Pastor Rick Warren (0:02)

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, hangups 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 join Rick for part two of a message called the Growth Choice Number three.

Rick Warren (0:40)

Third thing I have to do to keep on growing is focus on my goal, not my habit. Focus on my goal, not my habit. When I say habit, I'm talking about those habits, hurts, hang ups, those sins, those weaknesses, the failures, the things in your life you don't like. What I'm saying is, if you wanna grow, you have to focus on what you want, not what you don't want. Why is this so important? Because God designed the universe with one of the laws of the universe is the law of attention. And the law of attention states that whatever you focus on, whatever gets your attention attracts you. It pulls you. There is a natural pulling when you focus on something. Have you ever stood on a cliff or on a tall building and you looked over and all of a sudden you felt like you were being pulled over? Ever felt like that? That's the law of attraction. That's the law of attention. It's whatever gets your attention. You tend to move toward. Well, obviously you don't move toward things that don't have your attention. So then you need to choose to make sure your attention is toward good things, not bad things. You gotta change your mind. And when I was a little kid, my mom loved to make desserts. But your kid never have dessert until after dinner. But she would make the dessert first and then start on dinner. And I can't tell you how many times I'd go into the kitchen and there was a hot apple piece. Man, let's just pause there for a minute. I can smell that hot apple pie. Okay. Or some other kind of pie or cookies. When Kay makes cookies, oh, man, that's the quickest way to get me out of my office. When Kay loves to make desserts, and man, I like to go down and watch her make desserts. And she's over there and she's making the batter for chocolate chip cookies. And I walk over and I go, what are you doing? I'm making cookies. What are you doing? Watching. She knows I didn't come down to watch. I Came down to stick my finger in there and get a big gob of that chocolate cookie dough. I don't come to watch. It's like when I'm a little kid, mom has these hot cookies, walk up to the. What you doing, Ricky? I'm just watching, mom, right? I'm watching, I'm watching, I'm watching, I'm watching, I'm watching. It's kind of like saying, I don't want to eat it. I don't want to eat it. I don't want to eat it. I don't want to eat it. I ate it. Whatever you resist, persists. And so whatever you want to change in your life, you don't focus on what you focus on, you end up going toward. That's why I love Celebrate Recovery because Celebrate Recovery is a forward looking growth process. So much of today's answers to getting over your hurts and hangups is looking at the past. And you could go to a counselor and spend two, three years just wallowing in your past, moaning and moaning and mourning and just wallowing in your past. Friends, your past is past. You are not your past. Your past influenced you. Your past does not define you. You are not your past. It's over. What matters today is not your past. What matters today is what direction your feet are headed right now. I don't care what you've done, who you did it with, or how long you did it. That's not you. Satan will tell it's you. But that's not the truth. You are the direction your feet are headed right now. So stop focusing on your past. It's over. It's not gonna change. It's done, it's dead, it's over. And if you wanna grow, you must focus on the future. Focus on what you want, not what you didn't want. I wish I hadn't had that happen to me. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's the old way. It keeps you stuck in a rut. So what do you do? You focus on your goal, not your habit. In other words, this is why diets don't work. When you're on a diet, what do you focus on all the time? Focus. Food. You think far more about food on a diet than you do when you're off a diet. What happens? You're focused on man, that would be good. It's like the guy who's smoking. One of these days I'm gonna give up smoking. Yeah, I know. These are coffin nails. One of these. I know. It's bad for me. What are you doing the whole time you're focusing on what you don't want, and that's keeping you stuck in a rut. You gotta focus on something else. This is what Paul talks about in Philippians. Notice these verses. He says, I don't mean that I've already as God wants me to be. Well, duh, none of us are already as God wants us to be. I have not yet reached that goal. How many of you would agree with Paul? I have not yet reached that goal. Yeah, okay. But he says, there's the Word again. I continue. You might circle. Continue. We're to continue connecting, continue in the word. We are to continue trying to reach the goal. I continue trying to reach it and make it mine. Christ wants me to do this, which is the reason he made me his. Now turn your outline over and notice the rest of this verse. The very next verse says this. No, I'm still not all I should be. And neither am I or neither are you. But I am focusing all my energies. He's purpose driven. Focusing all my energies on this one thing. Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead. I strain to reach the end of the race. I wanna get the gold medal and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven. So don't focus on what happened. Focus on what you want to happen. You're always looking at your past. You're driving, looking in the rearview mirror. You're gonna crash. So stop it. It's over. You wanna finish the race? Fix a daily time with God. Fill your mind with God's word and focus on his goals for your life, his future for you, not your past. Now, I believe in setting goals. I've set them all my life. Why? Because goals are simply statements of faith. And the Bible says the just shall live by faith. The Bible says without faith, it is impossible to please God. The Bible says whatsoever is not of faith is sin. The Bible says that it is faith according to your faith, that will be done unto you. God always operates in your life by faith. And a goal is a statement of faith. That's why you need goals in your life. A goal says, I believe God wants me to accomplish such and such by this date. If you don't have a date, it's not a goal, it's a wish. It's a dream, it's a desire. But wishes are a dime a dozen. They're worthless. The only thing that will change your life is setting a goal. Not a wish, not a desire, not just a dream. You gotta Wake up from the dream and go to work. And you have to have a goal. And a goal has a deadline. In fact, a faith goal, according to your faith, what we've done and do has five characteristics. Write these down. This is what a faith goal is. F, A, I, T, H. A faith goal. F stands for it's focused. It is focused. That means it is specific. It's not vague. It's not general. It's not just a desire, a whim, a wish. A faith goal is focused. You're very specific about it. And you say, I want to accomplish such and such by this date. Now, if you use the word more or less, it's not a focused goal. I want to be more kind. I want to weigh less. That's not a goal. I want to be more like Jesus. I want to be less angry, less impatient. I want to exaggerate less. How you gonna measure that? You can't. It's gotta be very specific. So don't use more and less. That's too vague. A stands for attainable. A faith goal is attainable. If you set an unrealistic goal, it's just gonna discourage you. If you say, you know, I'm gonna pray three hours a day, you'll make that one day, maybe an unattainable goal. Don't ever set an unattainable goal. It's worthless. Set one that stretches you. But you think in faith you can accomplish with God's help. An attainable goal is possible. It's practical. You say, well, I know I could do this. And you set a goal and you ask God to help you in that goal. I stands for individual. A faith goal is an individual goal. That means it's personal. You cannot set goals for other people because you can't control them. You can't set goals for your children. You can't set goals for your husband. You can't set goals for your boyfriend or your girlfriend. You can only set goals for you because you can control you. You can't control anybody else. Now, you can have a family goal by changing you. Because when you change you, it changes everybody else. If you've acted a certain way and all of a sudden you've decided you're not gonna act that way anymore, all of a sudden, everybody else has to relate to you in a new way. The only way you can change other people is by changing yourself. But you set an individual goal. Not, we need to do this. It's, I need to do this. T stands for trackable. A faith goal is trackable. That Means you can measure it. It's verifiable. You set a date and you say, okay, by November 30th, I will have accomplished this. And by December 30th, I will have Accomplished this. And by January 30th, I will have accomplished this. And on and on and on. You set a date and it's trackable and you can measure it. And then H in faith stands for heartfelt. Heartfelt. It's gotta be heartfelt. If you don't feel it, don't set it. You see a passionate, passionless goal you'll never reach. Nothing is accomplished without passion. If you're not passionate about the goal, wait until you get passionate about it. If you don't have a deep desire to do it, don't set it. You're not gonna accomplish it. Now, I wanna encourage you to set one goal today, one spiritual goal in your life. And set it. And let's just say you're gonna do it by Christmas. Maybe your goal is to have a quiet time every day between now and Christmas. That is all these things. It's a F, A, I, T, H goal. I'm going to have a quiet time with God and maybe five minutes a day. I'm going to go out and sit down in the backyard and I'm going to say, God, is there anything you want to say to me today? And I'll be quiet for a minute and I'll talk to him in prayer and I'll read his word and let him talk to me and just say, that's a measurable goal. Now let me explain to you that growth, spiritual growth, is not an unbroken string of successes. It's not just like this. Nobody grows like this. Nobody goes through life with an unbroken string of successes, with no struggles, no suffering and no sin. It just doesn't happen. Growth is a curvy road. The road to recovery is jagged. The road to recovery is a lot of twists and turns. The road to health, to wholeness, to spiritual maturity often means three steps forward, two steps back. Three steps forward, two steps back, three steps forward, two steps back. Relapse is a part of the process, so don't beat yourself up. But a relapse is when you fall back into an area that you used to fall into, but you don't fall into it as often as you used to. Now, let me tell you this. Whatever your common area of weakness, you're probably gonna struggle with it the rest of your life. That doesn't mean you're not gonna have victory over it. Oh, you can. It's very possible to have victory over it, but you're still gonna be tempted. There is an unlikely chance that you will never not be tempted. I mean, the person who says, well, thank God, I haven't been tempted in 20 years, well, guess what? You're a liar. Because you're going to be. If it's your area of weakness, you're going to naturally tend to go back to that in times of stress. So if you're naturally tempted to control things, you're gonna fight that the rest of your life. If you're naturally tempted to. To be shy, if you're naturally tempted to lose your temper, if you're naturally tempted to say certain words, if you're naturally tempted to become bitter, if you're naturally tempted in any area of life, you're gonna probably struggle with that the rest of your life. And when those temptations come back to you, sometimes we get intimidated and we go, what am I doing? What am I? I shouldn't have that anymore. No, you'll probably have those attractions your entire life. Life. The Bible doesn't promise a temptation free life. It promises a victorious life. Which means, as the Bible says in Galatians, those who walk in the Spirit will not fulfill the lust of the flesh. Doesn't mean I don't have the lust of the flesh. It means I don't fulfill it. And if I have a natural attraction towards something, that may be a wrong attraction, but it doesn't mean that I'm wrong. It just means that's a natural attraction in my life. I just don't give into it. And so I don't beat myself up. And I go, well, oh, man, I thought I was never gonna do that again. No, you just realize you stumbled, you fell, and so you must learn how to deal with relapse. How do you do that? Fourth step. Step four is I face and forsake my failures quickly. You're going to stumble in life, but the key is not trying to live a perfect life. The key is to face and forsake my failures quickly. And I don't cover them up, and I don't blame others, and I don't excuse myself, and I own up to it. I've never met anybody who didn't want to be successful. The Bible says this here on the screen. Proverbs 28:13. People who cover over their sins will not prosper. You want to be prosperous in life. You want to be successful in life. There it is. People who cover over their sins will not prosper. Why because you got God on the opposite side of you. But if they confess and forsake them, they will receive mercy. Here's the problem. It's easy to confess and forsake a sin from five years ago. It's difficult to confess and forsake the one I just did five years ago. Oh, yeah, I'm sorry, God, it was wrong. I did it. It was bad. Yeah. But if I am in an argument with you and I just blew it, I don't wanna confess it at that second. That's ego. That's ego. I need to confess and forsake instantly. This is the key to spiritual growth. I let it go quickly. I don't let sins pile up in my life. I keep short accounts with God. I take out the garbage on a daily basis. I don't let garbage pile up in my life. And when I stumble, I don't go, well, I shouldn't be stumbling. So I'm not even gonna admit it. I'm just gonna cover it up. No, I admit it. I don't cover it up and I confess it and I forsake it quickly. The quicker the better. And that's how you deal with relapse. You don't be ashamed. You just go, I'm on the road to recovery. I'm on the road to development. You keep short of counsel of God. Now, how do you do that? One of the ways is by personal self examination. And I'm not gonna go into this, but there are three ways you wanna examine yourself. There's a spot check where how am I feeling right now? And there's a daily examination where like at the end of the day you kinda go, okay, how'd I do today in my steps and my recovery, in my growth. And then there's an annual checkup where you kinda do like a spring cleaning. And you do that. And those are all good. The Bible says this, Let us examine our ways and let us test them and return to the Lord. The Bible talks about the value of personal examination. If you don't ever examine yourself, you're not gonna grow. In fact, look at this verse. The Bible says, in 1 Corinthians 11:31, if we examine ourselves, we will not be examined by God and judged in this way. Whoa. God says, now either you can judge yourself or I'll judge you. Which would you rather do? You can judge your own sins or you can have God judge them. God says if you judge your own sins and you own up to it right away and you don't cover it up, and you just go, oh God, I stumbled again. I don't wanna say these things to my kids, but I did. And I don't wanna use that word, but I did. And I don't wanna look at that channel, but I did. And I don't wanna be controlling, but I was. And on and on and on. You just admit it to God. That's part of the growth process. You don't beat yourself up, you don't tear yourself down. You say, God, thank you, I'm not the way I used to be. And yeah, I dropped the ball and the string unwound a little bit, but I'm gonna pick it up and I'm gonna wind it up again. And it didn't completely unwind that ball of string. It just unwound a little bit. So I'm gonna pick it up and I'm gonna wind it up again. And hopefully it's gonna be a long time between the next one. Cause I'm gonna focus on the future, not on the past.