- Hello, everybody,
and welcome back to part
eight of our special study
during the COVID-19 global pandemic.
I'm Rick Warren, Pastor
of Saddleback Church,
author of the "Purpose Driven Life,"
and teacher for the
"Daily Hope" broadcast.
Now, in our previous messages,
I've pointed out
that there are actually two
different pandemics going
on right now.
One of them is a physical pandemic,
and the other is an emotional
and spiritual pandemic.
Right now, we're facing
the disease of COVID-19,
but there's also the emotional dis-ease
that's being caused by all
the disruptions in your life.
You see, the side effects of COVID-19
has created unprecedented stress,
and the lives of billions of people
around the world have
been turned upside down.
Long after we have a
vaccine for the disease,
people are still gonna
be feeling the economic
and relational and emotional effects
of having their lives turned upside down.
So, while doctors and
scientists are working
around the clock to find
a cure and a vaccine
for the "disease" or the disease,
pastors and counselors
around the world are working
to help people cope with the dis-ease
that's caused by people out of work,
and with schools and churches
and all kinds of public events canceled,
and the stress that is caused
by these sudden changes
in our lifestyles.
And that's why I began this series called
the faith that works when life doesn't.
And each session,
we're looking at a
different negative emotion
caused by stress.
And we're looking at some practical steps
from the Bible
on how to deal with
that particular emotion.
Now, the Bible book that
we're using as our guide
is a little book called The Book of James.
It's only five chapters,
it's only 108 verses,
but it is jam-packed with wisdom
for people going through a crisis.
Now, we've already looked
at what God has to say about
dealing with fear and anxiety,
dealing with indecision,
dealing with loss and grief.
We've looked at what God
has to say about dealing
with self-defeating coping devices
that we tend to turn to
when we're under stress.
We've looked at instability.
And in our last session,
we actually looked at
how to counteract the inevitable
irritability and anger
that comes when we're all
isolated and stuck together.
If you've missed any of
these previous messages,
I hope you'll go watch them online.
Now, the Book of James is in the category
of what's called wisdom literature.
It's like the Book of
Proverbs in the Old Testament.
And that means it's a
collection of wise advice
and aphorisms to help you
through your daily life.
Now, the topics,
when you read through the Book of James,
can literally change with each verse.
And often, a particularly topic is spread
throughout the entire book.
For instance, he talks about
the power of your words
and your mouth, chapter one,
chapter two, chapter three,
and chapter five.
So, in some cases,
we're jumping around
from chapter to chapter
to see all that God has said
about a particular subject.
Now today, I want us to look at a faith
that leads to emotional health.
A faith that leads to emotional health.
And in the Book of James,
we're given many valuable
and many practical principles
for coping with stress.
Today, we're gonna look
at just 10 of them.
10 principles.
So we might call these the 10
COVID commandments. (laughs)
The 10 COVID commandments
for emotional health.
Now, before I give them to you,
I wanna point out a couple things.
Everybody doesn't have
the same level of stress,
we all have different levels
of stress in our lives,
and everybody does not respond
to stress in the same way.
I'm sure you've heard of people
saying probably many times
during this pandemic,
"Well, we're all in the same boat."
But actually, that's not true,
we're not all in the same boat.
We're all in the same storm,
but we're not all in the same boat.
Some people are sailing
in the storm in a yacht,
and they've got enough money,
and they've got a secure job,
and they've got a nice house,
and they're sailing through
the storm in a yacht.
Other people are in a rowboat,
and they live month to
month with their rent,
and being out of work is a
disaster for them right now.
And even still, there's some
other people in the storm
who are just kinda like holding
on to a piece of driftwood
in the storm.
In other words, how do you shelter at home
when you're homeless?
Or what if your home situation
is alcohol and abuse?
So we're all in different
boats in the same storm.
And you need to be sympathetic to that.
Now, each of us came into this crisis
with different levels
of, what I would call,
emotional and physical
and spiritual reserves.
And if you have a lot of
reserves built up in your life
before we entered this crisis,
you're probably doing okay right now.
But if your tank was already
half-empty before this crisis,
you may be running on empty by now.
And the truth is, some of
you entered this crisis
with nothing in your emotional tank
and nothing in your spiritual tank,
and you were already drained
before this even happened,
and you were the most
vulnerable to distress.
And I want you to know
that I care about you.
I care about you.
And I mean that.
And so does your church family.
We want to help you through
this difficult time.
That's why I'm teaching this
special COVID-19 series.
You can't be spiritually healthy
if you're emotionally unhealthy.
Did you hear that?
You can't be spiritually healthy
if you're emotionally unhealthy.
And you can't be spiritually mature
if you're emotionally immature.
So, regardless of how much emotional
and spiritual reserve you
had before this crisis began,
you need to understand that every day
that this crisis continues,
your emotional and your spiritual
and even your physical reserves
are being drained every day.
Okay, you just need to understand that.
Ongoing stress that just doesn't stop,
it completely depletes your reserves,
a little bit every day.
It's like letting the air out of a tire.
And that's why today's
message is so important
on emotional health.
Now, Romans chapter 12,
verses 11 and 12.
I love this, and the message
paraphrase says this,
"Don't burn out.
"Don't burn out.
"Keep yourselves fueled and aflame."
Keep yourselves fueled and aflame,
we're gonna talk about how
to keep yourself fueled,
how to keep your emotional,
physical,
mental,
spiritual reserves up.
"Don't burn out, keep
yourself fueled and aflame.
"Don't quit in hard times, instead,"
the Bible says, "Pray all the harder."
Now,
I'm gonna share with you 10 commandments
for emotional health during COVID-19.
As I said, we might call
these the COVID commandments.
These 10 principles are all in the Bible
and James refers to every one of them.
And if you'll follow these guidelines,
you're gonna make it through this pandemic
without falling apart.
So I hope you'll take
notes on this message.
You can download the message
outline from our website.
Now, let me give you
these 10 commandments,
COVID commandment,
these 10 steps to emotional health.
Get ready.
Number one.
Here's the first one.
Show grace to myself and others.
I need to show grace to
myself and to others.
To make it through this crisis,
you need to treat yourself,
and you need to treat other
people, the way God treats you.
How does God treat you?
Graciously.
With grace.
With mercy.
With forgiveness.
God always gives us what we
need, not what we deserve.
If I got what I deserved,
I wouldn't even be here.
He gives us what we need.
That's called grace.
And in James chapter four, verse six,
it talks about God's
grace and it says this.
"God loves to give us more grace.
"He opposes the prideful,
"but He gives grace to the humble."
God loves to give grace.
He opposes the prideful,
but He gives grace to the humble.
Why does God oppose the
prideful and the arrogant?
'Cause they think they can
do it all by themselves.
They don't think they need God,
they don't think they need God's grace,
they don't think they need
His mercy or forgiveness.
"There, you know, if it's
to be it's up to me."
But when we're humble,
and when we admit that we
don't have enough resources
to make it through this situation,
God opens the floodgates of heaven
and He pours out His grace on the humble.
And you know what?
Then God expects you to treat yourself
and everybody else the same way.
So, the first thing you need
to do for emotional health
is you need to be gracious
to you and to everybody else.
You need to cut yourself some slack,
and you need to do the same with others.
Why?
'Cause everybody's having
a tough time right now.
Everybody is under the gun.
Everybody is feeling the
stress of this pandemic,
particularly the over
thirty-something-million in America
who are out of work and not telling
how many millions around the world.
And so, you need to be kind,
and you need to be gentle,
and you need to be gracious with you.
What am I saying?
Don't expect yourself
to be able to perform
at the same level that you were
at before this crisis began.
You know, remember,
every day that this crisis continues,
your reserves are being drained.
What does that mean?
It means that right now,
you can get a full-night's sleep,
and get up in the morning,
and an hour later think, "I'm exhausted.
"I'm exhausted."
If you felt that way, that's normal.
That's normal with prolonged stress.
So the first step to emotional health is
to be freaking giving of yourself,
cut yourself some slack.
You may be working fewer hours right now
and yet feel more fatigue.
Again, it's normal.
So you should plan a moderate
amount of work right now,
not expect to be able to operate
at the same level of efficiency,
the same level of energy that
you had before this crisis.
This is not the time to play Superman,
this is not the time to play Superwoman,
you wanna be realistic.
Be forgiving of yourself,
and everybody else around you
'cause everybody's worn out.
Now, because of this first principle,
treat myself the way God treats me,
show myself grace and
show other people grace,
give them some slack,
then you need the second principle.
Here's the second principle.
Start and end each day refueling my soul.
You need to start and end every day,
during this pandemic,
refueling, recharging,
renewing, refilling your soul.
Now, what's your soul?
Your soul is your mind,
it's your will,
your ability to make choices,
and it's your emotions,
the way you think, the way you
feel, and the way you choose.
You see, you're not just a body,
you're a soul with a body.
And just as your body
has to be fed every day
to stay healthy,
so does your soul.
And if you're not feeding your soul,
you're fasting your soul,
your soul's on a diet,
well, you're gonna be drained
emotionally and spiritually.
So how do you refuel your soul?
By getting into God's Word every day.
Jesus said, "Man shall
not live by bread alone,
"but by every word from the mouth of God."
You recharge, this is soul food.
The more you get in this book,
the more you're gonna recharge,
refill, refuel your soul.
James talks about this.
James chapter one verse 21, he says,
"Humbly accept God's word
planted in your heart.
"It is able to save your souls."
This book, God says, is
able to save our souls.
Now, if this book can save your soul,
it can also feed your soul,
it can also restore your soul,
it can recharge your soul,
it can refuel your soul.
As David says in Psalm 23,
"He restoreth my soul."
Now, here's an interesting thing.
Recent studies have shown
that the way you begin your day
and the way you end your day
determines your attitude
throughout the day.
Your first five minutes, in
particular, in the morning,
determine your attitude
for the rest of the day.
So that's gonna set your attitude.
You're either gonna choose wisely
in those first five minutes,
or you're gonna not choose wisely.
I would ask you to think about
what you're gonna do in the
first five minutes of your day.
Do not begin your day by
picking up your phone.
Do not begin your day by reading the news.
Do not begin your day by
turning on the TV or the radio.
None of those things are
gonna feed your soul.
You need to feed your soul first.
So I wanna recommend
that you start a new
habit during this pandemic
that I guarantee you will
help recharge you every day.
It's called God's word, first word,
and God's word, last word.
G-W-F-W, God's word, first word,
and G-W-L-W, God's word, last word.
What does that mean?
It means that,
what you do is you take your Bible
and you open it to a book
that you wanna read through.
Let's say you're gonna
read through Psalms,
or let's say you're gonna
read through First John,
those would both be good
books, or Philippians.
What you do is you open your Bible,
and you put it on your bedside,
the cabinet or whatever
you've got by your bedside,
and you leave it open.
If the Bible is closed,
you will have a tendency to overlook it.
But you leave it open to
where you read the day before.
And then when you wake up in the morning,
before you do anything else,
God's word, first words,
you sit down, and you read a passage.
Now,
I talked about this earlier,
but I'm telling it to you,
again, in this session
because I really want you to start it.
I don't think many of
you started that habit.
And you start reading.
It doesn't matter how long you read.
It's not about time.
It's not five minutes, or 15 minutes,
it's not an hour.
What you do is you start reading,
and then you read until God speaks to you.
And the moment you go,
"That's what I needed to hear," you stop.
So if you read one version
and go, "That's all I needed,"
you stop right there and
then you think about it.
But in the morning, when you get up,
the first thing you do is
you look at your open Bible
and you read where you
left off the night before.
Then that night, God's word, last word,
G-W-L-W,
and at the end,
you leave your Bible open all day
and you just pick up the next verse,
and you read the next verse,
and you keep reading
until God speaks to you.
If he speaks to you in three verses, stop.
It's not how many times
you get through the Bible,
so how much the Bible gets through you.
So I highly recommend reading
or listening to the Bible,
the first thing in the morning
and the last thing at night,
in a modern translation.
Like the New Living Translation
is a great translation.
And I would start with
the Book of Philippians,
or the Book of First John,
or Psalms, or Proverbs.
Psalm 92, verse two, let
me show some verses here.
Psalm 92:2 says this.
"Every morning,
"I thank God for His love,
"and every evening, I thank
Him for His faithfulness."
Do you hear that?
Morning and evening,
first word, last Word.
Psalm 119:147,
here on the screen says,
"Before sunrise, I look to You for help
"and I put my hope in Your word."
I put my hope in You.
Before sunrise, the first
thing when I get up,
the first thing I do,
His word, first word,
God's word, first word.
Isaiah 50, verse 4, says this.
"God has given me His Word
that sustains the weary."
That he's talking about emotional support.
He said, "God's word sustains the weary."
And Isaiah finishes that sentence saying,
"He wakes me morning by morning
and teaches me His Word."
God's word, first word.
All right, so that's
the second commandment.
Start and end each day
with the Word of God.
Here's the third commandment
for emotional heath.
Set and stick with a routine.
Okay, set and stick with a routine.
Now, if you're out of work
and you've been asked to shelter at home,
you probably haven't had
a routine for a while.
Because it wasn't get up, get to work,
take the kids to school, whatever.
Predictability is an
important stress reducer.
Do you hear that?
Especially when everything
is constantly changing.
When everything's changing,
if something's predictable,
if something's routine,
that gives you stability,
that helps refuel your tank.
Here's what the Bible says.
Ephesians five, verse 15 and 16.
"Carefully consider how you live."
Carefully consider how you live.
See, those dogs are showing you
that this is not a green screen here,
it really is my farm.
So live wisely, not foolishly.
Make the most of your time,
because these are difficult evil days.
Make the most of your time.
He says, "Live wisely."
You need to have a routine.
Now,
when you're stuck at home,
it's so easy to slip into sloppiness,
thoughtlessness,
thoughtless living,
without any boundaries,
and you end up staying up
later than you usually do.
And then you sleep in
and all of the boundaries go out the door.
I want you to write this down right now.
Okay, write this down.
Routine develops resilience.
Routine develops resilience.
Predictability creates stability.
Structure creates steadiness.
This is especially important for kids,
but it's important for everybody.
You need to set and stick with a routine
for the duration of this pandemic.
Now, a crisis,
which we're going through
right now, should include
what Dr. Bruce Perry
calls dosing and spacing.
I'm gonna explain that a
little bit later in a minute.
But dosing and spacing
are part of a routine.
Now, you may need to get creative
in carving out a routine.
This week, one of my staff pastors,
Brandon Bethour, shared this idea.
He said,
he said, "You know, Rick,
"to help me make a better
barrier between my work
"and my home, my home life,
"'cause I'm at home the whole time,"
he said, "I've been practicing
a 15-minute virtual commute.
And I said, "What do you mean by that?"
He says, "Well, at the end
of the day, when I stop work,
"instead of just going in the house,"
he says, "I go outside
"and I walk around
outside for 15 minutes."
And he said, "That's my virtual commute."
And while I'm walking around outside,
I either listen to a podcast,
or I process the day that
I just had great idea.
Great idea.
Great idea.
Set and stick with a routine
that's gonna raise your emotional health
during this stress time.
Okay, here's number four.
This is very practical.
Ready for this?
Write this down.
Stop watching so much news.
Stop watching so much news.
'Cause it's all negative right now.
And for your own mental,
and emotional,
and spiritual health,
you need to monitor your media intake.
I know it's easy to get
glued to the internet,
glued to social media,
get glued to the TV,
24-hour news channels.
But if you fill your
mind with constant images
of negative news,
and they're just saying the
same thing over and over,
it's going to deplete your reserves,
it's gonna raise your stress level.
And you don't need to hear
the same negative story
over and over and over.
That's what Dr. Bruce
Perry calls flocking.
In other words, where you
watch a story on one channel
and then you switch the
channel to watch it again,
and now, so then you
switch it again to watch it
be told again, as if you're
looking for reinforcement.
You see, the Bible has a
lot to say about focusing
on what's helpful, not
on what's stressful.
And Jesus said, in Matthew
chapter six, verses 22 and 23,
he said this.
"Your eye is the lamp of your body.
"If your vision is good,
your whole being will be full of light.
"But if you're focused on the bad,
"your life will be full of darkness."
Here's the point, I want
you to write this down.
Okay, write this down.
What I see is what I become.
What I see is what I become.
And if you become a news
junkie during this pandemic,
you're adding stress to your life.
You're not reducing
stress watching the news,
you're adding stress.
You've heard me say before,
if you look at the world,
you'll be distressed.
If you look within, you'll be depressed.
If you look at Christ, you'll be at rest.
You know, if I were to ask you,
how many of you believe everything
you read on the internet?
No, see, none of you would say that.
If I said, how many of
you believe everything
you hear and watch on TV?
None of you say that.
If I said, how many of you
believe everything in the Bible?
You'd all raise your hands.
Why do we spend more
time reading and watching
what we don't believe
than what we do?
You know, 50, 60 years ago,
the computer industry came
up with a little phrase,
GIGO, G-I-G-O.
And if you're old enough to remember this,
it meant garbage in, garbage out.
A computer can only give you
what data you put into it.
You put garbage data in,
you're gonna get it out.
Proverbs 15 verse 14 says this
in the New Living Translation.
"A wise person is hungry for truth,
"while the fool feeds on trash."
(laughs)
Have you ever fed on trash?
Oh, yeah, there are a lot of
channels of trash out there,
and social media, and the
internet, and everywhere else.
By the way, let me give you a
good verse for social media.
In Psalm 119:37, here's what it says.
It's a prayer.
"Keep me from paying attention
to what is worthless."
Wow, what a verse.
"Keep me from paying attention
to what is worthless."
Is that next TikTok video
really worth your time?
Why not replace it with
something more positive,
something more relaxing?
I love this birds up here.
Something more relaxing.
You know, read book,
play a game,
do a puzzle,
start a hobby,
listen to birds, go bird watching.
(laughs)
Anything besides watching the news.
You see, this time of staying
at home is really a great time
to begin some new family habits,
or to restore some old
family habits that were good
and you stopped them.
For instance,
what if every family restored
family meals together?
We'd come out of this pandemic
with a whole lot stronger
families and marriages.
Or what if you started
a family game night,
how much would that help
in building relationship
with kids or grandkids?
You know, one person this
last week wrote me, he said,
"You know, Rick,
"we're watching Sunday
worship service together
"on our TV screen as a family,
"and then we reinstituted
Sunday dinner together
"in our family."
I like that one.
Let's all reinstitute Sunday
dinner together as a family.
A great idea.
Another family with grown
children wrote me and they said,
"You know, Pastor Rick,
"we watch the Sunday service
together in our own homes
"'cause all of our kids are grown,
"they're in their own home.
"But immediately afterward,
"we get on a Zoom call
together and we discuss it."
What a great idea?
So ask yourself what good
habits could we start,
or what good habits could
we restore during this time?
It's a time for change.
Okay, number five.
This is a big one too.
For your emotional heath,
schedule a daily connection
with the people I love.
You need to schedule a daily connection
with the people you love.
You need to stay connected
to your community.
You know, all of our
campuses at Saddleback,
we're doing it Together Tuesday,
where we get together
just to see each other.
It's not a Bible study,
it's a time to just fellowship.
Because you need to schedule time
to be connected to the people
you love during this pandemic.
I want you to write this down.
I refill my cup by connecting
with the people I love.
That's just a flat out fact.
I refill my emotional, my spiritual cup,
by reconnecting with
the people that I love.
Now, how should you do this?
Well, the best way, of course,
is technology that allows you to see them.
So if you use Zoom, or you use Skype,
or you use FaceTime,
where you can actually see
their faces, that's best
'cause so much of our
connection is body language.
But you could just do old
school and call them up,
phone, call them up on the phone.
Another way is to bring back
the lost art of note writing.
Writing notes.
What if you did that?
That's so out of season
today that people are...
It's like a gift when you
get a handwritten note
from somebody.
Many of our campuses are
right now handwriting letters
to all their members of their campus,
and they're actually,
I think it's South Bay Campus,
is writing 25,000 letters
right now going out
to the community,
hand-addressing, hand-stamping them.
(laughs)
That's not a new idea.
Of course, we started
Saddleback with it before that.
Did you know that when
Paul, the apostle Paul,
2,000 years ago, was quarantined,
and when he was isolated
in a Roman prison,
and he was literally chained
to a Roman guard 24 hours a day,
that means no privacy, how
would you like to be chained
to a Roman guard 24 hours a day
and in prison, zero privacy?
Do you know how Paul used
his time of isolation?
He wrote encouraging
letters to his friends.
And the result,
we got this,
the New Testament.
14 of those letters
that Paul wrote to friends
are in the New Testament.
And at least three more
mentioned in the New Testament
that we don't have.
So, obviously, letter
writing is a good idea.
It lasted 2,000 years.
You might try that to stay in connection
with your family and your
friends and the people you love.
First Thessalonians 5:11.
I love this and the message
paraphrase says this.
"Speak encouraging words to each other."
That's what you wanna do
when you connect with people.
Speak encouraging, not discourage,
encouraging words to each other.
"Build up hope."
That's what you wanna do.
"Build up hope so you'll
all be together in this,
"with no one left out."
Using phones,
using letters,
using cards,
using social media,
using the internet,
using Zoom,
he says,
"Okay, you'll all be together
in this with nobody left out
"and no one left behind."
Paul says, "You know, I know
you're already doing this,
"just keep on doing it."
And I would encourage you to do that.
Now, I wanna share with you right now some
of the latest research
on recharging your brain
when stress has drained your reserves.
And we now know that for the brain,
meaningful experiences that
refresh you and recharge you,
they don't have to be really long.
Listen really closely.
A meaningful experience to
recharge somebody's brain,
to encourage them,
to lift their spirits,
it doesn't have to be a long call.
Your brain really only needs seconds,
seconds to feel the
effect of encouragement.
So when I'm saying, call people,
I'm not saying a 15-minute call,
a one or two-minute call does
wonders for regulating people.
In fact, most of the benefit of a call,
like a FaceTime or something like that,
comes in the first 30 seconds
when you connect with somebody
just to encourage them.
Just the fact that you
called is the encouragement.
So let me give you a
couple homework assignments
on this point.
First, this next week,
I want to ask you to intentionally connect
with three or four people
that you love every day,
just to encourage them.
It doesn't have to be long, it
could be a minute phone call.
Contact them, three or four
people that you love, every day,
and then encourage them
to contact three or four other people.
You know, if we all did this,
we could start a wave of love
that would grow exponentially.
That's one thing I want you to do.
Second thing,
I want you to consider volunteering
to become a Care Caller.
This is a ministry we had in the past
and we resurrected it
during the COVID-19 crisis,
where we have, right now,
over 900 people in our church
who have volunteered to
call people in our church
who are isolated because of their age,
or disability,
and/or they're lonely or
they live by themselves.
We have over 900 volunteers
who've already called over
15,000 people in our church.
You could do this.
You could do this from home.
But we need twice the
number of volunteers.
We need a couple of
thousand people doing this.
Okay, so if you're willing to
be a Care Caller, let me know.
Now, if you don't like
talking on the phone,
but you like to write,
you could write a short card,
you can become not a Care
Caller but a Care Writer.
And to volunteer
to be either a Care
Caller or a Care Writer,
here's what I want you to do.
I want you to text the word
CARE, C-A-R-E, to 99000.
Text CARE to 99000.
Or if you live outside
of the United States,
email me, care@saddleback.com.
Now, I'm gonna stop
with just the first five
of these 10 COVID commandments
because we're out of time.
I'm gonna share the second five next week.
So you wanna come back and
make sure you get all 10
'cause they're all very, very important.
But before we close,
I wanna go back to the
very first commandment,
which was show grace to myself and others.
You know, you can't do that
unless you have experienced
the grace of God yourself.
Gracious people are people who
have felt graced by others.
Forgiven people are more
forgiving of others.
And people who are merciful are those
who have been shown the most mercy.
The reason why
a lot of people have a
hard time showing grace
to themselves and showing
grace to others is
they've never felt the grace of God.
If you don't feel that God loves you,
that God accepts you,
that God has forgiven you,
that God has shown you grace,
you're gonna be harder on
yourself than you ought to be,
and you're gonna be harder on others, too.
So the starting point
for all of these first five is
to experience the grace of God.
The Bible says in Ephesians 2:8-9.
"It is by grace that we
are saved through faith,
"and that, not of ourselves.
"It is the gift of God.
"Not of works, so no
one can boast about it."
God does everything in you, for you,
to you, and through you,
because He loves you and
because of His grace.
It's not something you work for,
it's not something you earn,
it's not something you deserve.
You need a Savior.
All five of these first commandments
that I've given you cannot be done simply
in the power of the flesh.
You have to rely on the grace of God.
Have you received the grace of God?
Have you accepted God's grace
and forgiveness and mercy
for all of your life?
Jesus Christ came to earth
and died on the cross
to pay for every sin you've ever committed
so you don't have to pay for them.
And what I wanna do now
is what we always do
at the end of every service,
and that is,
the first thing is we
recommit our life to Christ.
Maybe this will be the first time
you've ever opened your
life to Jesus Christ.
So I'm gonna lead into prayer right now.
And if you have never felt
the grace of God in your life,
you've never felt the
love and the forgiveness
and mercy of God,
why don't you say this prayer with me?
Will you bow your heads right now?
Just say something like this.
And if you're by yourself,
just pray it aloud.
Say, "Dear, God,
"I need to understand
and feel your grace."
Just say that, "Dear, God,
"I need to understand and feel your grace.
"Thank you for loving me
even when I didn't know You.
"Thank you for caring for me
before I even knew about You.
"And dear, God, I'm asking
You to show me Your grace
"and Your mercy
"in my time of need.
"I can't make these changes
in my own life without You.
"So Jesus Christ, as much as I know how,
"I'm asking You to come into
my life and change me by grace.
"I'm putting my faith in
Your goodness and Your grace
"and Your love.
"And I humbly ask this in Jesus name.
"Amen."
Now, if you pray that prayer
for the very first time,
congratulations,
you just stepped across
the line spiritually.
And I would like to help
you with your decision.
If you prayed that prayer
for the very first time,
would you text me?
Text the word fresh start...
No, NEWSTART.
Text the word NEWSTART to 99000.
And that, if you'll do that,
I'll send you some material
that will help you understand
the decision you made.
If you are watching this
outside of the United States,
you can email me, newstart@saddleback.com.
So text or email NEWSTART.
99000 by text or newstart@saddleback.com.
Now, the second thing we
do every week is we express
our gratitude to God
for His goodness to us
by giving a portion of
our gifts back to Him.
And I just wanna say thank you
to those of you who have
been giving generously
in the middle of this pandemic,
in the middle of a crisis
where it has to all be online giving.
If you'll go to saddleback.com/gift,
you could give regularly.
Do you realize that when you
give to Saddleback Church,
you are literally helping
feed tens of thousands
of people who are out of work.
We're doing that right now every week.
You're also helping us
minister to the disabled,
to the elderly,
to those who are most vulnerable
with this COVID crisis.
So thank you for your generosity.
I'm so proud of you.
I don't even have to talk about it
because you're such a generous group.
Join us in giving.
The third thing we do every
week is we meet in small groups.
And right now we're meeting
in small groups online.
We have over 9,000 of these groups.
And if you would like to
be a part of a small group,
you need to be a part of one,
just text me.
Text the word SMALLGROUP to 99000.
Text SMALLGROUP to 99000.
I'll help you get in a small group.
Doesn't matter what city you live in,
we'll help you do that.
Well, get in an online group.
You need the support.
If you're outside of the United States,
email me smallgroup@saddleback.com.
And then one, other
thing I mentioned earlier
that if you wanna become a
Care Caller or a Care Writer,
to write notes,
and you'd like information about this,
you can text me.
Text the word CARE to 99000.
Or email care@saddleback.com.
And I'll get you the information.
We need many of you to help us continue
to contact the most
vulnerable in our church
and in the world.
And you can make a difference.
Don't forget Tuesdays are Together Tuesday
at every Saddleback campus.
It's when we get together
online in our fellowship
and we support each other.
It's not a Bible study, it's
just more of a fellowship time,
and you don't wanna miss that.
And by the way, this week,
I'm gonna be sending you,
by email, a survey.
And the reason I'm asking you
to fill out this survey is,
I wanna know what your needs,
your hurts, your requests,
and your interests are
during this COVID 19 crisis.
So when you see that survey
come in, know that it's from me.
I'm asking you to take a
few minutes to fill it out
so I can better help you.
I can't meet your needs if
I don't know your needs.
Now, next week, we'll be in the
second half of this message,
and we'll look at the other
five COVID commandments
for mental and emotional
and spiritual health.
I love you guys.
God bless you.
Have a great week.
