- Hello, everybody.
Welcome to part nine 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, for the past eight weeks,
we have been in a series
through the Book of James
that I'm calling A Faith
That Works When Life Doesn't.
And life hadn't always
been working very well
for the last several weeks.
What we're looking at is
how God tells us to act,
to respond, to think, to believe,
and to feel when we're in
the middle of a crisis.
And how do you deal with the emotional
and relational problems that are created
by this COVID-19 pandemic?
I told you that while
the doctors are working
on curing the disease,
I'm trying to help you each
week handle the dis-ease.
That is the stress that
is caused by the pressure
and all the changes of
the COVID-19 pandemic
that you've been feeling,
and having your life turned upside down.
Now in my last message,
I called that a faith that
leads to emotional health.
And I gave you the first
five of 10 commandments
for emotional health based
on what the Bible says.
James has a lot to say
about emotional health.
What I wanna do today in this message
is to quickly review the
first five principles
that we went over last week,
and then share the final
five in what we're calling
The COVID-10 commandments
for emotional health.
Now, I wanna really encourage you
that if you missed last week's message,
to go back and watch it online
'cause I don't have time
to go into all the details,
I'm just gonna quickly review
those first five commandments
and then we'll get into the
meat of today's message.
Now, I said last week,
number one, the first
commandment for mental
and emotional health in a crisis
is to show grace to myself and to others.
Show grace to myself and to others.
In other words,
to make it through this crisis,
you need to treat yourself
and everybody else
the way God treats you.
How does God treat you?
He's gracious.
He shows you mercy.
He shows you forgiveness.
He cuts you slack.
And in the first part of this message,
I talked to you about
being kind to yourself
and not expecting to be able to operate
at the same level of efficiency and energy
that you did before this crisis.
You're in a draining time right now.
Remember, we talked about in a crisis
that your reserves are drained
every day this continues.
Your emotional reserves,
your spiritual reserves,
your physical reserves,
everybody's having a tough time,
so we need to be kind to
everybody including yourself.
Then the second commandment for
mental and emotional health,
is to start and end each
day by refueling your soul.
And I talked about how
your soul is your mind,
and it's your will,
and it's your emotions.
You're not just a body,
you have a soul.
You are a soul with a body.
How do you do that?
How do you recharge,
renew, refuel your soul?
Well, you do it by getting into this book.
This is soul food.
This is God's word.
And you begin every day
by reading a short portion
of the Bible.
We call it God's word first word,
and God's word last word.
That the first thing you do every morning
is you open your Bible and
you read a short passage
until God speaks to you,
and then at the end of the day,
you leave your Bible open
on your dresser by your bed,
and you read it the last thing at night.
Very important.
If you'll do that habit
during this pandemic,
you will really have a lot
more emotional stability.
Then the third commandment is to set
and stick with a routine.
And I went into detail last week
telling you that predictability
is an important stress reducer,
especially when everything
is unpredictable.
When there's so many changes
going on around you by the day
that routine develops resilience,
that predictability creates stability,
and that structure creates steadiness.
And we talked about some
practical ways to build a routine
into your life.
Then the fourth commandment
we looked at last week
is to stop watching so much news.
You need to monitor your media intake.
And why is that?
Because we tend to become
whatever we watch the most.
And if you're constantly filling your mind
with negative news,
it's no wonder you're
gonna be discouraged,
you're gonna be depressed,
you're gonna be fatigued.
And so, we talked about
replacing that with some
more positive things.
Then we talked last week, finally,
about the fifth commandment
and we looked at schedule
a daily connection
with people you love.
Schedule a daily connection
with people you love.
You refill your emotional tank,
your emotional cup,
by connecting with people you love.
And we gave you some very
practical teaching on that.
Now, what I wanna do is
continue with the last
five commandments, alright?
Let's get into it.
Number six.
This is an important one, too.
Share your feelings
instead of stuffing them.
Share your feelings
instead of stuffing them.
I'm talking about all the negative ones
that you've been bound to have
felt during this pandemic.
Anxiety, fear, boredom, frustration.
Now, we talked about this
in an earlier message,
but I need to reemphasize it again
because it's so important.
Feelings are meant to be felt.
You hear that?
Feelings are meant to be stuffed,
feelings are meant to be felt.
Feelings are neither good nor bad,
they're just feelings.
The only way you feel
anything is 'cause you're made
in God's image.
God has feelings.
The Bible says God gets angry.
The Bible says God gets jealous.
The Bible says God gets
frustrated with people.
God is patient, but He's also frustrated.
God is sad.
All of the emotions you
have is because you're made
in the image of God.
They're neither good nor bad,
they're just emotions.
But when you swallow your feelings,
your stomach keeps score.
In other words, if you don't talk it out,
you're gonna take it out on your body.
People say, oh, my aching back,
oh, my aching neck.
Well, guess why?
One of the reasons may be
you're swallowing your emotions,
you're stuffing your feelings.
So I said this in an earlier message,
but I'll say it again.
Don't repress them,
push them down.
Don't suppress them,
you know, pretend like they don't exist.
Instead, express them appropriately
and confess them to God.
The Bible says in Galatians 6:2,
share each other's troubles and problems.
That means I gotta share
what I'm feeling, okay?
Because part of your troubles,
part of your problems are
the emotions you're feeling.
This is why we have small groups,
over 9,000 small groups
in Saddleback Church.
Share each other's troubles and problems,
and in this way, you
obey the law of Christ.
What is the law of Christ?
Love your neighbor as yourself.
And one of the message in the future
I'm gonna share with you
how to love your neighbors
yourself during COVID-19.
But the Bible says we're to
bear each other's burdens.
We're to share.
And for emotional health,
you can't stuff it.
You don't have to share it with everybody,
but you have to have one
person that you can be hey,
can I just tell you how I'm
really feeling right now?
And then you share it with them
and they're gonna love you.
Paul gives us a great example
of sharing your feelings
instead of stuffing them
in 1 Corinthians 1:8.
This is a key to emotional health, okay?
Here's what he says.
He says, "We want you to know, friends,
"about the hardships that we suffered
"in the province of Asia."
Paul says, "We were
crushed, we were overwhelmed
"by great pressure."
He's being honest about his feelings.
He says, "The burden was
so heavy that we wondered
"if we were gonna make it through it."
Now, if Paul, the greatest
Christian ever to live
next to Jesus Christ Himself,
could be that gut level about
what he's gonna go through,
you can do it too.
Who are you sharing your
feelings, your emotions with?
If you stuff them,
you're gonna get sicker,
and sicker, and sicker.
If you share them,
you're gonna get healthier,
and healthier, and healthier.
Get one person.
Here's what James has to say.
James 5:16.
"Confess your faults one to another."
Notice he doesn't say confess them to God.
He says, "Confess your
faults one to another
"and pray for one another
so that you may be healed."
Circle that word healed.
You wanna be healed physically,
you wanna be healed emotionally,
you wanna be healed relationally.
It says this,
share your faults, okay?
Now, if you're gonna share your faults,
that means you can also
share your frustrations.
And if you're gonna
share your frustrations,
you could share your fears.
And if you're gonna share your fears,
that means you can share your feelings.
That verse, confess to each
other what you're feeling,
you've heard me say this many times,
revealing your feeling is
the beginning of healing.
Revealing your feeling is
the beginning of healing.
Now, if all you want is forgiveness,
all you need to do is
confess your faults to God.
But if you wanna be healed of them,
the Bible says you gotta
share it with somebody else.
This is the power of celebrate recovery.
This is the power of honesty
in our support groups.
Now, let me give you a suggestion.
You need to be aware,
during this time,
of unexpressed grief in your life.
Yeah, unexpressed grief in
your life during this pandemic.
Why?
'Cause you've already likely
had a number of losses
due to this pandemic
there are some missed opportunities.
Some of you missed graduation.
You didn't get to graduate.
Some of you weren't there
for the birth of a child
or a grandchild because of COVID-19.
Some of you couldn't go
to funerals of loved ones
because of COVID-19.
There have been missed
weddings, graduations,
all kinds of life experiences
that you lost out on,
you missed out on.
You need to grieve that.
That's an okay thing.
Grief is a good thing.
It's how we move from
transition to transition.
Share your feelings with somebody else.
Number seven.
This is a big one, too.
It'll help you be more emotionally mature
during the pandemic.
Seek advice before making major decisions.
Seek advice, form other people,
before making major decisions.
That's the seventh
commandment, COVID commandment,
for mental, and spiritual, and
social, and emotional health.
You see, under stress,
I don't have time to
go into this in detail,
but under stress,
your brain drops to lower levels.
And when you're under chronic stress,
you're not thinking your best.
You're not giving your best thinking.
So before you make any major decisions,
it's pretty wise and it's pretty safe
for you to check in with others.
This is a good time to not
make decisions that are major
on your own.
Proverbs 15:22 says this.
Our plans often fail because
we don't seek advice.
But listening to good
counsel will bring success.
Do you wanna be successful in life?
Do you wanna be successful
through this Covina,
I mean Corona Virus and COVID-19 crisis?
He says, "Listening to good
advice will bring success."
If you ignore advice,
he says, "You're not gonna
make good decisions."
You see, when you're fearful
or when you're upset,
you can't access the
smartest part of your brain.
And the more stressed and
the more anxious you are,
the more likely you're
gonna make dumb decisions.
That's why Proverbs 11:14 says this.
There is safety in seeking
multiple counsel, alright?
Safety in seeking multiple counsel.
So for your own spiritual
and emotional health,
don't make major decisions
right now by yourself.
Get some other people to take a look
at what you're thinking about doing
before you do it.
Alright, a couple more in
the COVID-10 commandments.
Number eight.
Space renewal breaks throughout my day.
Space renewal breaks throughout my day.
That's times when I recharge.
I intentionally refuel,
recharge, renew, refresh.
And you need to space
them throughout your day.
Now this is another break
through that brain science
is teaching us.
And it is this.
Instead of, for instance,
a long hour break,
and you think okay, I had my break today,
your productivity will
actually go up if you
instead of taking one long break,
take several five minute
breaks during your day.
Study has shows this now
that the way our brain works
is that we don't need a
long time to recharge,
but what we do need is more frequency
in recharging emotionally,
physically, spiritually.
For instance, let me give you an example.
Let's say you were to take a
45 minute walk in the morning.
Well that's a good thing,
but you probably didn't
need all 45 minutes
to renew your mind.
But if you took a 45
minute walk in the morning
and then you sit down in front of a screen
for the next seven hours without a break,
you just nullified the value of that walk
on your emotional state.
It would actually be
better for you to take five
five minute walks throughout your day
where you work for a little bit
and then you go walk for five minutes,
and then you work for a little bit,
go walk for five minutes.
That would have a better
impact on your brain.
So, this is called the
principle of spacing and dosing.
Dosing, when you take medicine,
you don't take one giant horse pill
and that's it.
No, no.
To get over your illness,
you take doses and it'll
say three times a day,
or twice a day,
or four times a day.
Dosing gets the stuff into
your system in a better format
than one giant pill.
And this is true in
emotionally recharging.
You need to figure out what
renews you emotionally.
I call it diverting daily.
You know what recharges you and then do it
several times a day, okay?
If it's playing on a piano,
if it's working in a garden,
if it's shooting some hoops,
if it's working on a puzzle,
if it's reading a book,
whatever recharges, refills your tank,
shorter breaks taken more
often will help you emotionally
far more than one large break.
This is an important principle.
So what you wanna do is
periodically you get up,
you stretch your body,
you breathe deeply,
you get outside.
Nature is both healing and calming.
You say, well what do I do
during those refreshing breaks
that I'm taking?
This little five minute break.
Well, one of the things
you can do is talk to God.
Talk to God during those breaks.
While you're walking,
while you're doing your hobby.
That will recharge you in multiple ways.
Here's a great promise
from Isaiah 40:30 and 31.
Even young people become
exhausted and give up too soon.
But those who wait on the Lord
will renew their strength.
That's refilling your tank,
that's recharging your battery.
They will renew their strength.
They will soar like eagles.
They'll keep running and not grow weary.
They'll walk and not grow weak.
That's called emotional health.
That's spiritual health.
And it comes from talking to God,
waiting on the Lord.
And you can do that when
you take these breaks
throughout the day.
Let me show you one other great promise.
It's Isaiah 58:11.
Here on the screen, it says this.
The Lord will guide you continually,
watering your life,
don't you like this?
Watering your life when you're dry.
You feeling emotionally dry right now?
He says I'll water your life.
And keeping you healthy too,
and you will be like a well-watered garden
like an ever-flowing spring.
God says, I don't want you
drying up during this pandemic.
I don't want you going dry.
I will water you, but you
gotta spend time with me
throughout the day.
Alright, now the next step, number nine.
Is also an important one.
Very important.
Number nine.
If you wanna be emotionally healthy
as we come out of this crisis,
serve someone suffering more than you.
I need to serve someone
suffering more than me.
Look around and you'll find somebody
in a worse situation than you are.
For your own mental and emotional health,
you need to get the attention off yourself
and you need to focus on somebody else
who's hurting more than you are.
You need to give back.
You need to make a
difference with your life.
It's not about you.
You need to get out of
your self-centeredness.
Now, James talks about helping
the most vulnerable people
many times in the book of James.
Let me just read you one verse.
We'll come back to this.
"In society," he says,
"the most vulnerable people," he said,
"are orphans, don't have parents,
"and widows, elderly single adults."
He said, "They are the most sidelined
"and the most vulnerable."
James 1:27.
The religion, listen to this.
The religion that God, our Father accepts,
the religion that God, our
Father, accepts as pure
and faultless is this.
To care for orphans and
widows who need help
in their distress and to
keep yourself uncorrupted
by the world.
He's talking about public
charity and private purity.
Public charity, help the
people who are most needy,
and private purity.
Right now, our church is feeding tens
of thousands of people.
We normally feed a couple
thousand families a month.
This month I think it was 30,000 families.
And we are helping the most vulnerable
in many, many changeable ways.
There is a place for you
to serve if you wanna help.
But not only will you help others,
but serving others who
have greater needs than you
actually help you refill your
emotional and spiritual tank.
There's many, many promises about this.
Let me just give you one.
Proverbs 11:25 promises
the generous prosper
and are satisfied.
And those who refresh others
will themselves be refreshed.
You wanna be refreshed yourself?
Start refreshing somebody else.
Look for somebody to help.
Be a servant to others.
Important 10 commandments,
COVID commandments.
Finally, number 10.
The tenth commandment is this.
Control what's controllable
and trust God for the rest.
Control what's controllable
and trust God for the rest.
Now, both of these are important.
God has a part in your
mental, and spiritual,
and emotional health,
and you have a part.
Now, God isn't gonna control the things
that He's already given you control of.
God gave you a lot of His will
when He gave you a brain.
And he gave your brain the
ability to make good choices
and He gave you a will to choose.
And He expects you to make wise choices.
You said, so what is controllable?
The things you have a choice in.
A lot of things you
don't have a choice in,
but the things you do have a choice in,
those are controllable.
You can control when
you go to bed at night.
You can control what you eat.
You can control when you get up.
There's a lot of things
that you can control.
Those are the choices that's
your part in the bargain.
You control the controllables.
But then, you let God handle
the stuff you can't control
and you trust Him then.
Now James says a good example of this,
the balance between
God's part and my part,
James says in chapter 2:22,
he said, "A good example is Abraham."
And from Abraham's example, he says this.
"From Abraham's example,
we see that his faith
"and his actions," God's part and my part,
"His faith and his actions work together.
"His faith was made
complete by what he did."
Now, let me just be honest with you.
It's easy to go to either extreme here.
You can say, well I'm just gonna trust God
and you become a passive
little, you know, clod.
You give up all your humanity.
I'm just gonna trust God.
And you use it as an excuse to do nothing.
On the other hand,
the other extreme is well,
if it's to be, it's up to me
and you act like God
doesn't have any part in it.
It's all on you.
No, passivity is wrong and
depending like it all depends
on me is both wrong.
Both of them work.
Faith and works.
We're gonna come back to this
where James talks to us about the balance
between God's part and my
part in staying healthy.
You know, in the first book
of "The Lord of the Rings"
trilogy written by J.R. Tolkien,
there's a moment where Frodo complains
about all the evil and pain in the world.
And he's upset about it and he says,
"Everybody's experiencing this evil
"and everybody's experiencing
this pain in this day,"
and he complains to Gandalf.
And Frodo says, "I wish
it needs not have happened
"in my time."
I wish it needs not happen in my time.
I wish, and you may be saying
that about this pandemic.
I wish it hadn't happened in my time.
But Gandalf wisely and
sympathetically responds to Frodo
and he says, "Well, so do I, Frodo.
"So do I.
"And so do all the people
who live to see such times."
And then he says, "But that
is not for them to decide.
"All we have to decide is what to do
"with the times that we've been given."
All we have to do is to decide what to do
with the time that is given to us.
There are a lot of things in your life
you have no control over.
You can't control a pandemic,
you can't control how the
government deals with it,
you can't control a lot
of different things.
But you can't control the
circumstances of life.
But you can respond how you will respond.
You can choose how you'll respond.
And if you will put into
practice these 10 principles
from the Bible,
you're gonna come out of this
crisis a whole lot stronger.
You're gonna be mentally stronger,
you're gonna be emotionally healthier,
and you're gonna be
spiritually more mature.
That's all your choice.
You get to choose how you respond.
And here's the good news.
You don't have to do it by yourself.
Jesus Christ is waiting to help you.
You don't have to do these
10 things on your own,
certainly not on your own power.
Jesus will be your Savior if
you let Him be your Savior.
Now, every week,
we close by doing three
or four things together.
And the first thing we do
is we recommit our lives
to Jesus Christ.
I'm gonna pray a prayer right now,
if you've never prayed this prayer,
I invite you to pray it.
I invite you to say it
again as a recommitment
of your life to Christ, alright?
Let's bow our heads.
Just say, dear God.
tell God, dear God,
you know how empty I am.
You know when my tank is low emotionally,
spiritually, mentally, physically.
And I need to be recharged,
I need to be refueled.
And Lord, I understand these principles
that you have put in your word.
But honestly, I can't
do them on my own power.
And right now, I'm so tired,
I don't know if I've got
the energy to do these.
So I need you in my life.
I need your strength.
I need your power.
Jesus Christ, I need you to save me.
I need you to change me.
I need you to empower me to be able to do
what you've called me to do.
So God, I will make the right choices,
but I'm asking you to give
me the power to do them.
I'm asking you to fill me with your Spirit
and your love.
And I humbly ask this that you
accept me into your family.
In your name I pray.
Amen.
If you prayed that prayer just now,
I want you to let me know about it, okay?
I want you to text me right now.
Text new start, on word.
N-E-W-S-T-A-R-T.
New start.
Text it to 99000, alright?
And that way, I can send you some material
help you through your decision.
If you're overseas, email me.
Newstart, one word, at saddleback.com.
That's the first thing we do.
Now, the second thing we do every week
is we express our gratitude to God
through giving back to Him.
And I wanna just say this week,
friends, your generosity
online is amazing.
It is allowing us to literally feed
tens of thousand of out
of work people right now.
It is allowing us to serve
emotional and spiritual needs
of literally tens of thousands of people.
So thank you for your generosity.
You can give at saddleback.com/give.
You can set up a weekly
account that's automatic
if you want to.
But thank you so much.
Third thing we do is we meet
in small groups for support.
And of course, we're doing
this online right now.
If you're not in a small group,
we'll help you get in a small group.
Text me small group at 99000.
One word, small group at 99000.
I'll help you get in a group.
Or you can email me.
Smallgroup@saddleback.com
everybody needs the
support of a small group
during this crisis.
So please, doesn't matter
what city you live in,
let us help you.
Now number four, if you wanna
volunteer as a care caller
or as a care writer,
I mentioned this earlier,
I want you to text me.
Text care to 99000.
Care to 99000.
Or email me care@saddleback.com.
We'll get right back to you
and help you find a place
that you can give back.
I wanna remind you,
every Tuesday, every campus,
together Tuesday's campus Zoom fellowship.
It'll be a great, great time.
And by the way,
this next week,
I'm gonna be sending you
in the mail a survey.
And I'm asking you, as your pastor,
to help me help you by taking this survey.
The Bible says, know well
the condition of your flock
and so I'm sending this survey to you
asking you to help me know what
you need during this crisis.
I love you.
I thank God for you.
Be sure to tell other
people about this message.
Pass it onto others so
that more and more people
can be emotionally and spiritually healthy
during the pandemic.
I love you guys.
We'll see you next week.
