Moses. He's outlining his destiny. Your territory. Listen. Will extend from the Sinai Desert to Lebanon and from the Euphrates to the Great Sea. That's the Mediterranean Ocean on the west. Now, notice, he's very specific here in outlining the borders of his destiny. Now, I want you to notice a couple things about this in preparing a plan. First, you're never gonna possess your future if you're stuck in the past. You're never gonna prepare and possess your destiny if you're always looking backwards. And the first thing God has to say to Joshua is, moses is dead. What do you need to bury in your life? What do you need to let go of? It's dead. It's over. You know, the most difficult thing to do is to keep a corpse from stinking. It's also the most expensive thing to do. There are some things you need to let go of. There's some things you need to bury. And you cannot get on with your destiny if you're always thinking about the past. He says, moses is dead. That era's over now. All the errors you've been through in your life are over. But that doesn't mean your destiny's over. You've got new eras and a new destiny. Then he says, get ready. I want you to circle that. Get ready to cross the Jordan River. In other words, you gotta prepare. You gotta plan it out. And again he says, be specific. He says, here's where you're gonna go. You're gonna go from the Sinai to Lebanon. You're gonna go from the Euphrates, which is over in Iraq, to the Mediterranean Sea. Question where do you want to be in 10 years? You're either gonna have a destiny or you're gonna Drift. And if you don't have a destiny that planned out that you wanna go toward, you're just gonna drift through the next decade. You know, I read recently a very famous study that reported this. 27% of all Americans have given no thought to the future. They've given no thought at all. 27%. About 60% of Americans have given some thought. Usually it's only in the area of finances. They only give financial planning thought. They don't think about any other area of their life. 60%. Only 10% of Americans have ever given serious thought to their Future. And only 3% of all Americans have a plan written down with goals. Only 3%. Now, they went back and they studied these four different groups and they discovered this, that almost all of the people who had no thought to the future were on welfare. They were Welfare recipients. Almost 100%. Most of the 60% who had given some thought to the future were barely making it, barely making ends meet. All of the 10% who had given serious thought were what you would call successful. All of them and those with written goals were highly successful. They were the top achievers in the nation. In fact, those who had written down goals and plans were out achieving all the others. 10 to 1. 10 to 1. Now, it's interesting. They did a study between the 10% who had given serious thought and the top 3% who had actually written down goals and a plan. And they tested them and they discovered that the successful and the highly successful, there was no difference measurably in their education or in their talent. The only difference between successful and highly successful was the top 3% had written down a life plan, had written down goals, had written down a way to moving toward their destiny. That's important. You know, a guy told me one day, he says, you know, Rick, you're just lucky that your book was a bestseller. And I said to him, I said, well, you know, maybe, but I'll tell you this. I find that the more I prepare, the luckier I get. And 12 hours a day writing and rewriting and rewriting was more than just luck. I did it for seven months. Got up at 4:30 in the morning and from 5am to 5pm I wrote on that book for seven months without fail. It was a very disciplined thing. And the more I prepared, the luckier I got. Now he says, get ready. Plan it out. And then in verse 10, he says this. So Joshua ordered the leaders. And that's who I wanna talk to today. I wanna talk to you leaders. Ordered the leaders go through the Camp and tell everyone, prepare your provisions. In three days, you'll cross the Jordan and you're gonna go in and take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving for you to own. Now, again, notice here. God says, the promised land is your destiny. But you're gonna have to take possession. I'm not just gonna hand it to you on a platter. This is not just a cakewalk. You gotta go in and take possession of it. He says, prepare. Prepare your provisions. What's he saying there? He's saying, get your supplies ready. He's saying, pack your bags. Have you packed your bags for the next decade? Are you just gonna drift through it? Have you made any plans for where you wanna be in 10 years? With your family, with your finance, with your life, with your career, with your relationship to Christ, with your small group, with your church, with your ministry, with all the things that God has given you? You know, this verse is one of my favorite verses, Psalm 24. It's a prayer. And he says, may he, God, give you the desire of your heart and make all your plans succeed? Did you know that verse was in the Bible? God says, I wanna give you the desire of your heart. I wanna make your plan succeed. Here's the problem. God can't make your plan succeed if you've never made any. Until you make plans, God can't make them succeed. So really, God is waiting on you. I give you a choice. Life or death. Blessing or curse. Now, the Bible has so much to say about the wisdom of planting. You go all through the Book of Proverbs, it's filled. Solomon says, look at the ants. The ants are smarter than most people. They plan. They store up for the winter, in the summer. You know, most people, they're gonna get to retirement, have nothing to live on. Cause they're not making any plans. They're not saving. They're spending everything they've got. Jesus said it like this. He said, no king goes to battle without first making a plan. Says it in Luke 14. And he says, no builder builds a tower without first making a plan. Do you have a life plan? Most people have spent more time planning their vacation than they have planning their lives. And I'm certain most women have spent more time planning their wedding than they planned their life. And yet the wedding is over in a day. And you got the rest of your life to live. And what have you done to plan that? We make business plans? Do we make life plans? Proverbs 20, verse 18 says this. Don't go charging into battle without a plan. Now, since we don't know the future, we give God the right to change our plans. And that's why in the book of James, James says, when you plan, you should don't say, we're gonna do this and this and this. Say, we're gonna do this, this, and this if it is the Lord's will. In other words, I don't know what's gonna be around the next turn. I don't know what's gonna happen to my life tomorrow. But it doesn't mean I don't make plans because I don't know the future. God knows the future. I just give God the right to change my plans, and it doesn't upset me. But he still wants me to make plans, even if he has an intention to change them. Because he said, that's smart, that's wise. So how do you have plans that will succeed? How do you be successful in the next 10 years? Look at this verse on the screen. Proverbs 16, 3. Commit to the Lord. Whatever you do, then your plans will what? Succeed. Now, as your pastor, I am committed to your success. In fact, I pray for your success. In fact, I was praying for you this morning, and I was praying for those who are out of work and for those who need different jobs and for those who are going through financial and marital and physical and emotional tension. And I pray as your pastor, part of my job is to help you be the success that God meant you to be, fulfilling the destiny he has for you. And how do you do that? Well, he says right there, you commit your plans to the Lord. You commit whatever you do to the Lord, and then it will succeed. You surrender your plans, you make your plans. And they say, now, Lord, this is the best I could do, but I'm surrendering them to do, and I give you the right to change them.