The Teachings of Rick Warren Flashcards

Question

According to Rick Warren, what are the four ways that God speaks to us?

Answer 1

Here are four of the channels that God uses: God speaks to us through the Bible. It’s your guidebook for life. It shows you the right step to take. That is why you need to read God’s Word every day. If you’re not having a daily quiet time and reading the Bible, God is getting a busy signal when he wants to speak to you. You have to keep a constant connection, because God’s will is found in God’s Word. God speaks to us through teachers. Have you ever been in a church service and felt like what the teacher was saying was a direct message from God to you? There’s no way I or any other teacher could figure out exactly what to say to meet every need. But God knows. So before every service I pray, “God, you know the people and the needs out there. Give me the right things to say.” Somehow, in the way only he can, God uses my teaching and the teaching of other pastors to meet the needs of people who are listening. God speaks to us through impressions. There are two extremes to this. One extreme is the rationalist who believes no impression can be from God; it all has to be logical. At the other extreme is the mystical belief that every impression is from God. You need to get in the middle and realize that every impression has to match God’s Word. God speaks to us through our circumstances. If we’re going to live a life of significance, God’s got to make constant course corrections, and one of the things he uses to do that is the circumstances that come into our lives

Answer 2

It’s going to take more than your willpower to stop worrying. It takes four things: 1. **Get to know God.** Jesus says in Matthew 6:32, “People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things” (MSG). If you don’t have a relationship with God, you have every reason to worry. You’ve got to get to know God! As a believer, you have a heavenly Father who has promised to take care of you. You are God’s child, and children get special privileges. When you worry, God says, “You’re my child. Why are you acting like an orphan?” 2. **Put God first in every area of your life.** Matthew 6:31-33 says, “Don’t worry at all about having enough food and clothing …. Your heavenly Father already knows perfectly well that you need them, and he will give them to you if you give him first place in your life and live as he wants you to” (TLB). Any time you take God out of the center of your life and put anything else there — no matter how good it is — you’re going to worry. 3. **Live one day at a time.** The Bible says, “So don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will have its own worries. Each day has enough trouble of its own” (Matthew 6:34 NCV). If you’re worrying about tomorrow, you can’t enjoy today. You miss today’s blessings. It’s OK to plan for tomorrow, but you have to live for today. Right now, you only need enough power for today. 4. **Trust God to care.** “Give all your worries and cares to God, for he cares about you” (1 Peter 5:7 NLT, second edition). How do you do that? One way is to memorize God’s promises in the Bible. They’re like an insurance policy for believers. When you know something’s covered, you don’t worry about it anymore. Another way is to pray. If you prayed as much as you worried, you’d have a lot less to worry about.

Answer 3

Jesus actually gives four reasons you don’t need to worry in his Sermon on the Mount. 1. **Worry is unreasonable.** Matthew 6:25 says, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” (NIV) Jesus is saying, if it’s not going to last, don’t worry about it. To worry about something you can change is stupid. To worry about something you can’t change is useless. Either way, it’s unreasonable to worry. 2. **Worry is unnatural.** Jesus gives us an illustration from nature in Matthew 6:26: “Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” There’s only one thing in all of God’s creation that worries: human beings. We’re the only things God has created that don’t trust him, and God says this is unnatural. 3. **Worry is unhelpful.** It doesn’t change anything. Matthew 6:27 says, “Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?” When you worry about a problem, it doesn’t bring you one inch closer to the solution. It’s like sitting in a rocking chair — a lot of activity, energy, and motion, but no progress. Worry doesn’t change anything except you. It makes you miserable! 4. **Worry is unnecessary.** Matthew 6:30 says, “If God cares so wonderfully for flowers that are here today and gone tomorrow, won’t he more surely care for you, O men of little faith?” (TLB) If you trust in God, you don’t need to worry. Why? Because he has promised to take care of all your needs: “God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:19 NIV). Does that include bills? Yes. Does that include relational conflicts? Yes. Does that include your dreams and goals and ambitions? Yes. Does that include the health issues you don’t know what to do with? Yes. God will meet all your needs in Christ. Don’t worry about it!

Answer 4

When you pray a prayer request over and over, it’s not to remind God. He doesn’t need to be reminded! It’s to remind yourself who the source of your answer and all your needs is. If every prayer you ever prayed were instantly answered, two things would be true. First, prayer would become a weapon of destruction in your life. And, you’d never think about God, because he would become a vending machine. If every time you prayed you instantly got results, all you’d think about is the blessing. God wants you to think about the Blesser. Persistent prayer clarifies your request. 1. **A delayed answer gives you time to clarify exactly what you want and to refine your prayers.** When you pray persistently to your heavenly Father and you say something over and over again, it separates deep longings from mere whims. It says, “God, I really care about this.” It’s not that God doesn’t want to answer your prayers. He does. It’s just that he wants you to be certain that that’s what you really want. 2. **Persistent prayer tests your faith.** James 1:3-4 says, “When your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.” The only way you can grow to spiritual maturity is to have your faith tested. One of the ways God’s going to test your faith is by delaying some answers to your prayers. 3. **Persistent prayer prepares your heart for the answer.** When you make a request of God, God almost always wants to answer in a bigger and better way than you’ve prayed. Sometimes God denies your prayer requests because you’re thinking and asking too small. He wants to give you something bigger and better. But first, he has to prepare you for it. So God uses delays in answering prayer to help you grow, to help you get ready, to help prepare you for a bigger and better answer. Remember, “God can do much, much more than anything we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20 NCV).

Answer 5

What are the steps in this choice to let Christ have control? 1. Admit that you’ve been trying to play God. 2. Admit that you can’t change on your own. 3. Humbly ask God to help you change. 4. Be honest with someone else about the things that need to change in your life. 5. Give Jesus Christ total ownership of your life.

The Teachings of Rick Warren Flashcards

(29 cards)