Knowing What Matters Most - Part 1

Hey everyone, thanks for joining us today on Pastor Rick's Daily Hook. This is the place where Rick Warren brings you uplifting messages from God's Word every day to help you grow deeper in faith and live a life with purpose. Today we're continuing in a powerful series called Toolbox for Life. In this series, Rick teaches us four essential skills that you need to succeed. Wherever God has placed you, whether it's at home, at work, at school, or in your community, these are tools that every follower of Jesus absolutely needs. So let's jump right in for part one of a message called Knowing What Matters Most. Now what would you think if I were to announce this weekend this, I've just read an incredible self-help book. And this book tells me that I can be anything that I want to be. If I just really desire it and work really hard, I can become anything I want to be. So this weekend I'm leaving Saddleback Church to go become a ballerina on Broadway. How would you react to that? And if I said, God told me that I'm going to be a ballerina on Broadway, you would say, Rick, what have you been smoking? Because it would be ludicrous for me to announce that I was going to become a ballerina on Broadway because I really, really wanted to be it and I was going to work really hard. It would be ludicrous for three reasons. Number one, I'm not shaped to be a ballerina. Why are you laughing? I'm not big enough. I'm not shaped, I'm not gifted to be a ballerina. I really am not one of these people with good balance. I don't have good balance. I never have all my life and it takes incredible physical balance to be a ballerina. I'm not gifted. I'm not talented. And the third thing is I've never learned the skills so clearly this would be disastrous. Now we do this all the time in other areas. I talk to people who say, I like to eat bagels so I'm going to start a bagel shop. Just because you like pie or because you can even bake a pie doesn't mean you should start a pie business. Those are two different animals. Just because you admire or you desire a certain career doesn't mean you should acquire that career. One of the keys to succeeding in life is you have to be skilled. Honor is not enough, dedication is not enough, prayer is not enough, working hard, all these things are part of it but you've got to have the right skills. You could be the most sincere person in the world and if you don't have the right life skills you're going to fail at life. If you don't have the right work skills you're going to fail at work. If you don't have the right ministry skills you'll fail in ministry. The Bible says skill, not dedication, skill will bring success. Now the good news is skills can be learned and today we're going to look at the second essential skill and it is this, knowing how to recognize what's important and what's not important. I can't tell you how important this skill is and how few people have it. To look at a situation and go that's important, that's not. That matters, that doesn't matter. That's valuable, that's not valuable. This is crucial, that's not crucial. Leaders know what's important and they focus on that and they forget everything else. Successful people know what matters and don't worry about what doesn't matter. Paul says this one thing I do, not these 40 things I dabble in. He is focused, he's laser focused and you have to learn this skill in life to be successful at work and at home and in life. The skill of knowing what matters most. Now have you noticed that you don't have time to do everything? Yeah of course you have. You have noticed this in life. The good news is this, God doesn't expect you to do everything and there are only a few things in life worth doing in the first place. God hasn't called you to do everything in life. He's called you to do what he's called you to do, what you're gifted, what you're shaped. We're going to talk about that in the future and what's important in life. Knowing what matters most is extremely important. Look at this verse on the screen. First Corinthians 6.12 says this, everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. What does that mean? You're free to do anything with your life. God isn't going to force you to do anything with your life. It's all permitted. You can waste your life, you can invest your life, you can spend your life. Everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial. Some things in life are not necessarily wrong. They're not necessary. Oftentimes we give first class allegiance to second class causes and those causes betray us. I talked one time to a guy who said, I climbed the ladder of success and when I got to the top it was leaning against the wrong wall. Not everything is worth doing. So you can save yourself a lot of time, a lot of energy if you learn the skill of knowing what's important and what's not important. Knowing what's valuable and what's not valuable. What matters and what doesn't matter. Selection is a key to success in life because you don't have time for everything. Selection just like these other skills is a skill that you can learn. The better you get at selection and prioritizing what matters in your life and what doesn't matter the more effective you're going to be as a person, as a partner, as a parent, as a leader in life. I thought since we're talking about prioritization I would show you a screen shot of the four folders on the top of my computer desktop. Can we put that picture up? This is my desktop and there are actually four folders on my desktop. Number one is things God wants me to do. Number two is things people I love need me to do. Three is things I want to do and four is things everybody else wants me to do. Which of those four do you think has the most? Number four. Which is the least important? Number four. That's when people say can you write an endorsement for this book? Can you do this for me? They're not even people I know a lot of times but they want me to do something. You have to know what does God want me to do? What do the people I love need me to do? What do I want to do? There's a legitimate part for that. And then what does everybody else want me to do? And God has not called you to fulfill everybody else's will for their life. Does that make sense? So what I want us to do this weekend is talk about how do you discover what matters and what doesn't matter? What's valuable and what's not valuable? What is important and what's not important? You see every time you make a decision, what we're talking about here is clarifying your values. Every single time you make a decision, you are basing it on unspoken values. You have a grid in your mind. You've never even thought about this most likely. But you have a set of values in your mind and every time you make a decision, I'm going to do this and not do that, I'm going to buy this and not buy that, I'm going to spend my time and effort and energy on this and not on that, you are showing your hidden values. The problem is most people have never figured out what they are, where they came from and whether they are valid or not. So really the secret of success is clarifying your values. This is a skill you need to learn. What is valuable to me and what is not valuable? Every time you make a decision, you reveal your values. My question is, do you know where your values came from? Are they, how are they working out? Is your life working out with those values? Do you know where you picked them up? Are they working for you? Your values in life determine your stress, determine your success and determine your salvation. Now you may not realize this but your values could be causing stress in your life. Unclear values cause confusion. They cause confusion in your life. Conflicting values in your life cause tension. Unclear values cause confusion. Conflicting values cause tension. False values create deception and the wrong values create dysfunction. So it is extremely important, what I am talking to you about this weekend is very vital to the rest of your life. Lasting success and as your pastor I want you to succeed in life. Lasting success is built on values that last and a lot of the values that our world has aren't lasting values. So what I want to do this weekend is give you four questions. I want you to write these questions down to evaluate your values. When we talk about evaluate, you are valuing your values. Evaluate means to judge your own values. So let me give you four questions that are going to determine your values and your destiny. Number one, here's the first question you want to ask yourself in knowing what matters most. First question, who is going to be my authority? That's the fundamental question of life. Who is going to be my authority? In other words, where am I going to get my values? Now there are a lot of different sources on which you can determine what values you are going to live by. Some of your values you pick up from your parents. Some of them you pick up from peers. Some of your values you picked up at school. Some of your values you picked up from books and magazines and movies and television shows. Today the number one source of values today in the generations growing up, you know what it is? The media. The media are determining the values of the next generation in the world today. That's the thing. Now you have to decide, you have to choose what's going to be the source of my values. A poor source will give you poor values. The source determines the quality. Does this make sense? I could go down to a street corner in L.A. and learn my values from a drug pusher. They're not going to be very reliable values, but I could learn them. The source would determine the quality of my values. The first step, if you want to succeed in life, you want to know what's important, you got to decide where you're going to get your values. You have three options. Here are the three options. The first option in determining values is me, myself. Write that down, myself. You can just get your values from yourself. You can actually say, you know what, I'm going to depend on my gut to always know the right thing to do. Some people do this. They get all their values from within. I'm just going to depend on my gut to always know the right thing to do. Question, how's that working out for you? Are you hitting any dead ends? Are all your plans coming out exactly the way you planned them to be? Are all your dreams coming true because you're depending on you for your values? Have all your plans succeeded? The Bible says in Jeremiah 11, 17 verse 9, the human mind, this is a God's word translation, the human mind is the most deceitful of all things. It is incurable. No one can understand how deceitful it really is. Now I want you to circle the word deceitful because I want to give you the definition of that word. It says the human mind is the most deceitful of all things. Nobody can understand how deceitful it is. What does deceitful mean? Well let me give you a definition. The word deceitful means to mislead in the wrong direction. That's Webster's definition. It means to mislead in the wrong direction. Does your mind ever do that? Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby. Yes it does. Your mind often leads you in the wrong direction. I don't know if you follow all these recent brain studies but I read these technical reports. I read articles, magazines, read scientific journals on it and in the last five years there have been enormous breakthroughs in understanding the brain. I think part of it was because Matthew struggled with mental illness. I've just always been interested in the brain and in the last five years, study after study after study after study has proven that your perceptions are wrong more than they're right in life. Every single brain study is proving this. That your brain lies to you. You get it wrong more often than you get it right. The way you perceive yourself, the way you perceive others, the way you perceive your relationships, the way you perceive your problems, the way you perceive the world. Study after study shows our brain isn't that good at getting it accurate. That just because you tell yourself something about a problem, about a person, about a relationship, about money, about anything, doesn't mean it's true. Doesn't mean it's correct. You lie to yourself all the time. You lie to yourself more than you lie to anybody else. Now this is not new news because thousands of years ago God said the human mind is the most deceitful of all things. It misleads us in the wrong direction. You say but I saw it. I heard it. Well you could have misheard it and you could have misseen it. Both your eyes and your ears lie. Any attorney can prove this by using multiple witnesses. You can have an accident take place and you can have people on four different corners and they all see the accident and they're going to tell you four different stories. Which one was right? We see what we think we see. We perceive what we think we perceive. We hear. The stuff I'm telling you right now, what I'm saying, you're not actually even hearing it the way I'm saying it. You're hearing it the way you receive it. And so it's not highly reliable to base your values on yourself because you don't always see reality as it really is. Growing up you were told things about you and you believed them. They weren't true but you believed them. And you've told other people and people told you things that were about you that really weren't true but you believed it. And so your perceptions are not always reality. You might say I know what's causing my problem. Well the fact is you probably don't. You need an authority bigger than yourself. Because we all misjudge. We misjudge events. We misjudge pain. We misjudge people. We misjudge motives. In fact you might want to write this down. My perceptions say more about me than others. My perceptions say more about me than others. Because I have this grid in my mind and I see things the way I see it which doesn't necessarily mean it's the truth. So if I build my life that I'm the final authority of what's right and what's wrong, what's true and false, what's good and bad, what's valuable and invaluable, I'm on sinking sands. I gotta have a source of authority outside myself. That's not enough. Because we all misjudge. The Bible says this. Look here on the screen. Proverbs 16.25. There is a way that seems right to humans but in the end it leads to death. A lot of plans that you've had were dead ends. A lot of plans I've had were dead ends. It seemed the right thing. So you can't just depend on your own gut. Your perceptions can lead to dead ends. What you need is the truth. That's why the Bible says trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, on your own perception, on how you think it is seen. So the first possible source, it's not very reliable, is I'll be the source of all my values and I'll determine what reality is. The second source, you can write this one down as a possible source, is the world. Most of the time we get our values from the world. In other words, what does everybody else think is valuable? What does everybody else consider important? If they consider it important, it must be important to me. If they consider it valuable, it must be valuable to me. Now 1 John chapter 2, 15 and 16 says this. Don't love what the world offers and values. Do not love what the world offers and values. Those who love the world don't have the Father's love in them. For what the world values, and it lists three things, physical gratification, we see that, greed, materialism, and prideful self-centered lifestyles. What the world values does not come from the Father. Now this verse shows us three of the world's values. You might write these down. If you're going to base your values on what the world says, what culture says, what pop culture says, here's what you're going to get. The first thing the world values is this, looking good. Looking good. The world values appearance. The world values appearance. It's why billions are spent on beauty aids, and surgeries, and clothes. The truth is most of us aren't part of the beautiful people. We're not as attractive as the superstars. We're just kind of average looking. The world doesn't value you or me like it values the beautiful people. You're probably not going to get your picture in People Magazine, or us, or on the cover of some beauty magazine. The world says, because you're not that beautiful, you don't matter. You aren't as valuable as the prom queen, as the cheerleader, as the sexy starlet, or the incredible hunk, Rick Warren. The world values appearance, beauty. The Bible says, no, no, that's not the important value. The second thing that the world values is not just looking good, but feeling good. Feeling good. Of course, that's pleasure, and that's sex. I don't have to convince you that sex dominates our society. Everybody agree with that? It is used to sell spark plugs, and dishwashing soap, and everything else. People taking a shower, and they're shampooing. It's like they're having some kind of experience. Sex is used literally to sell everything. Why? Because it's the second big value. I just want to have fun. If you say, my number one goal in life is happiness, you've bought into the world's value system, which says that happiness, feeling good, is more important than doing things right, or correct, or anything else. It's not by accident that in our culture today, our largest industry is entertainment. It's entertainment, because we want to feel good. The world's system is looking good, appearance, feeling good, pleasure, and sex. The third value of the world is having the goods. In other words, materialism, money, wealth, riches, prosperity. We are conspicuous about our consumption. People like to show it off. They want to show off their cars, show off their clothes, their homes, their jewelry, their front lawn, except in Southern California, where we're ashamed of having a lawn. We want to base our self-worth on our net worth. We think that our value is connected to our valuables. It isn't. But that's what the world teaches. Money, sex, power, or passion, possession, position, sex, salary, status. This is what the world values. This is what every advertisement promotes. Here's the problem. Since you're constantly bombarded by the media with these three values about appearance, you've got to look good, you've got to feel good, and you've got to have the goods, even Christians get seduced by those values. All of a sudden we think that's the whole purpose of life, to look good, to feel good, and have the goods. That is not at all what God puts you on this planet for. There's a third possible source for your values. Of course, that's God, particularly God's Word. God's Word is a far more objective, truthful, not giving sway to your perceptions or the world's opinions. God's Word, Jesus said it like this in John 8, if you continue in my Word, you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. What does God say about these values? I just thought I'd quickly give these verses to you. What does God say about appearance and beauty? First Samuel 16.7, the Lord does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at what? God doesn't care about your appearance. He doesn't care about your appearance. God says it's not about appearance. He says it's not about making pleasure your highest value, Hebrews 11.25. The pleasures of sin only last for a short time. They're not going to last. Yeah, it's fun, you have your kicks, but they'll be the kickbacks. God says it's not about wealth, it's not about materialism. Luke 12.15, Jesus says real life is not measured by how much we own. In other words, the greatest things in life aren't things. The first question I need to ask is, who's going to be my authority? Myself? That's pretty shaky. The world? That's just the opinion of other people, or is it going to be God's Word? The second question you want to ask is this, what's going to last the longest? What's going to last the longest? This is an important question to ask if you're trying to decide what you're going to build your values on, what's going to be important. If you want to know what matters most, what doesn't matter, you need to invest your life in something that's going to last the longest. Let me be honest with you. We rarely, we rarely evaluate our values or question our perceptions until we hit a crisis. When we hit a crisis, and when we're in deep, deep, deep, deep pain, then we just start going, is this really what life's all about? Living for appearance, feeling good, having the goods, looking good? No, no. No, it's got to be more than that. When you're in pain, you start saying, well, maybe my perceptions aren't correct. Maybe my values aren't right. What happens is we typically cruise through life like this, never stopping to ask the tough questions about our life until we hit the pain. We don't change when we see the light. We change when we feel the heat. When we hit the crisis, then we start saying, is this a dead end I'm walking down? Where is this headed? Am I seeing things correctly? Am I deceiving myself? When things are going great, we don't even ask those questions. When you get fired from your job, or you go through a divorce, or a loved one dies, or you have a health crisis, all of a sudden these values questions become real. Am I really seeing things correctly? Am I listening to what the world says, or am I listening to what God says? Such a great message from Pastor Rick today, and I hope you were just as encouraged as I was. You know, the truth is, desire and determination alone aren't enough to succeed in life. So many people already work so hard. But real success isn't just about working harder. It's about working smarter. It's about working God's way. Did you know that the Bible is packed with practical instruction to help you do just that? Yeah. That's why Pastor Rick Warren created the Toolbox for Life Bible Study. Through this powerful study, you'll discover and develop four essential real-life success-building skills straight from God's Word. These are skills that will equip you to make a difference as you lead with confidence and clarity in your home, at work, at school, and in your community. The Toolbox for Life Bible Study has four video sessions taught by Rick and includes a companion workbook. It's perfect for personal growth or small group study. So be sure to request your copy of the Toolbox for Life Study Kit today when you give a gift to Daily Hope to help take the Word of God to a world in need. It's 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. And thank you so much for your support. Your gift to Daily Hope helps us share the hope of Christ with people everywhere. 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. For more information visit www.pastorrick.com