No Condemnation BY RICK WARREN — MAY 21, 2014

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law

of sin and death. Romans 8:1–2 (NIV)

No matter what you’ve ever done, there is no condemnation in Christ. He sits at the

Father’s right hand, not as an accuser, but as an advocate willing to give his life for

you.

God began the work to bring you back into his presence long before you were born.

God knows you can’t make the journey home on your own, so while you “were still

helpless” Christ died for you (Romans 5:6 HCSB).

Jesus offers mercy, not condemnation. He says, “I desire mercy, not

sacrifice” (Matthew 9:13 NIV). His objective is to bring you back into intimacy with the

Father, so he’s not interested in making you jump through hoops to prove yourself

worthy or to earn back God’s love.

In a sense, Jesus says, “You promise to do things in exchange for your forgiveness,

but I want to give you forgiveness and grace as a gift. I desire mercy, not these

sacrifices you hope will win back my love: You never lost my love!”

“My purpose is not to condemn you but to let my life run free within you as the Holy

Spirit connects you directly to the Father” (Romans 8:1-2 NIV, author paraphrase).

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“Besides, you can’t wash all the stains away. So, let me do it for you. My blood will be

the bleach to wash you white as snow, and my Spirit will begin to live directly in your

heart.”

Wrapped in Christ, we are able to “approach the throne of grace with confidence, so

that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews

4:16 NIV).

When you feel condemnation coming at you like a furious flood, look to Jesus, who

says, “I no longer condemn you. Go and sin no more” (John 8:11 NLT, with author

paraphrase).

Jon Walker is the author of Costly Grace (http://amzn.to/hnalx6).

Take a look at this new curriculum from Saddleback Resources: Raising Your Kids

without Raising Your Blood Pressure (http://www.saddlebackresources.com/Raising-

your-Kids-C1121.aspx).

This devotional is copyrighted 2011 by Jon Walker. Used by permission.

Give hope, prayer, and encouragement below. Post a comment & talk about it.

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Pride From Mere Christianity by C S Lewis

I now come to that part of Christian morals where they differ most sharply from all other morals. There is one vice of which no man in the world is free; which everyone in the world loathes when he sees it in someone else; and of which hardly any people, except Christians, ever imagine that they are guilty themselves. I have heard people admit that they are bad-tempered, or that they cannot keep their heads about girls or drink, or even that they are cowards. I do not think I have ever heard anyone who was not a Christian accuse himself of this vice. And at the same time I have very seldom met anyone, who was not a Christian, who showed the slightest mercy to it in others. There is no fault which makes a man more unpopular, and no fault which we are more unconscious of in ourselves. And the more we have it ourselves, the more we dislike it in others.

The vice I am talking of is Pride or Self-Conceit: and the virtue opposite to it, in Christian morals, is called Humility. You may remember, when I was talking about sexual morality, I warned you that the center of Christian morals did not lie there. Well, now, we have come to the centre. According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere fleabites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind.

Does this seem to you exaggerated? If so, think it over. I pointed out a moment ago that the more pride one had, the more one disliked pride in others. In fact, if you want to find out how proud you are the easiest way is to ask yourself, 'How much do I dislike it when other people snub me, or refuse to take any notice of me, or shove their oar in, or patronize me, or show off?' The point is that each person's pride is in competition with everyone else's pride. It is because I wanted to be the big noise at the party that I am so annoyed at someone else being the big noise. Two of a trade never agree. Now what you want to get clear is that Pride is essentially competitive - is competitive by its very nature - while the other vices are competitive only, so to speak, by accident. Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. We say that people are proud of being rich, or clever, or good-looking, but they are not. They are proud of being richer, or cleverer, or better-looking than others. If everyone else became equally rich, or clever, or good-looking there would be nothing to be proud about. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone. That is why I say that Pride

 

 

is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. The sexual impulse may drive two men into competition if they both want the same girl. But that is only by accident; they might just as likely have wanted two different girls. But a proud man will take your girl from you, not because he wants her, but just to prove to himself that he is a better man than you. Greed may drive men into competition if there is not enough to go round; but the proud man, even when he has got more than he can possibly want, will try to get still more just to assert his power. Nearly all those evils in the world which people put down to greed or selfishness are really far more the result of Pride. Take it with money. Greed will certainly make a man want money, for the sake of a better house, better holidays, better things to eat and drink. But only up to a point. What is it that makes a man with £10,000 a year anxious to get £20,000 a year? It is not the greed for more pleasure. £10,000 will give all the luxuries that any man can really enjoy. It is Pride - the wish to be richer than some other rich man, and (still more) the wish for power. For, of course, power is what Pride really enjoys: there is nothing makes a man feel so superior to others as being able to move them about like toy soldiers. What makes a pretty girl spread misery wherever she goes by collecting admirers? Certainly not her sexual instinct: that kind of girl is quite often sexually frigid. It is Pride. What is it that makes a political leader or a whole nation go on and on, demanding more and more? Pride again. Pride is competitive by its very nature: that is why it goes on and on. If I am a proud man, then, as long as there is one man in the whole world more powerful, or richer, or cleverer than I, he is my rival and my enemy. The Christians are right: it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began. Other vices may sometimes bring people together: you may find good fellowship and jokes and friendliness among drunken people or unchaste people. But pride always means enmity - it is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God.

In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison - you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you. That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit

 

 

themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellow-men. I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good - above all, that we are better than someone else - I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

It is a terrible thing that the worst of all the vices can smuggle itself into the very centre of our religious life. But you can see why. The other, and less bad, vices come from the devil working on us through our animal nature. But this does not come through our animal nature at all. It comes direct from Hell. It is purely spiritual: consequently it is far more subtle and deadly. For the same reason, Pride can often be used to beat down the simpler vices. Teachers, in fact, often appeal to a boy's Pride, or, as they call it, his self-respect, to make him behave decently: many a man has overcome cowardice, or lust, or ill-temper, by learning to think that they are beneath his dignity - that is, by Pride. The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer. For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

Before leaving this subject I must guard against some possible misunderstandings: (1) Pleasure in being praised is not Pride. The child who is patted on the back for doing a lesson well, the woman whose beauty is praised by her lover, the saved soul to whom Christ says 'Well done,' are pleased and ought to be. For here the pleasure lies not in what you are but in the fact that you have pleased someone you wanted (and rightly wanted) to please. The trouble begins when you pass from thinking, 'I have pleased him; all is well,' to thinking, 'What a fine person I must be to have done it.' The more you delight in yourself and the less you delight in the praise, the worse you are becoming. When you delight wholly in yourself and do not care about the praise at all, you have reached the bottom. That is why vanity, though it is the sort of Pride which

 

 

shows most on the surface, is really the least bad and most pardonable sort. The vain person wants praise, applause, admiration, too much and is always angling for it. It is a fault, but a child-like and even (in an odd way) a humble fault. It shows that you are not yet completely contented with your own admiration. You value other people enough to want them to look at you. You are, in fact, still human. The real black, diabolical Pride, comes when you look down on others so much that you do not care what they think of you. Of course, it is very right, and often our duty, not to care what people think of us, if we do so for the right reason; namely, because we care so incomparably more what God thinks. But the Proud man has a different reason for not caring. He says 'Why should I care for the applause of that rabble as if their opinion were worth anything? And even if their opinions were of value, am I the sort of man to blush with pleasure at a compliment like some chit of a girl at her first dance? No, I am an integrated, adult personality. All I have done has been done to satisfy my own ideals - or my artistic conscience - or the traditions of my family - or, in a word, because I'm That Kind of Chap. If the mob like it, let them. They're nothing to me.' In this way real thorough-going pride may act as a check on vanity; for, as I said a moment ago, the devil loves 'curing' a small fault by giving you a great one. We must try not to be vain, but we must never call in our Pride to cure our vanity.

(2) We say in English that a man is 'proud' of his son, or his father, or his school, or regiment, and it may be asked whether 'pride' in this sense is a sin. I think it depends on what, exactly, we mean by 'proud of'. Very often, in such sentences, the phrase 'is proud of' means 'has a warm-hearted admiration for'. Such an admiration is, of course, very far from being a sin. But it might, perhaps, mean that the person in question gives himself airs on the ground of his distinguished father, or because he belongs to a famous regiment. This would, clearly, be a fault; but even then, it would be better than being proud simply of himself. To love and admire anything outside yourself is to take one step away from utter spiritual ruin; though we shall not be well so long as we love and admire anything more than we love and admire God.

(3) We must not think Pride is something God forbids because He is offended at it, or that Humility is something He demands as due to His own dignity - as if God Himself was proud. He is not in the least worried about His dignity. The point is, He wants you to know Him: wants to give you Himself. And He and you are two things of such a kind that if you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble - delightedly humble, feeling the infinite relief of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to

 

 

take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are. I wish I had got a bit further with humility myself: if I had, I could probably tell you more about the relief, the comfort, of taking the fancy-dress off - getting rid of the false self, with all its 'Look at me' and 'Aren't I a good boy?' and all its posing and posturing. To get even near it, even for a moment, is like a drink of cold water to a man in a desert.

(4) Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble' nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.

If anyone would like to acquire humility, I can, I think, tell him the first step. The first step is to realize that one is proud. And a biggish step, too. At least, nothing whatever can be done before it. If you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.

Four Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Worry BY RICK WARREN — AUGUST 10, 2015

“Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body,

what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than

clothes?” (Matthew 6:25 NIV)

Worry is essentially a control issue. It’s trying to control the uncontrollable. We can’t

control the economy, so we worry about the economy. We can’t control our children,

so we worry about our children. We can’t control the future, so we worry about the

future. But worry never solves anything! It’s stewing without doing.

Jesus actually gives four reasons you don’t need to worry in his Sermon on the

Mount.

1. Worry is unreasonable. Matthew 6:25 says, “Do not worry about your life, what

you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than

food, and the body more than clothes?” (NIV) Jesus is saying, if it’s not going to

last, don’t worry about it. To worry about something you can change is stupid. To

worry about something you can’t change is useless. Either way, it’s unreasonable

to worry.

2. Worry is unnatural. Jesus gives us an illustration from nature in Matthew 6:26:

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and

yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than

they?” There’s only one thing in all of God’s creation that worries: human beings.

We’re the only things God has created that don’t trust him, and God says this is

unnatural.

3. Worry is unhelpful. It doesn’t change anything. Matthew 6:27 says, “Can any

one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” When you worry about a

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problem, it doesn’t bring you one inch closer to the solution. It’s like sitting in a

rocking chair — a lot of activity, energy, and motion, but no progress. Worry

doesn’t change anything except you. It makes you miserable!

4. Worry is unnecessary. Matthew 6:30 says, “If God cares so wonderfully for

flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for

you, O men of little faith?” (TLB) If you trust in God, you don’t need to worry.

Why? Because he has promised to take care of all your needs: “God will meet all

your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19

NIV).

Does that include bills? Yes. Does that include relational conflicts? Yes. Does that

include your dreams and goals and ambitions? Yes. Does that include the health

issues you don’t know what to do with? Yes. God will meet all your needs in Christ.

Don’t worry about it!

PLAY today’s audio teaching from Pastor Rick >> (http://rickwarren.org/listen/player)

Talk It over

• What are the things that last that you need to be concerned about?

• Think of something you’ve been worrying about. What is an action step you can

take instead of worrying?

• How do you think prayer helps keep you from worrying?

Give hope, prayer, and encouragement below. Post a comment & talk about it.

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Trusting God through Gratitude BY RICK WARREN — NOVEMBER 28, 2014

“Sink your roots in him and build on him. Be strengthened by the faith that you

were taught, and overflow with thanksgiving.” (Colossians 2:7 GW)

An attitude of radical gratitude is God’s will for you because it develops your faith.

How does gratitude develop my faith? It happens when times are tough — when

things don’t make sense, when you can’t figure it out, when your prayers are

unanswered, when everything is going the way you didn’t want it to go. It happens

when you can say in those circumstances, “God, I know you’re in control. I know you

love me, and I know you can bring good out of this. I’m thankful that you’re bigger

than my problem.”

Anybody can thank God for good things. But if you can thank God even in the bad

times, your faith will grow stronger as your roots go deeper.

Habakkuk was going through tough times. He said, “Though the fig tree does not bud

and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields

produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I

will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior” (Habakkuk 3:17-18 NIV).

In the midst of all the bad things that went wrong, Habakkuk rejoiced. What’s his

cause of gratitude? “I will be joyful in God my Savior.” When everything else stinks in

life, you can be grateful because the Lord is your Savior. He will pull you out. You are

not by yourself. He hasn’t abandoned you. Give thanks to God!

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That is the ultimate test of the depth of your faith. Can you thank God when life

stinks? When you’re going through tough times, don’t look at what’s lost. Look at

what’s left, and be grateful for it!

You can be thankful to God just for being God. He has promised to see you through

those tough situations, and your faith will grow even stronger because of it.

Colossians 2:7 says, “Sink your roots in him and build on him. Be strengthened by the

faith that you were taught, and overflow with thanksgiving” (GW).

God’s will is radical gratitude — in all things give thanks. Why? Gratitude honors God,

it creates fellowship, and it develops your faith.

Talk It Over

• What is your usual reaction to difficult circumstances? How do you think God

wants you to respond?

• What does it mean to honor God?

• How have you seen God strengthen your faith through the difficult circumstances

of your life?

Give hope, prayer, and encouragement below. Post a comment & talk about it.

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Waiting On God? Don’t Fear, Fret, or Faint BY RICK WARREN — MAY 5, 2015

“I will bless the Lord and not forget the glorious things he does for me.” (Psalm

103:2 TLB)

When our dream is delayed, it causes us to forget many things. We tend to forget our

dream. We forget what God has done in our lives and his goodness to us in the past.

We tend to forget that God is with us. We forget God’s power.

This was the fourth mistake that the Israelites made in the wilderness: “They forgot

the many times [God] showed them his love, and they rebelled against the Almighty at

the Red Sea. But he saved them, as he had promised, in order to show his great

power. But they quickly forgot what he had done and acted without waiting for his

advice” (Psalm 106:7b-8, 13 (GNT).

It’s unbelievable how short their memory was! In Egypt, God sent 10 plagues on the

Egyptians just to rescue his people, and the children of Israel forget it just a few days

later when they’re at the Red Sea saying, “We’re all going to die!” They forgot what

God had done. Then, God does a miracle and opens the Red Sea. They walk through

to the other side and immediately forget that miracle and cry, “We’re going to die of

thirst!” God miraculously provides water. The Israelites forget that and complain,

“We’re going to die because we have no food!” They were always forgetting.

But we shouldn’t be too quick to judge them, because we do the exact same thing.

When a delay occurs in our lives, we start acting like God’s never done anything for

us. Has God done things for you in the past? Sure he has. And you can count on him

to do it again tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

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Instead of forgetting, you need to remember God’s promises. There are more than

7,000 of them in the Bible. Whenever you have a problem, find a promise, like 2

Timothy 2:13: “Even when we are too weak to have any faith left, he remains faithful

to us and will help us … and he will always carry out his promises to us” (TLB). The

promises are always greater than the problems you’re facing!

God may not have fulfilled the promise in your life because he’s waiting on you. He’s

waiting on you to learn to not fear, not fret, not faint, not forget. He wants you to learn

that before he delivers you.

God can do things immediately, but he’s working on a larger agenda. The delays that

come in your life do not destroy God’s purpose. They fulfill God’s purpose in your life.

“I will bless the Lord and not forget the glorious things he does for me” (Psalm 103:2).

Talk It Over

• What has God done for you that proves his faithfulness?

• How has God been refining you in the delay of your dream?

• What do you need to change about your attitude as you are in God’s waiting

room?

Give hope, prayer, and encouragement below. Post a comment & talk about it.

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