Skip to content You Are Called to Bless — pt 1 (Help, Serve, Promises, Mission, Blessing) Jan 15 · 29 min ...more
You Are Called to Bless — pt 1 (Help, Serve, Promises, Mission, Blessing)
January 15, 2026 · 29 min
There’s almost nothing that God won’t do for the person who really wants to help others. Discover God’s promises of what he will do for the person who is committed to blessing & helping other people.
Series Live Your Calling January 15, 2026 · 29 min · Live Your Calling
There’s almost nothing that God won’t do for the person who really wants to help others. Discover God’s promises of what he will do for the person who is committed to blessing & helping other people. ...more Show the full description Show less There’s almost nothing that God won’t do for the person who really wants to help others. Discover God’s promises of what he will do for the person who is committed to blessing & helping other people.
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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
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In this video 0:00 You Are Called to Bless Through Service8:15 The Blessings of Unselfish Service
You Are Called to Bless Through Service 0:02 Hello, everybody, and welcome to pastor Rick's Daily Hope. This is the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. Now today, we're continuing into the new year, and we're digging deeper into 1 of0:14 life's biggest questions. Does my life really matter? In today's message, Rick's gonna continue his powerful series, live your calling, what on earth am I here for?0:26 In it, you'll discover how living out God's purpose for your life brings real meaning, direction, and joy no matter where you're starting from. So let's join Rick right now for0:38 a special message titled, you are called to bless.0:42 Good morning everybody. It's good to see you. If you'll take out your message notes, welcome to live your calling. What on earth am I here for? And we're looking at the 5 callings of your life, the 5 purposes of0:54 your life, the 5 reasons God created you, the the 5 assignments that he has for your life. The word calling is used more than even the word purpose in the bible and we've looked at these1:06 first 4 or 3 so far, we looked at God's first calling in your life is your called to be loved. God made you to love you. The second calling is your called to belong, to belong to1:18 his family, the body of Christ, the family of God. Last week we looked at your third calling, you're called to become. God wants you to grow up, he wants you to mature, he wants you to become who he wants you to be.1:30 This week we're gonna look at the fourth calling on your life and it is you are called to bless. You're called to bless other people. Now how do you do that? You bless other people when
1:41 you serve them. It may be physical, assistance, it may be financial assistance, it may be emotional support, it could be relational support, it could
1:53 be, practical support. There are 1000 different ways that you can serve the people around you. And when you serve others the bible says you actually bless them. Now I want you to write this down,
2:06 on your outline. The fourth purpose of my life is God shaped me to serve him. God shaped me to serve him. I'm not gonna spend a lot of time on this because we've covered this
2:17 many many times at Saddleback that God has uniquely shaped you with 5 elements, your spiritual gifts, your heart, your abilities, your personality, your experiences, we've covered this many times. That God
2:29 wired you to be you and he shaped you to serve him. Ephesians 2 10 explains this, by the way this is our memory verse this week so let's read it aloud with great enthusiasm. Alright? Let's say
2:41 it, Ephesians 2 10, we are God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance
2:53 for us to do Ephesians 2 10. I want you to work on that this week. It says we are God's workmanship, we talked about this couple weeks ago. You are God's masterpiece, you are God's work of art,
3:05 you are unique there's nobody like you in the world, and you were created in Christ Jesus to do good works. That good works is called your service, it's called your ministry, it's called
3:17 your blessing, it's the way you help other people. You weren't made to just take up space, breathe, live a self centered life and die. God puts you here to make a contribution with your life and that is
3:29 called your ministry. Another word for blessing, another word for service is ministry. The word servant and the word minister are the same word in the Bible and the word service and ministry are the same words. The
3:41 fact is we're all ministers. Pastors, I'm a pastor. My job is to administer the ministers. So if somebody ever asked you, how many ministers does our church have? You say, 30000.
3:54 Because everybody is a minister. So I want you to write this down. My life calling is to be a bivocational minister of Jesus. I'm gonna have to explain
4:06 this to you. My life calling is to be a bivocational minister of Jesus. Now what is bivocational mean? Well it's like the word bifocal. You know when you get glasses that are
4:18 bifocals, it means you can see 2 things at the same time. You can see far away and you can see up close, you can see both with clarity. And when you are a bivocational minister Jesus it means
4:30 that no matter what you do in life you do it for 2 reasons not 1. You are a bivocational minister. So whether you're a truck driver or an attorney or a janitor or a hospice worker or a
4:41 homemaker or a teacher or a deal maker or a stock broker or an accountant or a farmer, it doesn't matter what you are. If you're a Christian, you were to do it for 2 reasons,
4:54 to help others and to honor God. To help others and to honor God. To help others and to honor God. Everything I do in life, if I'm a follower of Jesus, is by vocational.
5:06 I have a job but in that job I do it to help others and to honor God, to help others and honor God. I'm a by vocational minister of Jesus Christ. Look up here on the screen.
5:17 Colossians 3 17. Whatever you do, whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks to God the
5:29 father through him. So it says whatever you do, it can be a ministry, it can be a blessing if you honor God and you help others and whatever you do you
5:41 do it in the name of the Lord Jesus. I can take out the garbage as a ministry. I can change a dirty diaper as a ministry. I can clean the living room, I can
5:53 make a deal, I can help somebody across the street. Everything in your life can become a ministry if you do it to help others and honor God. And he says whatever you do
6:05 it becomes part of your ministry if you have the right motivation. Now I want you to write this down. Menial tasks become meaningful
6:17 tasks when I do that do it out of love for God. Menial tasks become meaningful tasks if I do it out
6:29 of my love for Jesus, for God. So everything in your life becomes significant. Really, let's say you're at a meeting in your office at where you
6:40 work and all of a sudden the meeting's over, everybody gets up to walk out and they've left coffee cups and trash and all kinds of, and you just decide I'm gonna clean that up. Everybody, it's not my job but I'm
6:52 gonna clean that up to help people and honor God. And so while they're all gone, you clean off the table and you put it all in the trash when they just walked out expecting somebody else to do it. You have just done a
7:03 ministry and God will notice and God will reward you for it. Now the fact is the calling to salvation and the calling to service are the same. So when you became a
7:15 believer, when you stepped across the line, you weren't just called to be saved, you were called to serve. You're saved to serve, to make a difference with your life. And as I said, every member is a
7:27 minister and everybody has a ministry. Galatians 1 chapter 1 verse 15 says this, God in his grace chose me even before I
7:39 was born and called me to serve him. Circle that last phrase, call me to serve him. This is the fourth purpose of your life, this is the fourth calling on your life. You are called to
7:50 serve, you're shaped to serve, you're made for ministry, you're called to bless. What happens if I begin to use my life in this fourth calling?
8:02 When I begin to stop thinking about me all the time and begin to start thinking about other people in my life, begin to think about not how can I be served but how can I serve others? Well it brings 4 amazing
8:14 benefits. The first thing that happens, you might write this down, is that serving others unselfishly will create joy in my life. It creates enormous
The Blessings of Unselfish Service
8:26 massive amounts of joy in my life. Most people are looking for happiness in all the wrong places. You don't find happiness in pleasure, power, possessions, position, prestige,
8:40 you know all of these different things that we typically look for popularity. Success does it bring satisfaction, sex doesn't bring satisfaction, salary doesn't bring
8:52 satisfaction, status doesn't bring satisfaction, those are all temporary for permanent ongoing joy. It comes not through sex, status, salary,
9:04 it comes through service. By giving my life away, God wired us that when you give your life away that's when the joy flows in to your heart. Why? Because he wants you to be like him.
9:16 Most people don't know the 2 secrets of joy but I'm gonna give them to you right now. Here they are. Number 1, the first secret of joy is get the focus off myself. The more you focus on you the
9:28 more miserable you're gonna be. It is not by accident that the word miser and miserable come from the same root word. You've got to shift your focus from inward focus it's all about
9:41 God and serving others. And when you do that, that is a counterculture move because everything in our society says it's all about you. Every advertisement says it's all about you. We do it all for you.
9:53 Have it your way. You're number 1. You're the best. But when you begin to give your life away, the more you give your life away to help others, guess what? The more joy flows into your
10:05 life. Good example of this is the Apostle Paul. Philippians chapter 2 verse 17, he says, my life is being poured out as a part of the sacrifice and
10:17 service. There's those words, as a part of the sacrifice and service I offer to God for your faith. Yet, he says, in spite of this sacrifice and service I am filled
10:29 with joy and I share that joy with all of you. It is a fact of life that the most helpful people are the most happy people in life. If you wanna be
10:41 happy, you gotta be helpful. The more helpful you are, the more happy you are. The more self centered you are, the more unhappy you're gonna be in life. It's just the way the universe works.
10:53 So joy floods into my soul when I begin to give it away. God wired the universe that the more unselfish you are the more joy flows into your life. The Bible says
11:05 this in Philippians 4, always be full of joy in the Lord. I say it again. Rejoice. Let everyone see that you are unselfish and considerate
11:17 in all you do. Now notice how he pairs joy with being unselfish and considerate. If you are inconsiderate and you are selfish, you're not gonna be joyful. But if you are unselfish and you are considerate, you're
11:29 gonna be joyful. I'll I'll be real blunt with you. Look at this verse up on the screen. Philippians one:four says, Forget about yourself long enough to lend a helping hand. That should have been our memory verse this
11:41 week, it's shorter. Forget about yourself long enough to lend a helping hand. If you lack joy in your life, you're not happy right now, let me tell you, start serving. Start finding a
11:53 place where you can volunteer to give part of your time away and you get nothing in return. You're not paid for it, you're you're just giving your life away. If there's nothing in your life that that you are doing
12:05 say on a weekly basis on which you're just doing it for others benefit not for your own, if there's nothing in your life like that you're living a pretty selfish life. And God didn't put you on this
12:17 planet just to live for you. You got to give back, you got to make a contribution, you got to be unselfish. That's where the joy comes from. Number 2, the other way joy comes is when I
12:29 use my gifts to help others. Joy comes from getting the focus off myself and joy comes from using my gifts to help others. And when you use the
12:41 gifts that God gave you to help other people it feels good. I was reading an article this week about the Oscar contenders for the Academy Awards this year. Some of 1 of the actors said,
12:53 I was created, I was made for this role. You know that feeling that's how you feel when you know I'm doing what God made me to do, what God wired me to do.
13:05 First Peter 4 10 says this, God has given each of you some special abilities. Be sure to use them to make a ton of money.
13:16 Oh sorry I misread that, that's in the reviled substandard perversion translation. God has given each of you some special abilities be sure to use
13:28 them to read it with me. Help each other. Okay. Passing on to others God's many kinds of blessing. We are blessed to be a blessing. God blesses you
13:40 so you can bless other people. We are blessed to be a a blessing. And how do we bless others? We bless others by using our skills, by using our time, our talents, whatever we've got. When we
13:52 use it to help other people and service, you bless other people. Number 2, surviving others unselfishly, serving others unselfishly will create not only
14:04 joy in my life, it will improve my relationships. And boy do we need this 1. Your relationships will get better the more you learn how to serve.
14:16 And that's something you got to practice at. It will improve my relationships. Why? Because the root of every single relational problem in your life is self centeredness. Problem in your life is self
14:28 centeredness. Now there are other issues that come in but at the root, it's selfishness. I want what I want when I want it, and you want what you want when you want it, and neither of us are willing to budge and give in
14:40 and change. And I want it my way and you want it your way and that causes conflict. The verse verse that Kay and I memorized when we were, actually on our honeymoon was Proverbs
14:52 13 10, only by pride cometh contention. In other other words, when you have an ego you're gonna have conflict. Anytime you're having a conflict in your marriage ego is showing up and you're not being a servant,
15:04 you're being selfish. But the more you practice, the more you learn to get yourself out of yourself, get a bigger perspective, you begin to serve unselfishly, it's gonna change and improve every
15:16 single 1 of your relationships. Because you change, it changes your relationships. You see friends, life is the lifelong task, the lifelong
15:28 school of learning how to be unselfish. Unfortunately some people never learn it. They go through all of life living for themselves. The whole task of life, why God put
15:40 you here, is to learn why? Because God is love and God wants you to learn to be like him. So how do I learn to be unselfish? Simple. Copy
15:51 Jesus because he lived the most unselfish life ever. Matthew 10 28 says this, your attitude your attitude must be like my
16:03 own, Jesus says. For I did not come to be served but to serve. Now when you take on the attitude of Jesus and you begin to
16:15 live your life not for the benefit of yourself but you begin to live your life for the benefit of others, to help others and honor God, help others and honor God, you accept your bivocational minister of God, 2
16:26 incredible benefits happen. 1, you become more like Jesus and 2, you're more loved, respected, you're more popular. If you wanna have more friends, learn to be a servant. If you
16:38 wanna learn to have be more popular, learn to be a servant. If you want people to love you, like you, to respect you, learn to be a servant. Don't try to be interesting, be interested.
16:51 Be interested in others. That's how you make it at a party, be interested in others. No, think you're the greatest person in the world because everybody is interested only in themselves. And when finally somebody
17:03 is interested in them, they think you're the greatest conversationalist that ever lived. Here's what the Bible says, Romans 14 18, If you serve Christ in this way, unselfishly
17:15 serving, you will please God, notice, and be respected by people. You wanna be respected by people? Learn to have a servant's heart. Here's the cool part of
17:27 all this. The more I bless other people, the more God blesses me. The more I serve others, the more God honors me. The more I bless other people, the more I minister to other people, the
17:39 more God ministers to me. Let me show you some verses up here on the screen. Proverbs 11 25. The 1 who blesses others is abundantly blessed and those who
17:51 help others are helped. In other words it's the principle of sowing and reaping. Whatever seed I sow I'm going to get back. But when I don't get back a seed, if I plant a seed I don't get back 1 seed, I get a whole
18:03 tree of seeds. And so if you start blessing other people you get tons of blessing back. You start helping other people you get tons of help back. You get more than you bargained for.
18:15 Blessing others gives me blessing. You know when people tell me, You know I'd really like to be involved in service but I'm just too busy. I don't have any time to really be
18:26 involved in volunteering anywhere, I'm just too busy. Then you just forfeited God's blessing on your business. I really feel sad for you. You want God's blessing on your business? God does not bless selfishness. You want
18:34 God's blessing on your business? God does not bless selfishness. You want God's blessing on your business and on your work so badly? God said, are you giving anything away? Are you thinking only about yourself? Is it
18:46 all about you? Are you you think I put you on earth just to live for you? No. The more you give your life away the more God blesses you. Look at these verses. Proverbs 17 11, You
18:58 do yourself a favor when you're kind. Isn't that interesting? You do yourself a favor when you're kind. The bible says in Proverbs 20 two:nine, A generous man
19:10 will himself be blessed. So if I want God's blessing on my life, I got to be a blessing in other people's life. And if I want better relationships, I need to start serving. Number 3,
19:23 serving others unselfishly will make my life meaningful. That's the third big surprise that most people won't know. The only way you find meaning in life is to give your life
19:34 away. God wired the universe on this principle. Meaning does not come from money. We think if I just get more money then my life will have more meaning. No it will
19:46 not. Money has many good uses. It can make life easier, it can give you opportunities, it could open doors, it could save you time, but money cannot give you meaning. No
19:58 amount of money will ever give your life meaning. Meaning comes from ministry, from giving your life away. Jesus said it like this, Mark 8 35. If you try to keep
20:10 your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, for the sake of the good news, you will find true life. Circle those last 2 words. True
20:22 life comes from giving my life away. Now knowing this, what should be my attitude toward service?
20:34 Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord because you know that your work in the Lord is never wasted. Now notice a couple of words in that verse. It says always give yourself fully. That word fully, in Greek,
20:47 fully. That word fully, in Greek it literally means not half hearted. You just totally I'm all in. I'm jumping in. I'm I'm going in the deep end. Give yourself fully to the work of the
20:59 Lord because you know that your work in the Lord is never wasted. That word wasted is is it means empty, it means useless, it means without purpose.
21:11 Everything you do for for Christ has a purpose. And it may seem insignificant and maybe nobody else seems to know about it but it's important. The Bible says even if
21:23 you give a cup of cold water in God's name, in Jesus name, that you get rewarded for that in eternity. And that brings me to the fourth reason. What will happen
21:35 if I use my life to serve and bless others? If I switch the focus from it's all about me to switch the focus on how many people can I serve, how can I honor God by helping others? It creates
21:47 joy in my life, it improves my relationships, it makes my life meaningful, legacy. You will leave
21:58 a mark. Actually, you'll leave 2 legacies, 1 on earth and 1 in eternity. The 1 on earth isn't gonna last very long because after about 3 generations everybody
22:10 forgets you. Given enough time all your trophies are gonna be trashed. All the things you think are so cool right now, 2 generations don't even gonna care. Care. You may get your name on a building, nobody's even gonna
22:22 ask who was that person? So what? But the rewards you get in eternity are gonna go on and on and on and on forever. But when you begin to serve,
22:35 what it does is it gives you a reputation. The Bible says this Proverbs 10 verse 7, Good people will be remembered as a blessing. Let me
22:47 ask you, what are you gonna be remembered for? If you were to die tomorrow, would people say, Man, that person was a real blessing. They really live for other people, they served, they were sharing, they were
22:58 generous, they were kind, they were always thinking about the people or would they think? Only they were pretty self centered. They only had their goals, they only went after what they wanted, they didn't really care
23:07 about anybody else, didn't take care of their wife or their kids or any, they just live their life, did what they wanted to do. What do you wanna be known for? Good people will be be remembered
23:19 as a blessing. Now the truth is everybody wants their life to count. Deep down inside of you, you want your life to have significance. You want your life to have meaning. You want your life to have purpose.
23:31 You want to do something great with your life. Everybody wants that. And there's nothing wrong with that, to do something great with your life. You ought to wanna do something great with your life. Here's how Jesus said
23:42 you become great. Matthew 20 26. If you wanna be great, you must be the servant of all the others. The more
23:54 you serve, the greater you're gonna be. The more you serve, the more influence you'll have. I call it the Mother Teresa Syndrome. Mother Teresa went to the poorest of the poor,
24:06 the most outcast of the outcast in Calcutta India to people who are on the street and dying. Nobody has less influence than them. And she began to take the dying into her home and she cared for them and she began
24:18 to serve those that everybody was trampling over. And as she went to the least influential people of life, God gave her enormous influence around the world so that she
24:30 could walk into the congress and everybody would listen. She could walk into the United Nations and everybody would listen. If you wanna be great, you learn to be the servant of all. You know for 30 years
24:42 I've been training leaders around the world, you know, lots of different countries. And I've discovered that when I hold a leadership seminar it's packed out. If I call it a service seminar nobody wants
24:53 to come. In fact even when we want to be servants we say, well we want to be a servant leader. Why not just lead the leader part off just be a servant. If you wanna be a great, learn to be the servant of all. If you go
25:05 on the Amazon dot com for every 500 books on leadership you'll find 1 book on being a servant. We got our values all upside down. The way you become great is by giving your
25:17 life away. You said, but nobody's gonna see my secret acts of service. God will. Like if you clean up that table when everybody's left the room, God will see that. And the Bible says
25:29 this in Hebrews 6 10, God is fair. He will not forget the work you did and the love you showed for him by helping his people. And he will remember that you are still
25:41 helping them. In fact, Jesus makes this promise in John 12 26. My father will honor anyone who serves me. Now
25:53 friends, that honor right there is more important than winning the Nobel priest prize. You're not gonna win the Congressional Medal of Honor. You're not gonna win the Nobel priest prize, but you can win that prize. My
26:04 father will honor anyone who serves me. And if you wanna leave a legacy, then you need need to start serving unselfishly, doing something with your life that you don't get
26:15 something back for, you know, monetarily. You've heard me say before that the greatest use of life is to invest it in that which outlast it. You got 3 choices with your life.
26:27 You can spend your life, you can waste your life, you can invest your life. And the best use of your life is to invest it in that which will out last it. There are only 2 things that are gonna last in the world. Only
26:39 2, the word of God and people. So if you build your life on the word of God and the people, then you are building your life on the things that are gonna last.
26:53 That was such an encouraging message from pastor Rick. And now here's Rick to tell you about today's offer.
26:59 1 of the things that I've discovered is that everybody eventually asks the questions of significance. Why am I here, and what is my purpose? What on earth am I here for? So I've updated the purpose
27:11 driven life because I wanted to help people like you understand how god created us for 5 eternal purposes. The Bible says that long before we heard of Christ, he had his eye on
27:23 us, had his designs on us for glorious living, that it was part of his overall purpose that he's working out in everything and everyone. God has never made a person that he doesn't
27:35 have a purpose for. You know, that simple message needs to be shared with a whole new generation. A young girl who was 12 years old when I wrote Purpose Driven Life is
27:47 now 22, And she needs to hear this essential message that God has a plan, has a purpose, and has a reason for everything that happens in our lives. What I did is after reading
27:59 hundreds of thousands of comments that have come into me over the past decade, I've added 2 new chapters that'll help you handle the 2 most common problems and barriers to living a life of
28:11 purpose. Now I want you to have this newly revised, expanded copy of Purpose Driven Life. I think you'll find it's a fresh reminder of things that you may have forgotten when you first read
28:23 it, or you might wanna give the book to somebody who has never read it and is struggling to find their purpose. So this month, I'm offering to you a hardback copy of the updated expanded edition
28:35 of Purpose Driven Life, What on Earth Am I Here For? It's my gift to you for your financial support of this ministry.
28:42 Just go to pastor rick dot com to get your copy of this great resource. That's pastor rick dot com, or you can text the word hope to 7 0 3 0 9. Again, that's the word
28:54 hope to 7 0 3 0 9. And we thank you so much for your support. It helps us share the hope of Christ with people all around the world. Be sure to join us next time as we look
29:06 into God's word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous financial
29:18 support.
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