Skip to content Possessing My Destiny — pt 1 (Plan, Purpose, Foundation, Future) Jan 7 · 21 min ...more
Possessing My Destiny — pt 1 (Plan, Purpose, Foundation, Future)
January 7, 2025 · 21 min
The Bible teaches that God’s plan for your life is good and includes a future filled with hope. Discover that the first step toward your destiny is to build your life on the foundation of God's Word.
Series Preparing for Your Future January 7, 2025 · 21 min · Preparing for Your Future
The Bible teaches that God’s plan for your life is good and includes a future filled with hope. Discover that the first step toward your destiny is to build your life on the foundation of God's Word. ...more Show the full description Show less The Bible teaches that God’s plan for your life is good and includes a future filled with hope. Discover that the first step toward your destiny is to build your life on the foundation of God's Word.
Series Preparing for Your Future Support this leader Liking this video? Support this ministry.
Support this leader
Liking this video? Support this ministry.
Give
Support this leader Liking this video? Support this ministry.
101K followers
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
101K followers
Comments No comments yet. Start the conversation.
In this video 0:00 Understanding and Choosing Your Destiny6:40 Preparing and Planning for Success18:08 Applying God's Word to Fulfill Your Purpose
Understanding and Choosing Your Destiny 0:02 Hey. This is pastor Rick Warren's daily hope. And whether you listen every day or you just found us, we are so glad you're here. Well, today, Rick begins a series called preparing for your future,0:14 where he shares how God's destiny for your life is good and how you get to choose much of your destiny. Now let's jump right in. Here's part 1 of a message called processing0:26 my destiny.0:27 Now, most people misunderstand the term destiny. They think that it means, unalterable conclusion, and that it's a it's a fate, it's kismet, it's0:39 karma, that you can't change it, that you can't control it, that you don't have anything to do with it, that God just determined your destiny, and it's gonna happen, no matter what you do. Nothing could be further from0:50 the truth. Folks, that's what Islam teaches. That's what Buddhism teaches. That's not what Christianity teaches. In fact, the bible teaches 2 very important truths about your destiny. And you might write these1:02 down, on your outline. The first 1 is that God's destiny for my life is good. A lot of times people think their destiny is is bad, it's negative, it's bitter. But the bible says1:14 in Jeremiah 29 11, for I know the plans I have for you, declares the lord. Plans to prosper. Circle that word, prosper. Plans to prosper you and not harm you.1:27 Plans to give you hope, circle that word, and a future. He says, my plan, my destiny for your life is a good plan. Now you may1:39 have had a terrible past, you may have had a painful past, but the truth is, the story isn't over. You haven't come to the end of the movie yet, and God says my plan, my
1:50 destiny for your life is good, and it's gonna give you hope. Now the second thing is just as important, and it's this, I get to choose my destiny. Did you know that? The Bible says
2:02 that you and I get to choose our destiny. God gives us a choice. In fact, you can miss the good destiny God has planned for you. It's not automatic. It's not just gonna happen all,
2:14 you know, whether you want it to or not. It's not involuntary. You get to choose your destiny. Now what I want us to do today is I want us to look at an event in the Old Testament that
2:26 illustrates these 2 facts, that God's plan, God's purpose, God's destiny for your life is good, and that you're gonna get to choose it. And we're gonna look at the story of Joshua
2:38 leading the children of Israel into the promised land after, 40 years of wandering in the desert. Now, let me give you a little bit of background. Moses leads them out
2:50 of, out of, 400 years of slavery in Egypt, and they're, crossing around the desert. It should have taken 11 days to go to walk from Egypt to Israel. But because they
3:02 didn't have the faith, they sent in some spies after about 2 weeks, and and and the spies, 10 of them came back with a negative report and said we can't do it. There are too many tribes there already. They're too big.
3:13 We're like grasshoppers in their eyes. We can't do it. Only 2 guys, Caleb and Joshua said, we can do it. And as a result, they said no, they were afraid to take the risk, and they spent
3:25 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Now in the 2 passages we're gonna look at in Deuteronomy, the bible tells us and in Joshua, the bible tells us that Moses is about to die. He's a hundred
3:37 and 20 years old. Joshua is the the young recruit. He's who actually is a whole lot older now, and he's gonna replace Moses and he's gonna lead them across the Jordan River
3:49 into the promised land. And right before that happens, God says, your destiny is your choice. Look at this verse, Deuteronomy chapter 30 verses 15 and following. God says, I
4:01 set before you today life and prosperity or death and destruction. That's the destinies you get to choose. Life and prosperity or death and
4:13 destruction. If you love the lord your god and you walk in his ways and you keep his commands then you'll live and you'll increase. Circle the word increase. You'll
4:25 live and you'll increase and the Lord your God will bless you, circle the word bless, in the land you are entering to possess. Now here's my question. Would you like to
4:37 live the kind of life where God says, you're gonna really live, I'm gonna increase what you do, and you're gonna be blessed by me. Would you like that destiny? Yes. I would like that
4:48 destiny. And God says, it's your choice. Look at the rest of it. He says, but if your heart turns away from me, you will not live long in the land. In other words, what you do isn't in a matter of hill
5:00 of beans. You will not live long in the land you're crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I have set before you, and here are the choices, life or death, blessing or curses.
5:13 Now choose life, underline that, choose life so that you and your children may live. Now I want you to notice 2 things about this very
5:24 powerful verse. First, God had prepared a destiny for the children of Israel. He said, I've already chosen this land for you. I'm gonna give you this land. It's gonna be the promised land,
5:36 but he says, you're gonna have to possess it. I'm not just gonna hand it to you on a platter. You you you're gonna have to possess it. And he says, you have to make a choice. And he says
5:48 that the choices we make, notice, affect our children too. The last phrase, choose life so that you and your children may live. In
6:00 the next 10 years, it's gonna be the most critical 10 years in your life so far. Some of you are gonna get married the next 10 years, some of you are gonna retire in the next 10
6:12 years. If you have a second grader, she will be graduating from college in the next 10 years, in 10 years. I mean, a lot of things gonna happen. This is gonna be a critical junction in
6:24 your life, and so we're gonna look today at how do you possess your destiny. How do you prepare for the future that God wants you to live so that you're
6:35 choosing life rather than death? You're choosing blessing rather than cursing. If you wanna possess your destiny, you're gonna have to do 3 things. If you wanna
Preparing and Planning for Success
6:47 do what God made you to do, if you wanna have everything God made for you to have, and if you wanna be what God made you to be, you're gonna have to do 3 things.
6:59 They're all in this very important chapter called Joshua chapter 1. If you have your Bible, you can open to Joshua chapter 1. The fact is you have to do the same 3 things that God told Joshua to do
7:11 in order to possess the promised land. Now, if you're interested in success, and I hope you are. I mean, what's the alternative? Failure. God God did not make you to be a failure. God does
7:23 not sponsor flops. God wants you to succeed in your life, being what he made you to be, doing what he made you to do, and having what he made you to have. But it's not automatic. You're not automatically
7:35 gonna be, do, and have what God made you to be, do, and have. You have to make choices. And if you're interested in success, you need to study Joshua chapter 1, because in it, it mentions
7:47 the word success 3 times, and 2 guarantees of success are actually in this chapter. So you need to study it if you wanna be successful in your marriage, in your family, in your
7:59 career, in your education, whatever it is. Now, here's the first thing God tells Joshua to do in order to possess his destiny. Number 1, prepare a plan.
8:11 That's it. He said you've gotta prepare a plan. The future belongs to the person who plans for it and who prepares for it. It's that old cliche that we've heard over and
8:23 over, if you fail to plan, you're planning to fail. Planning is a spiritual activity. The bible has a lot to say about it. The bible tells us it's foolish not to
8:35 plan, not to think ahead, not to know where you're going. And in Joshua chapter 1, God starts out with this, verses 1 to 4. After the death of Moses, the
8:46 Lord said to Joshua, Moses my servant is dead. Now then, get ready to cross the Jordan river into the land I'm
8:58 giving you and I will give you every place where you set your foot just as I promised Moses. He's he's outlining his destiny. Your territory,
9:10 listen, will extend from the Sinai desert to Lebanon, and from the Euphrates to the great sea, that's the Mediterranean ocean, on the west. Now notice, he's very specific here in
9:22 outlining the the borders of his destiny. And I want you to notice a couple things about this in preparing a plan. First, you're never gonna possess your future if you're
9:33 stuck in the past. You're never gonna, prepare and possess your destiny if you're always looking backwards. And the first thing, God has to say to Joshua is, Moses is
9:45 dead. What do you need to bury in your life? What do you need to let go of? It's dead, it's over. You know the most difficult thing to do is to keep a corpse from
9:57 stinking. It's also the most expensive thing to do. You need there's some things you need to let go of. There's some things you need to bury, and you cannot get on with your destiny if you're always thinking about the
10:09 past. He says, Moses is dead. That era is over. Now, all the eras you've been through in your life are over. But that doesn't mean your destiny's over. You've got new eras and a new destiny.
10:21 And then he says, get ready. I want you to circle that. Get ready to cross the Jordan river. In other words, you gotta prepare. You gotta plan it out. And again, he says be specific. He says, here's where you're gonna
10:33 go. You're gonna go from the Sinai to Lebanon. You're gonna go from the Euphrates, which is over in Iraq, to, the Mediterranean Sea. Question. Where do you wanna be in 10 years?
10:46 You're either gonna have a destiny, or you're gonna drift. And if you don't have a destiny that planned out, that you wanna go toward, you're just gonna drift to the next decade. You know, I I read recently
10:58 a very famous study that reported this. 27 percent of all Americans have given no thought to the future. They've given no thought at all. 27 percent. Percent. About 60 percent
11:09 of Americans have given some thought. Usually, it's only in the area of finances. They only give financial planning thought, they don't think about any other area of their life, 60 percent. Only 10 percent of Americans
11:22 have ever given serious thought to their future, and only 3 percent of all Americans have a plan written down with goals, only 3 percent. Now they
11:34 went back and they studied these 4 different groups, and they discovered this, that almost all of the people who had no thought to the future were on welfare. They were welfare recipients,
11:46 almost 100 percent. Most of the 60 percent who had given some thought to the future were barely making it. Barely making ends meet. All of the 10
11:57 percent who had given serious thought were what you would call successful, all of them. And those with written goals were highly successful. They were the top achievers in the
12:09 nation. In fact, those who had written down goals and plans were out achieving all the others 10 to 1. 10 to 1. Now it's interesting. They did a study
12:21 between the 10 percent who had given serious thought, and the 3 top 3 percent who had actually written down goals and a plan. And they tested them, and they discovered that the successful
12:33 and the highly successful, there was no difference, measurably in their education or in their talent. The only difference between successful and highly successful was
12:45 the top 3 percent had written down a life plan, had written down goals, had written down a way to go moving toward their destiny. That's important.
12:57 You know, a guy told me 1 day, he says, you know, Rick, you're you're just lucky that your book was a best seller. And I I said to him, I said, well, you know, maybe. But I'll tell you this, I find that the more I
13:07 prepare, the luckier I get. And and 12 hours a day writing and rewriting and rewriting was more than just luck. I did it for 7
13:19 months from got up at 4 30 in the morning and from 5 AM to 5 PM, I wrote on that book for 7 months without fail. It was a very disciplined thing, and the more I prepared the luckier I
13:31 got. Now he says get ready, plan it out, and then in verse 10 he says this, so Joshua ordered the leaders, and that's who I wanna talk to today. I wanna talk to
13:43 you leaders. Ordered the leaders, go through the camp and tell everyone, prepare your provisions. In 3 days you'll cross the Jordan and you're gonna go in and
13:55 take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving for you to own. Now again, notice here, God says the promised land is your destiny, but you're gonna have to take possession.
14:07 I'm not just gonna hand it to you on a platter. This is not just a cake walk. You've gotta go in and take possession of it. He says, prepare prepare your provisions. What's he saying
14:18 there? He's saying get your supplies ready. He's saying pack your bags. Have you packed your bags for the next decade? Are you just gonna drift to it? Have you made any plans for where you wanna be in
14:30 10 years? With your family, with your finance, with your life, with your career, with your relationship to Christ, with your small group, with your church, with your ministry, with all the things that God has
14:42 given you. You know, this verse is 1 of my favorite verses, Psalm 20 verse 4. It's a prayer, and he says, may he, God, give you the desire of your heart,
14:55 and make all your plans succeed. Did you know that with verses in the Bible? God says, I wanna give you the desire of your heart. I wanna make your plan succeed. Here's the problem. God can't make your plan succeed
15:07 if you've never made any. Until you make plans, God can't make them succeed. So really, God is waiting on you. I give you a choice, life or death, blessing
15:19 or curse. Now the Bible has so much to say about the wisdom of planning. You go all through the book of Proverbs, it's filled, Solomon says look at the ants, the ants are smarter than most people. They plan, they
15:30 store up for the winter in the summer. He He said, you know, most people, they're gonna get to retirement, have nothing to live on, because they're not making any plans. They're not saving, they're spending everything
15:41 they've got. Jesus said it like this, he said, no king goes to battle without first making a plan. Says it in Luke 14. And he says no builder builds a tower without first
15:53 making a plan. Do you have a life plan? Most people have spent more time planning their vacation, than they have plan planning their lives. I'm certain most women have spent more time planning their
16:04 wedding, than they plan plan their life. And yet the wedding is over in a day, and you got the rest of your life to live in. What have you done to plan that? We make business plans, do we make life plans?
16:17 Proverbs 20 verse 18 says this, don't go charging into battle without a plan. Now since we don't know the future, we give God the right to change our plans. And
16:29 that's why in the book of James, James says, when you plan, you you should say don't say we're gonna do this and this and this. Say, we're gonna do do this, this, and this, if it is the Lord's will. In other words,
16:41 I don't know what's gonna be around the next turn. I don't know what's gonna happen to my life tomorrow. But it doesn't mean I don't make plans because I don't know the future. God knows the future. I just give God the
16:51 right to change my plans, and it doesn't upset me. But he still wants me to make plans even if he has an intention to change them. Because he said that's smart. That's wise.
17:03 So how do you have plans that will succeed? How do you be successful in the next 10 years? Look at this verse on the screen. Proverbs 16 3. Commit to the Lord whatever you do,
17:15 then your plans will what? Succeed. Now as your pastor, I am committed to your success. In fact, I pray for your success. In fact, I was praying for you this morning,
17:28 and I was praying for those who are out of work, and for those who need different jobs, and for those who are going through financial, and marital, and physical, and emotional tension, and I pray as your pastor, part of
17:39 my job is to help you be the success that God meant you to be, fulfilling the destiny he has for you. And how do you do that? Well he says right there, you commit your plans to
17:51 the Lord. You commit whatever you do to the Lord, and then it will succeed. You surrender your plans. You make your plans, and they say, no Lord, this is the best I could do, but I'm surrendering to you, and I give you
18:01 the right to change them, and I'm giving it all to you. That's the first step. You prepare a plan.
Applying God's Word to Fulfill Your Purpose
18:15 Thanks so much for listening to pastor Rick's Daily Hope. You know, your prayers and financial support have a huge impact on millions of people here and around the world, so we really appreciate
18:27 that. Thank you. And now Rick's gonna share a letter from 1 of our listeners who says Daily Hope is making a real difference in their life.
18:35 You've heard me say before that it's not enough to just listen to God's word. You've gotta apply it in your life, and that's what leads you to your purpose. Let me share a letter from Ibanga who
18:47 listens to Daily Hope in Nigeria. She wrote, dear pastor Rick, I wanna express my gratitude to God for what he's done in my life through the Daily Hope broadcast. I listen to your podcast every
18:59 single day and your messages have blessed me immensely. I was a Christian who was living a compromising life. And as a result, I couldn't fulfill god's purpose for me.
19:11 But through consistent application of the principles that you teach, I have been able to live daily for the glory of God. And I have also begun pursuing the dream that's been in my heart
19:23 since I was a child of becoming a minister of music. Wow. Just think about this. If Yibonga had ignored god's word, she would have never been able to
19:35 pursue her dream, the 1 that god had placed in her heart. You probably have a dream in your heart too. And what is the key that unlocks that dream? The word of god. Now remember, no
19:46 matter how much you study it, it doesn't matter if you don't apply, act on, and practice the word of God. The Bible says that without acting on the word of God, it
19:58 just leads to pride. So let's walk together in humility and practice what we learn. God bless you.
20:06 Thanks so much, Rick. And if you'd like to let Rick know how much this broadcast has meant to you, how it's blessed you. Please send him an email at rick at pastor rick dot com. That's rick at
20:18 pastor rick dot com. Rick looks so forward to reading those emails. 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
20:29 Daily Hope and your generous financial support.
Comments
Keep it kind. Comments are public.