Find the Purpose in Your Pain and Choose Joy in Hard Times | Rick Warren

We're waiting for the police to come break down the door to find this terrible moment in our lives. And Kay and I are standing on the driveway hugging each other, sobbing, just sobbing. And Kay reaches down and she's wearing a necklace that has two words, choose joy. And I look at her and I say, how do you choose joy when your heart is breaking in a million pieces? As a pastor for so many years, I've counseled thousands and thousands of people. And I've also stood at the bedside of countless number of people as they took their last breath. Okay. And when people are dying and they know they're dying, what they say at the end is often very profound, very, very profound and very important because I think, and these are my last words on this side of eternity. And I kept hearing people talk about purpose, relationships, love, the stuff that really matters. And what I've discovered as a pastor is we eventually figure out what matters most. It just takes us so long. Okay. Not a single person that I've been with when they're dying has said, bring me my trophies. I want to see my golf trophy. Bring me my diploma. I want to look at it one more time. Bring me that gold watch I got from the business I get. No. When people die, you know what they want? They want people around them. They want relationships. And eventually we always learn it's about love. Okay. It's all about love. Now, God has five purposes for our lives. We're not going to go into all of them, but they're five. You're planned for God's pleasure. You're formed for God's family. You're created to become like Christ. You're shaped to serve God and you're made for a mission. These five purposes are modeled in Acts 2 by the first church. They're explained by Paul in Ephesians 4. Jesus prays for them in John 17. He says, this is the five things I did with the disciples, but they're best summarized in the five verbs of the great commandment and the great commission. So if nobody gets anything else that I say right now, this is PDL summarized. One day Jesus is walking down the street and guy comes up and says, Lord, what's the most important command? He goes, oh, that's not rocket science. It's easy. I can summarize all the law and the prophets in two verses. Okay. Here's the whole Old Testament, two verses. Love God. Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Oh, and by the way, love your neighbors yourself. Now we'll come back to that, but we get two of the purposes of life from the great commandment. Love God with all your heart and love your neighbors yourself. Then right before Jesus went back to heaven, he gives his last words. Last words are important. The very last thing Jesus says is go make disciples, baptize them in the name of the father, son, and Holy spirit, and teach them to do everything I've commanded you. These three purposes from the great commission and two purposes from the great commandment are the purposes of life. And they're also the purposes of the church. The purpose of the church is to help you fulfill the five purposes for your life. So what are they? Love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. The word for that in the Bible is called worship. Worship is simply expressing love to God. It is the first purpose of my life. The father seeks worshipers. Okay. Now I could be expressing love by myself in a quiet time with you in a small group, you and Lori in a small group, or with a thousand people. It's still worship. Anytime I'm expressing love to God, I'm worshiping. Okay. Love your neighbor as yourself. The word for that is called ministry or service. The Greek word is diakonia, service, deacon. We get it from that. It means to serve. And when I love God with all my heart and I serve him, that's worship. When I love other people with all my heart and I serve them, that's service or ministry. So we get worship and ministry from the great commission, commandment. In the great commission, it says, go make disciples. That's evangelism. We're to tell other people the good news. We're to pass it on. The only reason I'm saved, somebody told me, okay. Somebody told me. So I'm supposed to tell other people. And then it says, teach them to do everything I've told you. That's discipleship. Okay. That's another purpose of my life, to grow in Christ. And then in the middle, it says, by the way, baptize them. What's that? Baptism is a symbol that you're part of a family. It's a symbol of fellowship. It says, I'm not just a believer, I'm a belonger. And you guys know, we've heard a lot today. We have heard people say, well, I love Jesus. I just don't need a church. Well, that's like saying I'm a bee, but I don't need to hide. Or I'm a football player, but I don't want to be on any team. Or I want to be in the army, but not in any platoon. The Bible says a Christian without a church family is an orphan. And so we're not just believers, we're belongers. And so that's the element of fellowship, that we're better together. So the book's all about all five purposes. The most important one though, and I want to say it here, is the first one, that your number one purpose in life is to let God love you. Oh my goodness. Not for you to love God, but to let God love you. Now let me explain this. From cover to cover in this book, from Genesis to Revelation, the Bible says the whole reason the universe exists is God wanted a family. God wanted a family, okay? He didn't need a family. He wasn't lonely. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are in a relationship to themselves, in a love relationship. But he wanted a family. The Bible says God is love. Not that he has love, that he is love. It's his essence. It's his nature. It's his character. The only reason there's any love in the universe is because God created us, and he's a God of love. If God was not a God of love, you and I would not have the ability to give and receive love. The only reason we have the ability to give love and receive love is we're made in God's image. Cows don't love, slugs don't love, worms don't love, fish don't love. Only created in his image is the ability to love. Now, the Bible says God is love. If I have all this love, and I don't bestow it on something, a person, a pet, something, what good is the love? God wanted to show his love, and so he created the universe. And he created the universe just to create this galaxy, just to create this planet, just so it sits on the axis that, one degree this way, we'd burn up. The other degree this way, we'd freeze up. It's just perfectly designed for human life, just to create the human race, just so he could create Matt and Lori, just so he could love you. So for those who are listening, you've got to realize that if God paid that much attention, the whole universe was created because he wanted to create you so he could love you. If God loves me and I love me, you don't like me, what's your problem? Okay, in other words, I don't need your approval to be happy. You know what I'm saying? If I'm loved by the Father, okay, so what kind of love does God have? What's unconditional? God loves you on your good days and on your bad days. He loves you when you feel it and you don't feel it. He loves you when you think you deserve it and when you think you don't deserve it. You can't make God stop loving you. You can try, but you will fail. There's nothing you can do to make God stop loving you because God's love is not based on who you are, it's based on who he is. That's the first purpose, is to let God love me. You were planned for God's pleasure. People go, why am I made? I'll tell you why you're made. God made you to love you. If he had wanted to love you, you would not exist. God made you to love. Now, where in the world is that message not needed? This is why the book keeps selling, because it is the fundamental issue of life. Why am I here? I'm here to be loved by God. And the Bible says we love him because he first loved us. Our love's a response. We don't start with loving God. People tell me all the time, you know, pastor, you know, I think my problem is I don't love God enough. And I say, no, that's not your problem. Your problem is not that you don't love God enough. Your problem is you don't really feel and understand how much he loves you. Because if you really understood and felt how much God loves you, you can't help but love him, okay? It's not a duty. It's just I have to love somebody who loves me that much. And so I start with the first purpose of living in God's love, letting God love me, and then learning to love him back. And that's called worship. We were talking about earlier, Pastor Rick, that there was an unfulfilled question in the heart, I believe. This is my opinion, you know, maybe it wasn't, but it felt like on CNN, it felt like Larry King, since he shot his show in Los Angeles, you were often on it. And more times than not, it doesn't matter what the subject that you were there to deal with, if God is love, why do bad things happen to good people? Well, let me just, that's a great question, Matt. And I'm so glad you're asking it because when you look at these five purposes, knowing Christ and worship, loving Christ, growing in Christ, serving Christ, sharing Christ, there's lots of different ways to say these five purposes, worship, fellowship, discipleship, ministry, evangelism, and God uses problems and pain to build all five purposes in our lives. Okay. Now, you would know in your own life, if I asked you, Laurie, when have your times of worship been closer to God in pain, when you felt the heat on, both of you, when you felt like we're misunderstood, we're being criticized, things are not going the way we want them to, the finances aren't there, whatever it is, those are your deepest times of worship. Not God, C.S. Lewis said, God whispers to us in our pleasure and shouts to us in our pain. Pain is God's megaphone. So God uses pain to deepen our worship. God uses pain to deepen our fellowship. I don't grow close to you by bragging to you. I grow close to you when I tell you where I'm hurting and then it draws us close. I've been in a small group with some other couples in Southern California for 18 years. We've been through deaths in the family, cancer, job loss, suicide, you name it, all kinds of different problems. And we actually are closer together. My wife and I are closer together after losing our son to mental illness than we were before because the pain actually drew us closer together. Maybe we could talk about that a little bit because purpose doesn't prevent you from pain. Let me say that again. Purpose does not prevent you from pain. You're going to have pain in your life and it's actually part of it. And then in growth, we grow through pain. Romans chapter 8 talks about how we grow through pain. If God's going to make me like Jesus Christ, and that's his number one goal, to make me like Christ, he's going to take me through everything Jesus went through. Were there times when Jesus was lonely? Yes. Misunderstood? Yes. Criticized? Yes. Discouraged? Yes. Were there times when he was tempted? Yes. Every one of those things. Why would God take his son through those things and not take me? The Bible says Jesus learned obedience through suffering. The Bible says Jesus was made perfect through suffering. How do I think I'm going to learn those things? Same way. So it's not a lack of faith. It's part of discipleship. So God uses pain to deepen my worship, to deepen my fellowship. He uses pain to deepen my spiritual growth. There's some things we only learn through pain. And then God uses pain to give us a ministry to serve others. Your greatest ministry will likely come out of your deepest hurt. Your greatest ministry will likely come out of your deepest hurt if you'll be honest to God, honest to yourself, and honest with others to share it. So you have said pain causes growth. You have to own those words too. Yes, I have. Okay. What is the most painful event in the 20 years in your life? And how do these words help you through that? Yeah. Well, I would have said until Matthew's death, K's cancer. K got cancer right after I wrote this book. And honestly, in the early years when this book was selling a million copies every other month, honestly, the last thing I was thinking of is, oh, this is great. I'm on the cover of Time Magazine. I'm holding the bedpan while my wife throws up and her hair's falling out. I'm going, am I going to be alone with three kids? And K wrote a book one time called Choose Joy. And on it, it's a pair of railroad tracks. And this goes to your point in that I used to think that we had good times and bad times and that life was like mountains and valleys. Okay. You have high mountaintops and you have low valleys. But the truth is, life is more like a pair of railroad tracks where you get both at the same time. My goodness. The good and the bad are constantly. And no matter how good things are in your life, there's always something bad you got to be working on. Okay. And no matter how bad things are in your life, there's always something you can be thankful for. You can be grateful for. Wow. My son, my youngest son, Matthew, struggled with mental illness his entire life. He was born as a child. We could see he was clinically depressed as a child. And I remember when he was 17 years old, he came to me in tears. He loved the Lord. He had a tender heart, a tortured mind. Tender heart, tortured mind. He led people to Christ. He gave my book out to people. He would witness to people on suicide sites. He said, dad, it just doesn't work for me. I just can't get the depression out. And when 17, he came to me and he said, dad, it's real obvious. I'm not going to be healed. He said, we have gone to the best doctors. I've had the best medicine. Dad, I've gone to the best healers, men of faith, women of faith. I said, dad, you're a man of faith. Mom is a woman of faith. You've prayed for me, intercessors. I've gone to the best counselors. He said, it's real clear. I'm not going to get well. Why can't I just die and go on to heaven? I know where I'm going. Why can't I just go on? I just don't want the pain anymore. That'll break your heart as a father, okay, to have your son. And in tears, I'm standing there flooding tears down my face. And I said, Matthew, I don't think you want to die. I just think you want to be over the pain. You want relief. And I said, here's my prayer. One, I will never stop praying for a miracle because miracles do happen. As a pastor, I've seen thousands of miracles, physical miracles. I've seen many, many miracles. So I know they happen, but because they're miracles, because they don't always happen, not every time. And so sometimes it doesn't. And I said, my prayer is A, you'll be miraculously cured. Okay. And I will never stop praying for that. And I do have a prayer ministry. Number two, though, if not, I pray that through your own spiritual growth and maturity, good counselor, good medication, you'll be able to manage. Because Matthew, the truth is on this earth, not everything gets healed. This is not heaven. This is earth. In heaven, there's no more sadness, sorrow, sickness, suffering. But he said, there's pain here on earth. And that's why we are to pray in the Lord's prayer. Because in heaven, God's will is done perfectly, completely, instantly, and continuously. On earth, none of that's true. I often don't do God's will. You often don't do God's will. Other people, and so we hurt people intentionally, unintentionally. And there's, everything is broken on this planet by sin. The weather's broken. The economy's broken. Our bodies are broken. Our minds are broken. Everything's, we live in a broken planet. And that's why the Bible says in Romans, creation groans for the day of salvation. So I said, what do you do when a problem can't be solved? And there, if I have a child who has cerebral palsy, that child's going to have it the rest of its life, most likely. In those kinds of things, you have to manage the problem. And some problems aren't miracles. Some problems are managed for the glory of God. Johnny gave glory to God without a miracle, has done her entire life. Okay. And many others have done that too, who've lived with thorns in the flesh. And they gave glory to God either through a miracle or through managing it. Either way, God gets glory. So my prayer is that you'll be able to manage it. And then God will give you a ministry of helping other people. Well, about eight years ago, Matthew'd come over to our house for dinner one night. And we had a good time. We watched TV, played a few games. There's no problem, no rift. He lived in his own home. As he was leaving, he said, Dad, I'm just so tired. I'm so tired. And that was the last we heard from him. Wow. So about 24 hours later, we are worried because what we feared might happen someday and what we would pray would never happen. We go over to his house. His car's in the driveway. The door's locked. We don't have a key to get into his house. And we're waiting for the police to come break down the door to find this terrible moment in our lives. Kay and I are standing on the driveway, hugging each other, sobbing, just sobbing. And Kay reaches down and she's wearing a necklace that has two words that are the words of the title of the book she'd just written, Choose Joy. And I look at her and I say, how do you choose joy when your heart is breaking in a million pieces? How do you choose joy? The police came, broke the door down, found the inevitable bad news. They're carrying my sons out in a body bag. And if I hadn't had a small group, I don't know that I'd still be in ministry right now. But that group that I'd been in for so many years, those couples showed up within 30 minutes, 15, 20 minutes on that driveway. And they didn't say anything. They just hugged us, okay? They just hugged us. And they said, we're not going to leave you alone tonight. The guys hugged me and the women hugged Kay. They said, we're coming to your house. You don't have to say anything. We're just going to be with you. This is an important thing I want to say to those of you who are watching. I teach this to pastors all around the world. The deeper the pain, the fewer words you use. This is an important thing to remember. The deeper the pain, the fewer words you use. If somebody's having a bad hair day, you can have a 30-minute conversation, okay? But if somebody's just lost a son to suicide, you show up and shut up. There's nothing you can say. It's the ministry of presence. People say, I don't know what to say. Don't say anything. Just show up and shut up. That is the ministry of presence. Now, let me go back to when I was saying how God uses in every purpose. Out of that pain came, for the next 16 weeks, I spent it alone with God. I was either with Kay or with God. I didn't do any preaching, no staff meeting, nothing for 16 weeks. I had all my buddies, okay, Judah Smith and Judd Wilhite and Greg Laurie, all came in and preached for me for 16 weeks. I was either with God or with Kay and just listening. I received during that time, I'm not exaggerating, maybe 30,000, 35,000 letters of condolences. The ones that meant the most to me, honestly, Matt, were not the ones from rock stars and presidents and prime ministers. They wrote me. Many, many people that I didn't know wrote me and gave great condolences. The ones that meant the most to me were people that Matthew had led to Christ. And they said, I know that Matthew struggled with mental illness his entire life, but he led me to faith. And I'm going to be in heaven because of him. And he was talking to me on a side site and he talked me out of it. And I'm going to be in heaven because, and I remember writing in my journal that day, in God's garden of grace, even broken trees bear fruit. And then I wrote, and we're all broken. Okay, we're all broken. So if you think that reading Purpose Driven Life is going to give you a perfect life, don't even bother. It will give you a life of purpose and it will help you understand how God uses all these things. And the fifth thing was God uses pain to be a witness. I actually think that our greatest witness to the world is how we handle pain. Not how we handle good times. There's a guy I've been witnessing to on my block for 20 years, and he was not interested in anything. He just shut down, closed. But when Matthew died, I remember driving by one day and he's out watering his lawn. And he looks up at me and he goes, and I'm going, that got to him. That got to him. And all of a sudden it was real. And he was watching how I was handling the worst circumstances of my life. And so, as I say, your greatest ministry will come out of your deepest pain. I say that from experience. There's not a week go by that somebody famous calls me with either a mental illness issue or a suicide issue. And I'm talking about from the highest of the highest people, personalities in politics and in celebrity. And Kay and I did not ask for this ministry of ministering to families with mental illness and ministering to families struggling with suicide of a family member. I didn't want that ministry, but it's one that God gave us. And I'm not going to waste the pain. So I would say to everybody, whatever your pain is, have you been molested? My wife was molested as a little girl in a church. She has used that pain to help others. Okay. Cancer. You're going to go through pain in life. Just don't waste it. If you're going to go through pain, you might as well use it to help somebody else out. We need this program now, Rick, to be purpose-driven. And that, you know, you didn't write this book and we're not sitting here with cameras and TV to do anything other than one thing. And that's lead people to Jesus. Would you look into the camera and get someone's life started on that journey that you know? It would be my honor, Matt. Thank you. You know, I don't know who you are, where you came from or what your background is, but I do know this. You mattered, God. You matter to God. And the reason that you exist is God made you to love you. He made you to love you. If he hadn't wanted to love you, you wouldn't exist. And if God were to say to you today, these words, he would say, I thought you up. I formed you in your mother's womb. I have watched every day of your life. The good days, the bad days, the ups and downs, the highs, lows. And I have never, never stopped loving you. And all of the pain that you've gone through, I have wept. The Bible says God cries. I have wept at the pains that you have gone through. And I have waited for this day and I, I want you to know me. We're not talking about religion. We're talking about a personal relationship. I made you for a friendship. You know, I am a friend of God. I have walked with him now for over 50 years. I know his voice. I know his touch. And I know that no matter what I face in the future, I'll handle it because God is with me. He's never not with me. Have you ever thought that maybe the pain you're going through right now is to get your attention and for God to say to you, I'm standing here waiting for you, but he's a gentleman. He doesn't come into your life until you invite him in. You say, what will happen if I open my life to the love of Jesus Christ? Three things will happen in your life. Past, present, future. First, your past forgiven. Second, purpose for living. Third, a home in heaven. Past forgiven, purpose for living, home in heaven. Who else can offer that to you? Nobody. You were made by God and you were made for God. Until you understand that, life will never make sense. The purpose of your life is not your career. The purpose of your life is not your family. The purpose of your life is not your hobbies. Those are all good things. They're all gifts of God. But what the purpose of your life is, is to let God love you and to learn to love him back. You say, what do I do? You just be honest. It really doesn't matter the words you say as much as a humble attitude that says, God, I need you. There was a guy that came to Jesus one time who had a daughter who needed to be healed. And he said, Lord, I need you to heal my daughter. And Jesus said, well, do you believe I can heal her? And he said, Lord, I want to believe. Help me with my unbelief. Jesus said, that's good enough. And he healed her right on the spot. I wish somebody had told me years ago that I didn't have to have all my questions answered in order to open up my life to Jesus Christ. I didn't have to have all of my excuses fulfilled and all my reasons and rationales answered. I just had to take a simple step of faith. Lord, I want to believe. Help me with my doubts. I've walked with the Lord now all these many, many years. There's still things in this book I don't understand. And I go, wow, I don't know that I would have done it that way if I was God. Thank God I'm not God. His ways are not my ways. But I don't have to understand the chemistry of digestion to eat a steak and enjoy it. And I don't have to understand how internal combustion works to drive a car. I don't even have to understand how right now TV waves are going through the air and going right through my body. And you're seeing this. But it doesn't keep me from benefiting from it. So I'm going to ask you to make a simple step of faith right now. And that is to lay aside all the doubts and all the questions. We'll work on those. And there are legitimate answers to those. But to take a simple step and say, Lord, I want to believe. Help me with my doubt. One night many, many years ago in a cabin in Northern California at a Christian camp, I was working as the lifeguard at a Christian camp. And I walked into that cabin at night and I got down on my knees and I prayed a simple prayer, something like this. And I said, God, if there is a God, I want to know you. And if you can give me a better life than I'm living right now, I want it. Yeah, I'd like to go to heaven, but I really would like a better life right now. And so as much as I know how, I open my life to you and I say, yes, yes, I'm giving you a blank check and I'm signing my name. You fill in the amount. And for the rest of my life, I will live for you and I'll love you and I'll learn to serve you because you made me, you saved me. You have a purpose for my life. You want me with you forever. The whole reason I exist is because of your love. And you know, when I prayed that simple prayer, you know what happened? Nothing. I didn't actually feel any different. No angels came down, no wings fluttered, no blinding light. My hair didn't turn white like Charlton Heston, but that was the turning point in my life. And that simple decision changed the rest of my life. It's kind of like one day, I stood in front of a bunch of people and I said two words that changed my life, said them to my wife. I said, I do. Two words, I do. When I said those two words, I had no idea what I was doing. And the rest of my life for 45 years, I've been working out the implications of two words. I do. It's like, that's in the fine print. And Kay will say, yeah, that's part of the I do. Oh, okay. That's in the idea. Yeah, okay. Then I do that too. I do too. You don't have to understand it all right now. You just have to take a little bit of faith. Say, well, I don't have any faith. Yeah, you do. When you sit down in a chair, you have faith that the chair will hold you up. You drive a car, you have a faith that you can drive. You use faith every moment of your life. It's what you put it in. So take that little faith right now and I'm going to lead you in a simple prayer. It's going to change your life, not just for the rest of your life, but for all of eternity. All right, you don't have to close your eyes. You can look at me right now. I'll look at you and you look at me. Okay, just say these words. Dear God, say that in your life. Dear God, as much as I know how, I invite Jesus Christ into my life. I don't understand it all, but I know I need you. And I want to get to know you. And I want to learn to trust you. And I want to know your purpose for my life. Why am I here? And what do you want to do with my life? And I'm saying, yes, Lord, that's my answer. Even before you ask the question. Yes, thank you for loving me. Thank you for dying for me. I want to give my life completely to you. In your name, I pray this. Now, if you prayed that prayer just now, the Bible says in the book of Romans, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Now, would God lie? No, God isn't capable. People say, what, is there anything God can't do? Yes, there's something God can't do. God cannot lie. And if he says, I will save you if you call on my name. Did you call on his name? If you followed me in that prayer, you just called on his name. Then according to scripture, no matter what you feel, high, low, or whatever, you've been brought into the kingdom of God. You brought into the family of God. You're a child of God. You were always loved by him. You were created by him. But now you're in his family. You know what the first thing you need as a family? You need to find a family home. You need to get a church. There are lots of good churches in your area. If you don't have one, well, call TBN, look up Saddleback. We'll help you find one in your area to find a place. And the number one thing you need as a new Christian is a family. They'll help you get all the other stuff in your life. But I will be praying for you. Matt and Lori, you guys will be praying for them. Absolutely. And this is the most important decision you've ever made. Now, let me just say this. Sometimes there's a little bit of delayed reaction. I remember when I said those words to my wife, I do, and I got married. And I remember I woke up the next morning after our wedding night and I rolled over in bed and I looked at my wife and I said to Kay, my new wife, so I said, you know, I don't feel very married. She said, well, it doesn't matter whether you feel like it or not, Buster, you're married. Okay. You made a commitment. You are married. Okay. Well, it was about two weeks later. I was actually at the end of the honeymoon. I remember waking up one morning and I rolled over in bed and I looked at Kay laying there and I go, I get this woman to be my wife for the rest of my life. And I got so excited about it. I got out of bed. They started jumping around. I go, I'm married. I'm married. She goes, well, a little delayed reaction, but at least you got it. So the emotions can come now or they can come later. But when God comes into your life, he starts making changes. God bless you.