Skip to content How Jesus Revitalizes Your Life — pt 2 (Encouragement, Jesus, Forgiveness, Freedom) Apr 20 · 23 min ...more
How Jesus Revitalizes Your Life — pt 2 (Encouragement, Jesus, Forgiveness, Freedom)
April 20, 2025 · 23 min
Pastor Rick continues to share how Jesus revitalizes your life when you’re feeling defeated by showing you his love and offering you forgiveness.
Series How Jesus Revitalizes Your Life
Pastor Rick Warren shares the hope and encouragement you need to hear everyday. Listen in as he shares biblical truths to help you live the purpose driven life
April 20, 2025 · 23 min · How Jesus Revitalizes Your Life
Pastor Rick continues to share how Jesus revitalizes your life when you’re feeling defeated by showing you his love and offering you forgiveness. ...more Show the full description Show less Pastor Rick continues to share how Jesus revitalizes your life when you’re feeling defeated by showing you his love and offering you forgiveness.
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In this video 0:00 The Power of Forgiveness and Purpose
The Power of Forgiveness and Purpose 0:00 Hi. This is Rick Warren, bible teacher of the daily hope broadcast. Did you know that because of Easter, your past can be forgiven, you get a purpose for living, and you can have a home in heaven? That's good news. Where0:11 else can you get that kind of news? Nowhere else. And did you know that at Easter, studies have shown people are more open to an invitation to go to church than at any other time of the year. Don't go to0:23 church by yourself, but bring somebody who doesn't know Jesus Christ, a family member, a friend, a co worker, a neighbor, a relative. And if you bring them to that church service and they come to know Christ, you're0:35 gonna be making a friend for eternity. It'll be the most important investment you can ever make in their lives. And by the way, if they come to Christ, would you let me know about it? I'd love to hear that story that you0:46 brought somebody to Easter and they found Jesus. You can write to me, rick at pastor rick dot com. That's rick at pastor rick dot com. I would love to hear from you. God bless you, and happy0:58 Easter.1:02 Hello, and welcome to pastor Rick Warren's Daily Hope. Well, this weekend across every continent and in thousands of languages, millions of people will join together1:14 to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the cornerstone of our faith. But you know, it doesn't stop there. Not only was Jesus resurrected, he is still1:26 alive. So let's go to pastor Rick as he continues with part 2 of a message called how Jesus revitalizes your life.1:36
1:48 this is important because forgiveness is a huge reenergizer, because the 2 biggest leaks in your tank, the 2 things that cause you to run out of energy, and to drain
1:59 emotionally and physically are A, guilt, and B, resentment, and the answer to both is forgiveness. Guilt and resentment are the twin emotions that rob you of your
2:11 energy. You cannot be guilty and happy at the same time, You cannot be resentful, and happy at the same time. Now that's a problem, because we live in an imperfect world. We live in a broken planet
2:23 where there's a thing called sin. That means I don't always do the right thing, and you don't either. I make mistakes, sometimes I'm selfish, and we hurt each other. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally.
2:36 Now when I hurt you, what I feel is guilt. And when you hurt me, what I feel is resentment. And those 2 things, guilt over the things that I've done wrong in the world, and resentment over the things that
2:47 have been done wrong to me, are the twins that keep me stuck in emotionally empty positions. They drain the life out of me. And if you're ever gonna be happy in life, you
2:59 gotta learn how to let it go, how to let go of your guilt to God, and how to let go of your resentment against other people. There's only 1 way to do that, forgiveness. That's why the next thing Jesus said is this,
3:11 if you forgive someone's sins, they're gone for good, but if you don't forgive sins, what are you gonna do with them? Now what's Jesus saying here? He's saying, guys, I have forgiven you. You're completely forgiven.
3:23 That's why I died on the cross. I died on the cross for all the things you've ever done wrong, so you are forgiven. Now I expect you to do the same thing with other people. Pass it on. You know, cut them a little slack.
3:35 Show them some grace. I have forgiven you. Jesus said, I've forgiven you of everything you've ever done wrong. Now, I expect you to forgive other people. Why? Because guilt and resentment keep you running on empty.
3:47 Guilt and resentment keep you stuck in the past. You can't get on with the future. Guilt and resentment warp your personality, you get angry, you get sarcastic, you get cynical, the more bitter you become.
3:59 Guilt and resentment ruin relationships. I was having dinner with a couple 1 time that I did their wedding years and years ago, and the the lady said to me, you know, pastor Rick, when I was walking down that aisle in
4:11 that white dress, I had no idea that I was carrying along with me garbage sacks of guilt and grudges. I thought that's a word picture. I was carrying with me garbage sacks of guilt and
4:22 grudges from previous hurts and relationships, and I brought them all into this marriage, and it nearly killed the marriage. Guilt and resentment ruin marriages, and ruin relationships.
4:34 Now, when you've got garbage in your house, you have to take it out periodically, or the house starts stinking. You don't just pile it up in the corner, you gotta get rid of the guilt, and get rid of the grudges. So
4:46 question, who do you need to let go of today? Who do you need to let off the hook? Say, well, I just can't do that. They hurt me. That's right. That's why you need Jesus. You can't do it on your own
4:57 power. And forgiveness is not earned, it is not easy, and it certainly isn't fun, but it's what lets you get on, get on with your life. Last year there was a dear friend of mine, close friend, long term
5:09 friend, who started stabbing me in the back secretly, and I didn't know about it. And because of their pride and their jealousy, they just started going around spreading rumors, spreading lies, spreading gossip,
5:22 doing things that were to hurt me, and I had no idea this was even going on for a long, long time. And when I finally figured that out, it hurt me so bad, and I just started going
5:33 over it, and oh, why would they do that? Why would they hurt me like that? What have I done to hurt them? And I I sometimes I'd go to bed at night, and as I'd lay down, I'd start to write these angry letters to them in
5:44 your mind. You ever done this? Let me tell you a word or 2, you know? And I'm just going, wait a minute. This isn't helping. All this resentment in me is not hurting that person 1 bit. It's just making
5:56 me miserable. I gotta let it go. So I said, God, help me just let it go. It doesn't matter what they've done to me. It it it's in gonna change the past, so help me just let it go,
6:08 and that's what God says he wants you to do. He says, just let it go. Now forgiveness is the key to happiness. Look at the next verse. Happy is the person whose sins are forgiven, and whose wrongs are
6:20 pardoned. Happy is the person whom the Lord does not consider guilty anymore. Now circle the word happy. Forgiveness is the key to happiness. Now
6:31 because of the cross, and because of Easter, we have been completely forgiven if we've accepted that forgiveness. And so we, of all people, have a reason to celebrate, a reason
6:43 to be happy, because I don't have a guilty conscience. It's all been forgiven. That's a happy day. Now I know you'd never know it looking at my body, but I love Krispy Kreme donuts.
6:55 And it's not just a donut, it is the cream inside, the Krispy Kreme. Friends, that filling is the nectar of the gods. They haven't invented a word
7:07 to describe how delicious that cream is. Actually, I think Krispy Kreme is the Hebrew word for manna in the Old Testament. I think that's what God actually showered down to them. Now
7:19 it's interesting that whenever we're empty on the inside, we always have to have a filling of some kind. I wonder what is your standard preferred filling when you're running
7:31 on empty. Some of you when you hit the end of the day and you're tired and you're wiped out and you're fatigued, you come home, you fill your emptiness with television, and you flop down on a couch or or a
7:43 sofa or something, and and you watch several hours of television, and you fill your emptiness with entertainment. Others of you, when you feel empty on the inside, you fill yourself with food,
7:55 or you fill yourself with, alcohol or porn or 1 night stands. Some of you when you're feeling empty, you head for the club,
8:07 for the bar, for the single scene to fill up that emptiness. Some of you when you're when you're running on empty, you fill yourself with pain pills to take away the pain.
8:20 Everybody has something. It may be a hobby, it may be a sport. The number 1 feeling that people have when they're feeling empty, more work. I'll just keep working, and
8:32 I'll work harder, and harder, and harder, and harder, and harder, because I don't like the way I feel when I slow down. I don't like the emptiness that creeps back into my life, so I'll just keep busy, so when I go to
8:43 sleep at night, I put my head down. I don't have to think, I just fall asleep, and we overwork to hide our emptiness. Now all of these things, the good and the bad, they all have 1 thing in common,
8:54 none none of them last. None of them keep you satiated. None of them keep you filled up. You get hungry again. Now Jesus Christ,
9:06 God, offers you a permanent filling inside you. He said, I will put myself in you. I will put my spirit in you. I will fill you up with
9:17 me. And that will fill the emptiness that you feel. That's the next thing Jesus does. Number 5, on the back of your outline, He fills you with His presence when you're running on
9:29 empty. Now Jesus said I don't wanna just be with you, I wanna be in you. And he says in verse 22 to these guys, then Jesus breathed on them and he said to them, receive
9:41 the Holy Spirit. Now what's the Holy Spirit, what is this, Casper the Friendly Ghost? You know, what is the Holy Spirit? Jesus says, I wanna be with you. No, I wanna be in
9:53 you all the time, moment by moment. The Bible calls this being filled with the Spirit, being empowered and dwelled and filled with the Holy Spirit. Now, does that sound kinda
10:05 spooky to you, being filled with the Spirit? You know, I'm Spirit filled. What does that mean? Is that gonna turn me into some kinda weirdo, some wacko, some religious nut, where all of a
10:16 sudden I talk different and I wear polyester and have a comb over and, you know, and I wear a big bouffant hairdo and I say, baby, or, you know, Jesus, you know, and I don't even talk right anymore.
10:29 No. No. God doesn't need any more weirdos. There are plenty of them already in the world. Don't look at them. Okay. Come on, this
10:41 is church, be cool. Alright. Just don't look at them. There there are enough weirdos in the world. God doesn't need any more weirdos. Actually, when God puts himself in you, you become more you. You become more natural.
10:53 The glory of God is a human being fully alive. And if you're a man, it makes you more masculine, and if you're a female, it makes you more feminine. It makes you become what God intended for you to be in the first place
11:04 before all the things in life broke us all up into pieces. It doesn't turn you into wacko, it makes you more normal, it makes you more natural, it makes you more alive, more enjoying of life.
11:16 So what does it exactly feel like? What does it look like? What does it feel like to be filled with God's spirit? Well, let me tell you a couple things it does. Number 1, you stop being lonely.
11:29 You stop being lonely, because you realize God is with me all the time, and I may be alone, but I am not lonely. You can be in a large crowd and still be lonely,
11:41 but God says, I want to be with you every moment of your life, and it just takes away your loneliness when you realize he is with you and in you all the time. Couple months ago, my older brother died, Jim,
11:53 and I went through a very lonely period for several weeks. I just felt loneliness. You say how could you feel lonely? You're recognized everywhere you go, well I did. All of a sudden I realized my dad
12:05 had died, and my mom had died, and my older brother had died, and the 3 people who knew me from my very birth, who knew where Rick Warren came from, are no longer here. They're in
12:17 heaven. And I felt lonely, and I thought even 1 day my wife will die, or I'll die, or my kids will die, or my grandkids will die, because God didn't mean for us to stay here on earth forever where it's broken, he wants
12:29 us to live forever where it's perfect in heaven, so that's why relationships don't last here, And I was feeling lonely, and if you've ever lost a loved 1, you know that comes in waves, and you handle it and then you
12:40 don't, then you handle it and you don't. And when those waves of loneliness would come on me, I would say, God, I need to feel your presence right now. I need you to remind me that you're with me, and that you're in me.
12:51 And this sense of peace would come over me that could not be explained any other way. I remember sitting right here on this front row during my brother's funeral, and feeling this sense
13:03 of total peace and total presence of God in my life, and I'm just going, I'm I'm handling this. It's just it's okay. I'm handling it. And I want you to know that's not normal.
13:14 Having been in hundreds of funerals, I have looked in the eyes of people who have no hope, who don't have a belief system, who don't know Jesus Christ. You see, the test of what you believe is not
13:26 how you handle the parties of life. The test of what you believe is how do you handle the funerals? And if you don't have a relationship with God, what are you gonna hold onto in that moment when you're losing the
13:38 dearest things to you? And so it helps you take away the loneliness because, even though I'm by myself, I'm not alone. God is with me. The other thing that happens when I'm
13:50 filled with God's spirit, he puts his spirit in my life, is you start producing certain character qualities. There are 9 of them listed in the Bible. They're called the fruit of the Spirit because you kind of grow them
14:02 slowly like fruit. Doesn't happen overnight. The Bible says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, those are good things, I want to be more loving, I want to be more joyful, I want to be
14:14 more peaceful, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, and self control. I want those things in my life. They come from having God in my life.
14:26 Now when somebody says to you, you're full of it. Is that a compliment? You're full of it. Well, it all depends on what the it is. If they say
14:37 you're full of it, and they mean you're jealous, well, no, that's not good. You're full of it, that means you're egocentric, you're self serving, you only think of yourself. No, that's not good. But if they say you're
14:47 full of it, and you're full of love, and joy, and peace, and patience, and self control, that's good stuff. Notice this next verse. The Spirit that God has given us does not make us
14:59 timid. Instead, his Spirit fills us with power, love, and self control. Would you circle those 3 words? Power, love, and self control. You see, when you're running on
15:11 empty, that's the exact 3 things you need when you're out of gas. You need power to keep going, you need love to build relationships, and you need self control to keep from self destructing.
15:23 He fills you with his presence. Number 6, the sixth thing Jesus does when you're running on empty is he gives you a new reason to live. He gives you a new reason to live. And
15:35 this is important too, because another reason you're running on empty is you don't know the purpose of your life. You were made for far more than money. Making money is the
15:47 not the ultimate goal in life. You were made for meaning, and all the money in the world will not replace a lack of meaning. Last Wednesday night, I was down at St. Regis
15:59 Hotel in in Dana Point, where I'd been invited by a corporation to come down and speak to a thousand of their managers that they'd brought in from all over the United States. And I talked to them about success, and
16:11 why doesn't success satisfy? If I'm so successful, why don't I feel more fulfilled? If I'm so successful, why do I always want more? If I'm so successful, why do I feel like a fake? And I said,
16:23 the reason why is because you were made for more than success. God made you for significance. And all the success in the world will not take away, or,
16:35 take care of a lack of significance in your life. You're made for more than money, you're made for meaning, you're made for more than possessions, you're made for a purpose. And all the possessions in the world
16:47 will not compensate for a lack of purpose in your life, and that's why you still run on empty. So what do you do? Well, you have to turn to God and let him give you his purpose for your
16:58 life. You're not an accident. Now guys, particularly, some of you think, well Rick, I've talked to guys like this before, Rick, I don't really feel like I want to become a believer, a follower of Jesus, because don't
17:10 they just kind of like sit around in prayer groups and pray? Don't they like sit around and just talk nice and discuss stuff? You know, skip over the hills of Jerusalem and
17:22 pick flowers and talking about peace and love. No, thank you. I can't think personally as a man, I can't think of anything more boring than that. As a man, I need something big to chew on. I
17:34 need something, a challenge. I need something that makes me be a man. I need something that is so big, it forces me to grow to be a greater person. Now all of us, men or
17:45 women, need something greater than ourselves that pulls us out of ourselves, so we don't live these little selfish clods of lives, and causes us to become what God meant for us to be in the first place,
17:57 greater than we ever thought. Let me tell you something, God's plan for your life is greater than any plan you could ever think of for yourself. Your little plans are puny compared to what God wants to do with
18:09 your life. If you would just let him have control in every area. I'm exhibit a of this. I have no idea why, how God has done what he's done in my life. It's just I said yes.
18:22 Following Jesus Christ is not for wimps. It's not for cowards. It's not for lazy people. It's not for people who like to live in the shallows of life and play it safe. No. It takes courage to be a man of
18:34 God. It takes courage to be a woman of God, to say, God, whatever you want to do with my life, I'm yours. You use me for your purpose for good and for God in this world. I don't want to just live a
18:45 little selfish life, pitter patter around. I wanna go for the big stuff, go for the gusto. It takes courage, because God's plan for your life is so much bigger than your plans
18:57 for your own life. And it'll test you, and it'll stretch you, and it'll grow your faith. That's what Jesus did with these guys. These guys were all discouraged, look, we all
19:09 turned tail, we all wiped out, we copped out, we we flaked out on Jesus, so I'm sure He's through with us, and Jesus comes to Him, He says no, look at this, verse 21. Jesus says again,
19:21 peace be to you, second time He said it, as the Father sent Me, I now send you. He says guys, I know you blew it, you made mistakes, you didn't you didn't stay with me in the tough time, but he said I got a plan,
19:33 we're gonna take on the world. I got a world changing plan, and they did, and this little group of now 11 guys went out, and soon it's all over the Middle East, and soon within
19:45 300 years, it's overtaken the Roman Empire, and today 2300000000.0 people in the world claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. It was the biggest task ever
19:56 given. Now let me ask you a question, what are you living for? Yeah. What are you living for? I I didn't ask you what you're living on.
20:08 What are you living for? The problem in Orange County is people have a lot to live on and nothing to live for. They need a purpose. They need a goal. What What does God want me to do? Well I don't have time to get
20:20 into all of that today, but here's 1 of the things. Look at the next verse. He says, I want you to go out into the world uncorrupted like a breath of fresh air in a squalid and polluted society.
20:33 He said, just be a breath of fresh air to people. Provide people with a glimpse of good living and of the living God. He's saying, I'm not gonna expect you to be perfect. God doesn't expect you to be perfect. He says,
20:44 just give people a glimpse of what it's like to live a good life and to live for God, the living God. Carry the light giving message into the night. What's the light
20:56 giving message? It's what we've just been talking about, all these things. You must shine among them like stars lighting up the sky. Would you circle the word shine? What does God want
21:08 you to do? He wants you to shine in a dark world. Now why? Because most people today live mediocre lives. Petty, shallow, self centered,
21:20 mediocre lives. And when you find somebody who knows God and knows that God's purpose for their life and is fulfilling that purpose, they shine like a star. It is so unusual to find
21:32 people who know God and know his purpose and are doing it. When you find them, they're like stars. They stand out like on a dark night in stark contrast to the mediocre living most people
21:44 live. God says, I want you to shine like a star. I want you to be a star and represent me in the world.
21:59 Pastor Rick Warren says that every word Jesus spoke was important and has life changing power. The words that Jesus spoke during his final hours on the cross hold the key
22:10 to finding fulfillment in your life, career, and relationships. That's why Rick put together a powerful 7 session study kit called the 7 greatest words of love.
22:23 Get it now and unlock the full meaning and amazing blessings of Jesus' last words before his resurrection, words of forgiveness, assurance, love, trust, and
22:34 more. And this is a life changing bible study with 7 video sessions and a workbook. Just go to pastor rick dot com to get your copy of this great resource. Resource. That's pastor rick
22:46 dot com or just text the word hope to 7 0 3 0 9. Again, that's the word hope to 7 0 3 0 9. And really, thank you so much for your
22:58 support. It means so much to us because your gift to Daily Hope helps us share the hope of Christ with people all around the world. We hope you'll join us next time when we look into God's word
23:10 for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.
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