Skip to content How to Keep Your Heart Happy - pt 1 (truth, depression, encouragement, happiness) May 6 · 24 min ...more
How to Keep Your Heart Happy - pt 1 (truth, depression, encouragement, happiness)
May 6, 2026 · 24 min
God is with you, he is in you, and he is for you. In this message, Pastor Rick explains why those three truths can help you pushback against depression and discouragement—and find happiness.
Series The Habits of Happiness 2026 May 6, 2026 · 24 min · The Habits of Happiness 2026
God is with you, he is in you, and he is for you. In this message, Pastor Rick explains why those three truths can help you pushback against depression and discouragement—and find happiness. ...more Show the full description Show less God is with you, he is in you, and he is for you. In this message, Pastor Rick explains why those three truths can help you pushback against depression and discouragement—and find happiness.
Series The Habits of Happiness 2026 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 Leaky Hearts and God's Workout Plan8:09 Exercise 1: God is With Me, In Me, For Me13:18 Exercise 2: Be Grateful, Never Grumble
Leaky Hearts and God's Workout Plan 0:02 Hey, thanks for joining us today on pastor Rick's Daily Hope, the Bible teaching ministry of Rick Warren. And today, we're continuing our series called the habits of happiness. In this series,0:14 Rick dives into the book of Philippians and helps you discover God's path to true and lasting happiness. Let's get going with part 1 of a message called how to keep your heart0:26 happy.0:27 This week a little boy jumped into his father's lap and he said, daddy my heart is so full of happiness. Then he jumped off, went off to play with his brother. An hour later came back in with0:39 a long face. Really really, you know, like gloom had come over him and his daddy said, what happened to your happy heart? He said, Brian made it all leak out.0:52 Would you agree that sometimes our hearts spring a leak? Would you agree that it's quite easy to spring a leak? That you can be very very happy and the next second because of the phone call, or what1:04 somebody said to you, or somebody who cut you off in traffic, or whatever, you can spring a leak. And it is very very easy to lose the happiness in our hearts.1:16 Now we started a few weeks ago this series through the book of Philippians that I'm calling the habits of Happiness. And this weekend, if you'll take out your message notes, I want us to look at how do you keep your1:27 heart happy? In spite of all the things that happen and all the things that cause you to spring a leak, How do you keep your heart happy? And1:39 we're looking at Philippians chapter 2 verses 12 to 18. Now this is a very powerful passage, Philippians 2 12 to 18, because in it, it gives us examples
1:51 of 5 of the most common ways that we lose our happiness. But more important than that, it gives us the antidotes, the cures, the
2:03 remedies, the 5 cures to keep you from losing your happiness so often so that your heart doesn't spring a leak. Now let me read the text to you, and then, you see if you can,
2:15 pick out the antidotes as I read this to you. Philippians 2 12 to 18. Therefore, my dear friends, as you've always obeyed, not just in my presence, but even more in my absence.
2:27 Remember, Paul is writing from prison to these people in Philippi, a church that he started. He was the the planter of this church. He says, now I tell you to continue. Continue.
2:39 That means keep on. Continue to work out your salvation. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling. Now fear means deep
2:50 respect, and trembling means, with sensitivity. It means, with with deep reverence and humility. Work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is
3:02 God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose. Do everything without complaining or arguing, so that you may become blameless.
3:16 And pure children of God, without fault in a crooked and depraved generation in which you shine like stars in the universe
3:28 as you hold on to and hold out the word of life. In order that I may be able to boast of the day of Christ that I did not run or labor for nothing. Then he says,
3:39 but even if I'm being poured out like a drink offering on the sacrifice and service coming from your faith. The the sacrifice and the service coming from your faith. He said, I'm still glad, I'm still happy,
3:52 and I rejoice with all of you, and so you too should be happy, and you should rejoice with me. Now, the key
4:03 verse in this passage is there on your outline. It's it's verse 12 and 13 where it says, you must continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,
4:15 in other words deep respect and humility, deep reverence and humility. He says you work out your salvation for it is God who works in you both to will and to act according to His good purpose. I
4:27 want you to circle the phrase work out and circle the phrase work in. In your life, God has a part and you have a part in your spiritual growth. God's part is to
4:39 work in in you, to work in your salvation and your part is to work it out. And what does it mean to work out your salvation? Notice it doesn't
4:50 say work for, big difference. You cannot work for your salvation. You can't earn your salvation. You can't buy your salvation. You can't deserve. So he doesn't say work for your
5:02 salvation, like work real hard and then you'll be saved. The Bible does not teach that. In fact, the Bible teaches the exact opposite. In Ephesians 2 8 and 9, it said it's by God's grace that you're saved through faith.
5:14 And even the faith is not of yourselves. It's the gift of God, not of works so no 1 could boast. If you could work your way to heaven, then everybody would be bragging who got up there and it would be
5:26 like hell. So you can't work for your salvation. He doesn't say that. He says you were to work out what God works in. God works in the
5:37 salvation you work in. When you work out a puzzle, did you create the puzzle? No. It was already created. What's the working out part of a puzzle? You're putting it together and then all you said, oh, look at the big
5:47 picture. Okay. When you go work out in a gym, as I can tell you do every day, are you working to create a muscle that's not there? Are you creating to
5:59 strengthen the muscle God already gave you? The second. K. You can't create muscle. You can strengthen and enlarge the muscle God gave you. But when you go do a workout,
6:11 it's not like you don't have any muscle. You have some, it's just pretty weak. And so you are to work out what God has already worked in you. This is the key. We're to work out what
6:23 God works in. This week I was I read an article on 5 exercises for a healthy heart. And it said if you really want to have a strong heart, good strong
6:35 coronary health, said you need to do 5 things. Said, the 5 workouts were a treadmill, swimming pool, stretching, weight lifting, and aerobics
6:47 class. Those were the the 5 workouts, recommended by the American Heart Association for a healthy heart. But I don't wanna talk to you about a healthy heart
6:58 this weekend. This passage is about a happy heart. How do you have a happy heart? And and the workout for a happy heart is quite different than a workout for a physically healthy
7:10 heart. But in this passage that we just read, we have Paul's workout strategy, his workout plan, his 5 exercises for a happy heart.
7:23 Alright, let's look at these 5 exercises for a happy heart, not a healthy heart but a happy heart. And Paul in these verses
7:34 gives us 5 things to do. Now again, as we've been going through this book of Philippians, it's a very simple straightforward book. But simple does not mean easy.
7:46 I'm gonna share these 5 exercises with you. They're pretty easy to do, be easy to understand but they're very hard to do. I mean you know the right things that'll make you physically
7:58 healthy, do you do them? No. And these are the things that will make you emotionally and spiritually happy, and you can hear them and not do them. Now the first exercise to maintain
Exercise 1: God is With Me, In Me, For Me
8:10 a healthy heart has to do with fear. You see fear is 1 of the primary reasons we lose our happiness. You cannot be afraid and be happy at the same
8:22 time. You just can't. And and when we get afraid, when fear comes in the front door, happiness goes out the back door of our lives. And happiness stays on until fear goes. So you got to get
8:34 rid of fear. And 1 of the biggest fears we have is the fear of being abandoned. The fear of being alone. The feel like I'm facing life all by myself. And you've all felt that, I've all felt, we've all
8:46 felt it at different times in our lives that we're here, that on alone by ourselves and nobody is there to help us. And so here's the first exercise. Number 1,
8:57 remember that God is with me, He's in me, and He's for me. Remember that God is with me, and in me,
9:09 and for me. And this is the first verse that we have to deal with, verse 13. No matter what I'm facing, no matter what you're gonna face this next week, you're not gonna face it alone.
9:21 God is with you, he is in you, and he is for you. Now look at these 3 verses. Philippians 2 14, 2 13 says this, For God is always working
9:33 in you, giving you both the desire to obey Him and the power to do what pleases Him. Now let's look at this verse word by word. God is always working. Circle the word
9:45 working. That word in Greek is the word energos, from which we get the word energy energy. So God is the energy driver in your
9:57 life. You're not just going on will power, you're not just going on your own power. God says God says, I will give you the power and I am working in you, and no matter what you're facing I
10:08 am in you. Not only is He in us, He is with us. Look at the next verse, John 14 18 to 20 says, I will not leave you as orphans, Jesus is speaking. I won't leave
10:20 you as orphans, I will be with you. And you will realize that you are in me and I am in you. That's quite a promise. That's quite a promise.
10:33 God says not only am I with you, I am in you, and not only am I in you, I am around you. I'm around you. The Bible tells us in the book of Colossians
10:44 that we are hid with Christ in God. Now think about this. The Bible says Christ is in me. The Bible says I am in Christ. The
10:56 Bible says we're hid with Christ in God, and the Bible says we're sealed with the Holy Spirit. That means for the devil to get to you, he's got to get through the trinity.
11:08 That's a pretty good protection. That is a great fear reliever. Look at the next verse. Not only is God with us and in us, the bible says God is for us, Romans 8
11:20 31. If God is for us, who can defeat us? So go back and look at those 3 verses and circle the phrase in you, and with you,
11:31 and for you, or or for us. I think of the verse where in Psalm 23 it says, Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. Now you know that's the,
11:43 the Lord's shep the Shepherd's prayer, the good shepherd prayer where the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. And the whole whole poem is about
11:55 David being a shepherd to a sheep and God being a shepherd to David. And he says, Surely goodness and mercy will follow me. You know when a shepherd leads a sheep, there are always guard dogs at the
12:07 back. And these little guard dogs are at the back nipping at the back, so that as the shepherd leads them, the guard dogs behind keep the sheep moving in the right direction. And the Bible says that the guard dogs in
12:18 your life are goodness and mercy. God's goodness in your life, and God's mercy in your life. God's goodness, God gives you the things you don't deserve, and God's mercy is He doesn't give you the things
12:30 you do deserve. And in those in your life you're going to have both of those. He says, I'm not just with you, I'm not just in you, I'm for you.
12:42 Do you ever feel the smile of God in your life? If you don't, you don't really know God. Some people think God is like their angry parent who's mad at them all the time. No, it says God says, I am
12:54 for you. And the first exercise, if I want to be happy, I need to get up every morning and I need to say, God I thank you that you're gonna be with me today, you're gonna be in me today, and you're gonna
13:06 be for me today. How good is that? What kind of great news is that? If God is with me, God is in me, and God is for me, what in the world am I doing being depressed?
Exercise 2: Be Grateful, Never Grumble
13:18 Number 2. The second habit or exercise to maintain a healthy heart is this, be grateful and never grumble. Uh-oh.
13:30 Now we go to verse 14. This deals with the second cause of the loss of happiness. Fretting and fighting over the small stuff. Do you ever do that? Yes. We all
13:42 do it. We fret and we fight over the small stuff. That's verse 14. Now this is a hard habit to break because we're negative by nature and we're conditioned by our culture. And ever
13:54 since Adam and Eve existed, we have been going around excusing and accusing, excusing and accusing, excusing and accusing. We excuse ourselves for all the mistakes we make, and we accuse everybody else of
14:06 all of all the mistakes. We we hide and we hurl, and we blame others, for the problems in our life. And we say, you know if if I just had a different husband then I'd be happy.
14:19 If I had just hadn't gotten married then I'd be happy. If I had children I'd be happy. If my children would leave home I'd be happy. That's that when and then thinking and we're always
14:30 blaming somebody else. I've said this many times to you, You are as happy as you choose to be. You can't blame anybody else. Happiness is a choice. And you have to stop excusing it and accusing, and
14:42 you have to stop fretting and fighting over the small stuff. Now Philippians 2 14 and 15 says this. Do everything without complaining or arguing,
14:54 so that no 1 can speak a word of blame against you. That, their friends, may be 1 of the most difficult verses in the Bible. Would you agree with that? Do everything without
15:07 complaining or arguing so that nobody can speak a word of blame against you. This week I sent out and I wrote a list of the type of complainers that I run into all the time. I
15:19 didn't put your name down I just put I just put the description. First are the whiners. You got any whiners in your life? And when they complain
15:31 they you know they rise and whine in the morning. I saw a bumper sticker the other day said, I may rise but I refuse to shine. That's what a whiner does. They they wake
15:43 up negative you know, people used to always ask, Hey, do you wake up grouchy? She said, No, I usually let him sleep. And, you know, again
15:55 this is a choice. You can get up in the morning and you say, good morning Lord or good Lord it's morning. That's a choice. You have a choice. And the second
16:07 habit of happiness, the second skill, the second, exercise in the workout for a happy heart, you got to learn to be grateful. Always grateful and never grumble.
16:19 Always grateful, never grumble. They're whiners. Then the second kind of complainers are martyrs. Don't look at them. Their favorite expression is nobody appreciates
16:30 me. And they are pros at throwing pity parties. They love to have pity. Everybody hates me, nobody loves me, I'm gonna go eat worms. They're they're martyrs.
16:42 Maybe they get that hyperchondriac who had put on her on her tombstone. I told you I was sick. She she was a martyr. How do you react when you don't get
16:54 your way? How do you react when when you don't get your way? Do you pout? Do you mount a complaint in a complaining campaign? You continue to fuss and argue
17:06 and complain and moan, you know, but mom, they're whiners and they're martyrs. Third kind of complainer I see are the cynics. And the cynics take
17:18 a different approach. Their attitude is, what's the use? Why bother? Why try? It isn't gonna make any difference. And and cynics, they just they just kinda
17:30 poison everything. It's like the lady who walked into the, you know, the seafood restaurant and she said to the waiter, sir, do you serve crabs here? He said, ma'am, we serve everybody.
17:43 Or the lady walked into the grocery store and and, the clerk said shopping bag and she said no just looking. There are cynics. And then number 4, there
17:55 are perfectionist perfectionist. And perfectionist, nothing is ever good enough for these complainers. You know, everything is just not quite the way it ought to be.
18:07 They're unpleasable and you know the favorite phrases is that the best you can do, and if you got C's, the perfectionist wants you to get B's. You got B's, they want you to get A's. If you got A's, they want you to get
18:17 straight A's. But we are complainers, and the bible says if you want to be happy you've got to be grateful and never grumble. Do everything without complaining or arguing
18:29 so no 1 can speak a word of blame against you. You know to me friends, the most the scariest verse in the bible is Matthew 12 36. It's not on your outline. You might write that 1 down.
18:41 Matthew 12 36. It's up here on the screen. It's something Jesus said. Here's what he said. I tell you this, that you will give an account
18:54 on judgment day of every careless word you have spoken. That ought to send shivers up your spine. How many
19:06 times have I complained, grumbled, argued about something when I shouldn't have been sweating the small stuff? Don't sweat the
19:17 small stuff is law number 1 of life. Law number 2 is, it's all small stuff or at least most of it is. The Bible says this in first Thessalonians 5 18,
19:30 In everything give thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Now people ask all the time, Rick, what's God's will for my life? There it is. In everything, give thanks.
19:43 Really? Yes. That is God's will. When you do that, God will show you step b. Now notice circle the word in. It does not say for. It does not
19:55 say for everything give thanks. It says in everything give thanks. There are a lot of things I shouldn't be thankful for. I'm not thankful for war. I'm not thankful
20:07 for leukemia and cancer. I'm not thankful for people who get raped and molested. I'm not thankful for racial injustice and and I'm not I there's a lot of evil in the world. To be thankful for
20:19 evil is a perversion of what God teaches in His word. The Bible doesn't say you're to be thankful for everything, it says you're to be thankful in everything. Why?
20:31 Well remember when I did the series on grief, in the last 1 I talked about 5 ways to use your your pain? I can use it to draw closer to God. I can use it to draw closer to others. I can use it to grow more like Christ. I
20:43 can use it as a ministry to serve others, and I can use it as a platform of witness. I can be thankful in a situation because I know Romans 8 28, In all things,
20:55 God works for the good. Not everything's good but in all things, God works for the good. We've covered this many times. And so in everything I can give thanks because I know that if I respond correctly, God
21:07 could turn crucifixions into resurrections. He loves to to change beauty for ashes or ashes into into beauty. So in everything, give thanks. In other
21:19 words, be grateful and never grumble. Be grateful for what you do have. Question. Do you think you would be happier if you followed this second exercise every day? You
21:30 grumbled less and were more grateful? Duh. Okay. Again, it's not rocket science. Okay. But if you want to have a happy heart, you do what
21:42 God's word says. And the first thing is to remember that God is always with me, God is always in me, and God is always for me. That makes me happy. And I should be grateful and
21:54 not grumble, not complain and argue. And be grateful for what I have, not what I don't have. Study after study showing that gratitude is the healthiest attitude psychologically.
22:12 Thank you for listening to Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Hey, did you know that most people look for happiness in all the wrong places? You won't find it through money, fame or power. You'll only find
22:24 real lasting happiness by following God's commands, and that's why Rick created the Habits of Happiness Bible study. Here's Rick to tell you more.
22:33 If you'd like to learn more about the habits of happiness, I've got a new resource to help you. It's called the Habits of Happiness guided experience book. In this resource, you're gonna learn how seeing
22:45 things from God's perspective will help you develop the biblical habits of happiness. And you're gonna discover how happiness runs deeper than any circumstance or any feeling or any relationship.
22:57 Now I'm excited because this book is filled with biblical truth, practical lessons, application exercises, and a lot of space for you to write down your responses to what God is
23:09 teaching you. It's a really powerful workbook, and it's a comprehensive study tool I believe is gonna help you grow to your next level of spiritual maturity.
23:19 This bible study is only available on Daily Hope, and quantities are limited. So be sure to request the Habits of Happiness bible study today when you give a gift to help Daily Hope
23:31 take the hope of Jesus to a hurting world. It's our way of saying thanks. Just go to pastor rick dot com to get your copy of this great resource. That's pastor rick dot com, or you can
23:43 just text the word hope to 7 0 3 0 9. Again, that's the word hope to 7 0 3 0 9. And thank you so much for your support. Your gift to Daily Hope helps us share the hope
23:55 of Christ with people everywhere. Be sure to join us us next time as we look into God's word for our daily hope. This program is sponsored by Pastor Rick's Daily Hope and your generous
24:07 financial
24:11 support.
Comments
Keep it kind. Comments are public.