What on Earth Am I Here For? · Part 2

0:29 1 Peter 1, verse 3. God has given us the privilege of being born again so that we are now, notice, members of God's own family. You're not in God's family if you haven't been born again. You're loved by him, you're created by him, but you're not in his family. There's only two ways to get in the family, and both these verses mention them. You gotta either be adopted or born in it. And Jesus says, I'm doing both. I'm adopting you, and you're born again. So that's how you get into God's family. Now, you're automatically a part, when you're born physically, you automatically become a part of the human race. You don't have any choice. When you're born physically, you automatically become a part of the human race. But you're not part of a local family until somebody makes a decision to bring you home. It's a choice.

1:24 The same is true spiritually. when you're when you are spiritually born again you're born into god's universal family but you're not a part of his physical family called the church until you choose to say that's going to be my family that's going to be my home that's going to be my spiritual base what is god's family we looked at it last week first timothy chapter 3 verse 15 that family is the church it is the church of the living God, the support and foundation of the truth. The church isn't an institution, it's a family. Now, God's purpose for your life includes not just believing in him, but belonging in his family. So you can say, I'm a believer, but you could also say, I'm a belonger. Because being in the family of God is what makes you saved, being part of his family. Now, notice it said there, that family is the church, the support and foundation of truth.

2:23 what happens when a building has no foundation and support? It collapses. We've seen that in California a lot because of earthquakes. You need the spiritual support of God's family and you need a small group to support you when you go through the earthquakes of life. What's the support structure for your life? The church, God's spiritual family. 1 Peter 2, 17, love your spiritual family. That's what it says. love that's about as clear as you can get it you were commanded by god to love your spiritual family if you don't love this family just find one choose a church family say that's the church family i'm i'm gonna love you know when you get to heaven one day you're gonna do two things in heaven you're gonna love god and you're gonna love his family what does god want you to do while you're here on earth for 80 years? Practice. So when you get to heaven, you practice loving God and loving other believers in his family. Why? So when you get to heaven, you're not a doofus.

3:28 You already know how to love God and you already know how to love other Christians who often were not always lovable. And you aren't either, by the way. All right. To dwell above with those we love, that will be a glory to dwell below with those we know. Well, that's another story. You know, we love people in the ideal, but we don't love them in the real because we all have warts and problems and we mess up. God wants us to learn to love real people, not ideal people. That's why he put the people around you who are sitting next to you. Don't look at them. Be cool, okay? But God intentionally allows people in your life to sandpaper your rough edges. Okay? So don't go home and say, honey, thank you, heavenly sandpaper. You know, just, but you know what I'm talking about.

4:21 Hebrews 10, verse 25 on the screen. The Bible says this. Let us not give up the habit of meeting together. Instead, let us encourage one another. God wants worship to be a habit. Notice the word habit. Circle the word habit on your outline. God wants worship to be a habit, but he also wants fellowship to be a habit. Now here's the second purpose. The second purpose of life is to learn to love others. The second purpose of life, first purpose of life, to learn to love God. Second purpose, and that's called worship. Second purpose of life is to learn to love others, and that's called fellowship. Like two fellows on a ship, you gotta get along. Because you're headed in the same direction, you may as well get along. All right, purpose number one, I'm planned for God's pleasure. He made me to love me. Purpose number two, I'm formed for God's family. He made me to go through life in a church family, not to go through it by myself, where you get support in the tough times.

5:21 Number three, purpose number three, God created me to become like Christ. I was created to become like Christ. God created me to become like Christ. Now, once you understand this third purpose, a whole lot of life is going to make a lot more sense, particularly all the problems and the trials and the troubles you go through. Because God wants you to grow up spiritually. His goal isn't to make life comfortable for you here on earth. That's heaven. That's coming someday. This is the school. This is where you're learning. This is where you want to grow in character. and he sent Jesus Christ to be the model of what he wants every woman and what he wants every man to become. He wants us to learn to think like Christ, to act like Christ, to feel like Christ, to treat other people like Christ, to be like Christ in our attitudes and our actions and in our thoughts.

6:16 Jesus Christ was the perfect human being. We're never gonna achieve perfection here on earth, but that's our model. You were created to become like Christ. starting now here on earth. And when you get into heaven, God's gonna finish it in heaven. And you're gonna be completely transformed into perfection. Now, as I said, once you understand this, a lot of life's gonna make sense. God is far more interested in what you are becoming than what you are doing. He's much more interested in what you are in life than in what you do in life. People always worry, Does God want me to do this, a job, or that job, or that job? Does God want me to have this career, that career, this career? God would probably say, really, your choice. What I'm more interested in is the kind of woman you become while you're in that job. What kind of man are you becoming while you're in that job?

7:12 Are you becoming more godly like me? Now, you're never going to be a god. That's the oldest lie. Satan said, eat this fruit, and you'll be your own god. That's the new age. You're your own god. You're not a God. You're not even a mini me God. Okay, now you'll never be a God. If you're a God, you can't solve your own problems, much less the problems of the whole world. But God wants you to become godly. That means like him in character. He wants you to be loving and kind and patient and all these different things. So why is God more interested in your character than your career?

7:53 Why? Because you're not taking your career into eternity, but you are taking your character. You're taking the kind of person you became on this planet into eternity. So what you become is far more important than what you do in your life. You could do a lot of different things, but the key issue is, are you growing spiritually? Are you becoming like Christ? Romans 8, 29 says this. From the very beginning, God decided that those who came to him, and he all along knew who would, should become like his son. This is the third purpose in life, to become like Christ. You're created to become like Christ in character. Colossians 1.15 says, we look at the son and we see God's original purpose in everything created.

8:46 He's the goal. Friends, what I'm telling you right now is not plan B. It's been God's plan from the very beginning of creation. The very first thing God said was, let's make man in our own image. Sin marred that. But God's plan has never changed. To make you in his image, to make you have his character. To be as loving as he is. To be as truthful as he is. To be as patient as he is. To be as wise. God wants you to be made in his image. Not a God, but godly character. Now, the question I've been asked for 40 years, more than any other question, is this.

9:30 Why is this happening to me? Or, version two, why is this happening to me now? The answer to both of those is what I just said, the third purpose, in order to make you like Christ. That's the goal. God's goal is not to make you comfortable. God's goal is to make you like Christ. And we don't change when we see the light. We change when we feel the heat.

10:00 The greatest lessons in your life you will learn out of pain. I have learned nothing from success. Zero, zip, nada. I have learned nothing from fame. Everything I've learned in life, I learned through pain, conflict, and suffering. It's the greater teacher. When things go your way, you don't learn anything. You just think, I'm just really lucky. Or I'm just really smart. And you get on a big ego trip. The greatest lessons in your, the greatest ministry of your life, the greatest lessons of your life will often come out of your deepest pain.

10:44 God speaks to us, whispers to us in our pleasure, he shouts to us in our pain. Now, how does God make us more like Jesus? The Bible says this, Philippians 2, 5, in your lives you must think and act like Christ Jesus. That's the third purpose, that as I get older, hopefully I'm thinking more like Christ. Not like myself, but like Christ. How does God do that? First place, what is Jesus like? Well, the perfect picture of Jesus is Galatians 5, 22 and 23, the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, faithfulness, self-control. Those nine qualities are a perfect picture of Jesus. And God wants to build those things in your life, often by putting you in the exact opposite situation.

11:43 How does God make us like Christ? Am I, like, God wants me to be more loving. I wanna be a great lover in life. I wanna love people deeply. How does God build love in my life? I'm just walking down the street one day, and all of a sudden, zap, all of a sudden, I'm filled with love, and I love everybody. No, it doesn't work that way. How does God teach me real love? By putting me around some unlovable people. it's easy to love people like you who are cool but if God's going to teach you real love he'll put you around some unlovely people how about joy how does god teach you joy joy is different than happiness happiness depends on happenings happenstance circumstance disneyland's the happiest place on earth i go to disneyland i'm happy when i come out i realize how much i spent i'm not happy it's circumstantial happiness doesn't last joy is internal and joy is eternal you learn joy in the middle of grief that's where as Kay's great book says you choose joy joy is a choice and you learn it in the middle of grief I wish I had time to go into each of these but how about peace how does God teach peace not with everything going your way you're out fishing fly fishing in Alaska you go man it doesn't get any better than this this is great anybody can be peaceful there how does God teach It's real peace.

13:15 Everything's going wrong in your life. And you're under pressure. And the phone rings and the doorbell and the baby just threw up and the dog bit the cat. Cat bit the head off the Barbie. God allows you an exact opposite situation. Now, becoming like Christ is a journey. It's gonna take your entire life. You're not gonna become like Christ overnight. I'm still not there. But I can say like Paul, thank God I'm not what I used to be. Thank God I am what I am right now. Thank God I'm not what I'm gonna be. you. And that's true with you too. It is a journey. This is the third purpose of your life. Now write this down. The third purpose of life is to grow spiritually, to grow up, to grow up spiritually.

14:16 And that is called discipleship. We've talked about worship, fellowship, discipleship. These are loving God, loving his family, and growing up like him. Knowing Christ, growing in Christ, loving his family. God wants you to grow up. Every problem in your life has a purpose. And if you'll trust me on this, trust God's word, don't trust me, trust God's word on this, you can learn from any situation in life, no matter how bad, how evil it is, how painful it is. You can learn from any situation in life if you'll have the right attitude.

14:58 And that's how you turn your scars into beauty marks in your life. That's how you watch God transform and turn beauty for ashes and restore all the years that have been messed up. The Bible says in Hebrews 6 verse 1, Let us go on and become mature. This is God's goal for your third purpose. Let us go on to become mature in our understanding as strong Christians ought to be. Is it possible to grow old without growing up? Oh, baby. We all know people like that who grew old and never grew up. And they were still self-centered, self-serving, cranky, bitter as little old men or little old ladies. You can grow old and not ever grow up. This is the fundamental problem in our culture in America and literally all around the world today is we have an incredibly immature culture. It's full of spiritual babies. You say, why do you say it? Babies are self-absorbed. That's all they can think. They can't think about anybody else but themselves. Babies are self-absorbed. Babies are impatient. They want it now. They don't understand the difference between no and not yet. Babies cannot delay gratification.

16:31 If anything describes our culture, I want it now. I want sex now. I want to buy it now. I want pleasure now. I want everything now. I'm not willing to wait for anything. The inability to delay gratification has destroyed one culture after another for thousands of years and we're in that cycle right now babies are focused on their feelings today it doesn't matter what the truth is it's what i feel and if i feel it it must be true i feel i'm this so i must be that well your feelings lie to you all the time but focused on feelings and focused on short-term emotions and short-term goals not long-term art we have an incredibly immature culture

17:17 but God wants us to grow up spiritually Wow, some powerful words from Pastor Rick. And now this really is one of my favorite parts of the broadcast, letters from our listeners. Here's Rick. Friends, it's exciting to get letters from all over the world from people whose lives are being transformed by God's Word as they listen to the Daily Hope broadcast. Here's one from Rafael in Brazil who says, listening to the podcast is a regular part of his morning routine. He wrote, Dear Pastor Rick, I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the Daily Hope podcast. I listen to it every single day. I started listening to it to improve my English skills. Good idea. But then it turns out that it improved me as a servant of God. I use it as my daily devotional, and it's become one of the first things I do in my routine every day. It has changed my spiritual life. And every day when I get up, my first thought is, what am I going to receive from God today through the Daily Hope podcast? Pastor Rick, I also try to share the messages that impact me the most with my family and with my parents and with the people from my church. I've shared some messages with my father because he's also learning from it. Sadly, he doesn't know English because of that. Sometimes I translate the message into Portuguese for him so he can understand it. Wow. Thanks for writing, Raphael, and I'm really blessed to hear how you wake up every day expecting God to speak to you.

18:52 Psalm 130 verse 5 says, I wait expectantly, trusting God to help, for he has promised. You know, it's wonderful to know that God's using daily hope to strengthen your faith, and that you are using it to help your friends and family learn to hear from God too. So Raphael, thank you for taking the time to translate daily hope for your father. That shows that you really care about him and you care about others learning the hope that we have in Jesus. Now our team, I'm going to say this to everybody, our team is working really hard to translate daily hope teaching. And as new languages become available, we're going to post them for free on rickwarren.org. That's rickwarren.org. You can go and see the translations we've already got. And if you can help us by financially supporting a translation, that would make all the difference in the world. So I'd like to encourage all of our listeners to share daily hope with your friends and your family.

19:52 We want everybody to keep hearing that there's hope in God's Word and in God's Son. God bless you.