- Sometimes that they just
stand out in your mind. It may be because of an
outstanding achievement or an outstanding talent or giftedness or an outstanding personality but they're just extraordinary, they're unusual people. We call these people remarkable people. You could think of them very easily, you go, "That person is remarkable, "she's remarkable, he's remarkable," Things like them. All of us wanna live remarkable lives and God wants you to
live a remarkable life. That doesn't mean famous. Fame has nothing to do with it. You can make an impact and
most of the world not even know who you are but you have an
enormous impact on the world through your legacy and
you'll never, by the way, know your legacy on this earth. You'll never know it because
you don't know all the people whose lives have been
changed by people you touched and they touched others
and on and on and on. But we wanna live remarkable
lives and as parents, those who of you who are parents, we all want remarkable kids and
we want remarkable grandkids and we want them to
have an impact in lives. How many of you either
own a small business or you work for a business
that offers either a product or a service of some kind? Can I see your hands? That's a lot of you. Would you say it's easier
to get people's attention or harder to get people's attention today? It's harder, isn't it? Because there's so much
competition out there, with all of the noise and all of the news and all of the media and all social media, things like that. How does your product,
how does your business, how does your service get attention? Well, the only thing that
really gets attention is that which is remarkable. For instance, you can have two restaurants right next to each other and one of them, nobody's going to at
all and the other one, there's a line of people waiting to get in and they're willing to wait up to an hour to have a meal, why? Remarkable food. Or a company creates a remarkable product and it just goes like gangbusters and it's skyrockets and
why is it that some hotels and motels have people booking
up a long time in advance and others are empty, lots of vacancies? Remarkable service. I've written on your outline
a definition of remarkable. Remarkable means exceptional,
it means outstanding, it means uncommon, it
means worthy of attention. History, human history
is written primarily by remarkable people and
you could easily make a list of people you would
think in different areas, in arts and entertainment
and in government and in law and all the different areas, they were remarkable and
they made a pretty big impact but I will say this to you: God wants you to have a remarkable life but the only way you'll
ever be able to live it is if you're willing to be different. If you wanna be like everybody else, you're never gonna be remarkable. That's the very definition of remarkable, is it's not common, you are uncommon. To be remarkable in life means
you're not like other people and if you want children
who are remarkable children, you have to teach them how to not care about being like everybody else. That's not remarkable, that's just common. The secret of remarkable people is that they're willing to do things that the rest of us aren't willing to do. They're willing to develop
habits that are uncommon. They're willing to put in
extra hours that are uncommon. They're willing to make effort
that the rest of the world isn't willing to make. They're willing to pay a price in order to make a remarkable difference that most people aren't
willing to make and to learn. This last week is interesting. I read a fascinating study
is in two different magazines and I actually read it in
two different magazines; in Harvard Business Review
and also in Forbes magazine of a study of 1000
managers who felt quote, stuck in their career. They did this study people
that I've been at the level I'm at right now for a long time and I don't think I'm ever
gonna make any more progress in my career, I don't think
I'm gonna get any promotions. I am stuck in a dead-end career. Then they went ahead and did a study and they interviewed the bosses,
they interviewed the people and they discovered that those people, 97% of them had either one or more of what they called
career limiting habits. Career limiting habits. They made a list of the 10 most common career limiting habits
and even when people knew that they had them, they don't
change even though they know it's keeping them from
actually growing and developing and making a greater impact of their life. Today, we're going to
look at how do you build a remarkable life and
we're gonna look at four of the antidotes to these
career limiting habits. Now the Bible is filled with
examples of remarkable people. Deborah was a remarkable person. Esther, she was a remarkable person. Job, Jonah, Nehemiah was
a remarkable business man and on and on and on. Some of the people in the
Bible, they're famous, some of them you wouldn't know but they all were pretty remarkable in the way that they lived. One of them that you have
heard of if you've been around Saddleback was a guy named Daniel, who was taken as a slave
from Israel back to Babylon, which overcame Israel and took
the entire nation as slaves during the Babylonian Empire. And the Bible says this,
and notice on your outline, Daniel 6:3, "Daniel so distinguished himself "from all the other leaders
by his remarkable qualities," circle that: his remarkable qualities, "that the king," this is Nebuchadnezzar, the Emperor, the Babylonian Empire, "planned to put him," Daniel, "in charge over the entire empire!" Are you kidding me? Wow. A guy who starts off as a
slave and is taken hostage to a foreign country and
he doesn't wanna be there but he has so many remarkable
qualities in his life that the most powerful man in the world, King Nebuchadnezzar, the
Babylonian Empire goes, "I'm gonna put that guy as number two "and he's gonna be in
charge of my entire empire." I wanna know what those qualities were. Today, we're gonna look
at four of the qualities that were in Daniels life and I want us to look at it
from two different points; first, in your own life, these
are things you can learn. These are things that you can develop and the rest of your life
can be the best of your life if you're willing to put in the effort. Now, if you don't wanna put any effort, you can go ahead and leave right now because knowing about
them doesn't change you. They said in that study of those managers, they knew some of the
things they need to change, they just didn't change them. But if you're willing
to put that effort in to make those changes and ask
God to give you the strength to make those changes,
the rest of your life could be the best of your life. And we're gonna look at the
antidotes, four antidotes to four of the big common
things that hold people back in life, keys to living a
remarkable life but also because we've been in
this series on family, I want us to look at it
how do you build them in your children? You want remarkable kids, you want them to succeed in their life? Well, there's certain
things that you can build in their life. Now growing up, you heard in
school about the three Rs, you remember that, the
three R: reading, writing and arithmetic. Now what's strange to me,
if that's about education, why are two of them misspelled? Because writing and
arithmetic don't start with R so it seems kind of self-defeating but I've got a panel of
moms who are gonna help me with what I call the four Rs. Reading is important,
writing is important, arithmetic is important but you can have all those and still not be remarkable. You gotta have the remarkable
qualities that Daniel had and we're gonna look at those right now with our panel so I want
you to welcome Julia and Jody and Deanna, I'll
introduce them to you. Bring them out with an applause. (members of the congregation clapping) Thank you ladies. These women are not only
moms but all three of them have been teachers and I
thought this would be great to have them, talk about
how do we teach four Rs that are different from the 3 Rs. Julia Bernier is a mother of two. She's got a 24 year old son
and a 22 year old daughter. She's taught elementary schools,
she's taught junior high, God bless you. Here at Saddleback, she's
volunteered as a mission leader, she's hosted small groups. She prays with other people
out in our prayer garden. Welcome Julia, all right?
- Thank you. (members of the congregation clapping) - Jody Rosser is the mother of two boys; an 11 year old and a 15 year old. She is a lab teacher for grade school, that's kindergarten through
6th grade in science, technology, engineering and math. Where were you when we all needed tutors in engineering, math
and techno. (chuckles) She serves as a kid
small group leader here at Saddleback Church, she's
a coach for Treasured Moms, which is one of our
Women's Studies Program so welcome Jody, we're glad you're here. - Thank you. (members of the congregation clapping) - And on the end, Deanna Rudder
is a mother of two daughters and she's got a four year
old and a six year old, some of my favorite stages, she's an elementary school principal with Irvine Unified School District and she's helped out and
served here at Saddleback, long time volunteers with
Irvine campus special events. So welcome Deanna, we're glad you're here. - Thank you. (members of the congregation clapping) - Now let's get right into it. We got a lot to cover: four
Rs for a remarkable life. I've got to grow them in my
life, if I want remarkable kids, I've got to build them into
their lives so they are: number one, if I want to
build a remarkable life and a remarkable career, I
must learn to be respectful of everybody, I must learn
to be respectful to everyone. This is the starting point,
respect is the foundation of a remarkable life. Respecting others shows reverence for God. It shows humility in the way
you relate to other people. Why have you got this as
the number one quality in a remarkable life? Because today, everybody's rude. You wanna agree with that? Is the world getting more
respecting or more disrespectful? No, we're getting ruder. The world is becoming
more uncivil or incivil. So the more rude the world gets, the more a person who is
respectable of everybody becomes remarkable, you
stand out like a bright star on a dark night. I've given you a definition
there on your outline. The definition of respect
or to be respectful means to appreciate the
uniqueness, value the worth and affirm the dignity of everyone because God made them. I wanna read again because
notice three qualities. Truly, to be respectful of everybody means you appreciate their uniqueness, because they're not like you. Can you appreciate people
that are not like you? You value their Worth and
you affirm their dignity, everyone, because God made them. Any time you disrespect anything God made, it's an insult to God. Because wait a minute, I
made them, I made that, I made you and I made them,
you think I love you more than I love them? You think you're more
important than they are? It's actually quite arrogant, it's quite egotistical,
it's quite prideful when we don't respect other people. We're basically saying,
"God, you goofed up. "You made a mistake and you
should have made everybody "like me, which I'm the
standard of perfection here." Well, that didn't work. We all know you're not
standard, I'm not standard. Everybody is broken. It's arrogant, I told you
it's the opposite of humility. Anytime I'm rude to you or anybody is rude to you
or anytime you're rude to anybody else, you're
revealing your ego. You think, in that moment,
that you don't need to be respectful. You think, if the clerk is a jerk, you still need to be respectful. I'm not saying you have
to approve of everything. No, no, God doesn't
approve of everything I do, doesn't approve of everything you do or anybody else for that matter. There's a difference in
acceptance and approval. He accepts us, He loves us, He values us, he says we have dignity
even though we're flawed, we're sinful, we're
broken, they're both true. God looks to bless people
who are respectful. If you want God's
blessing on your business, on your career, on your
family, on your friendships, on your relationship, whatever
you want God to bless, you need to be respectful
in every area of your life. It's the foundation. There's so many promises that are given in the Bible that say that
when you build this quality, respectfulness, that you will be blessed. Let me show you a couple. Here's one: Matthew 23:12. If you put yourself above others, so you don't feel like
you have to respect them, you'll be put down. If you put yourself above
others, you'll be put down but if you humble yourself,
you will be honored by others. Study after study have shown, employees who are disrespectful get stuck. They don't keep progressing
in their career. They get stuck because people
don't wanna work with people who are disrespectful. So God leaves no wiggle room about this. Let me show you some verses. 1 Peter 2:17, the bible says, "Show real respect to people you like." Oh no, that's not what it says. Let's read it aloud together. Show real respect to...
- Everyone. - Circle that, to everyone. Now, just in case you don't understand what the word everyone
means, which by the way, I looked up that word
in the original Greek and in the original Greek, the
word everyone means everyone. (members of the congregation laughing) There's no exception. But just in case, you think
there's some wiggle room, God, 30, 40, 50 times in
scripture tells of specific groups of people that you must,
must show respect to if you want God's blessing on
your life and on your career. I'm gonna go through 10 of these very fast and in order to save
time, I didn't even write all the verses out. If you would like these verses,
I'll be happy to send them to you if you're watching
online or listening to this on an Mp3, whatever, you can actually, here, just take a card out and
write the word verses on it and I'll send all these
verses to you this week, they're all written out
but I'm just gonna give you the fillings, there's 10
different groups God says you have to show respect to if you want His blessing on your life. Number one, I must show respect
for God's name and word. I must show respect for
God's name and God's Word. I can't be using God's name as a cuss word or as an additive just like
uh, like Oh God, God, ooh God. Don't use God as an exclamation point. You take His word and you
take His name seriously. Second, I must show respect to my parents. In the 10 commandments,
one of the commandments is honor your father and mother and it's the only of the Ten Commandments that actually has a promise
with it and it says, and if you read these verses
that I've written out here, Ephesians 6:2-3 that if you
honor your father and mother, you'll have a long life full of blessing. It's the only promise
of the Ten Commandments that has a promise with it. Number three, I must show
respect to my spouse. If you are married, you're a husband, you're a wife, then God
expects you to show respect to your spouse and if you
don't, by the way, guys, men, did you know that if
you don't respect your wife, the Bible says God will
not hear your prayers? Uh-oh, this is one verse you got to see. Let me put it on the screen. 1 Peter 3:7-8, here's what it says, "You husbands must give
honor to your wives. "Treat her with understanding
as you live together. "She may be physically weaker than you are "but she is your equal partner
in God's gift of new life. "And if you don't treat her as you should, "your prayers will not be heard," bam. I'm sorry honey so you need to treat them, that's out of New Living Translation. Now before you women get cocky,
I have a verse for you too. Ephesians 5:33 says this and
it starts with the guys again. "Again I say, again,"
because we don't always learn it that well, "The
husband must love his wife "as a part of himself,"
it's like love your neighbor as yourself, you have to
love your wife as yourself, then treating her with respect. "And the wife must see to it
that she respects her husband, "praising and honoring
him," from the Living Bible. All right, number four, the Bible says that God expects me to
respect other church members in our church family and pastors. The Bible says we're to treat each other as brothers and sisters,
we're to outdo each other in showing respect to each other. I'll be happy to send you these verses, Romans 12:10, Hebrews 13:17. But we're to respect each
other in the family of God. Number five, the Bible
says that I'm expected to show respect to older people. You've heard the phrase,
respect your elders? Well, guess where it came from? It's from the Bible. God says that if you want
his blessing you must respect the elderly in Leviticus 19:32. Number six, I must show respect, this may surprise you, the unbelievers, doesn't matter if they're
an atheist or an agnostic or some other religion
or no religion at all, secularist, whatever, the
Bible says God expects me to show respect to
unbelievers, 1 Peter 3:15-16 and says, "When you share
your hope with them, "always do it with
gentleness and respect." Number seven, I am to show, specifically, respect to the poor, to the poor. The Bible says, "If
you're unkind to the poor, "you insult your Creator
but if you're kind to them, "then you show respect to God
and you show respect to them." Somebody may not have
as much money as you do, you don't get any leeway
in disrespecting them because they can't afford
what you can afford. You have to show respect to the poor. Number eight, I am to show
respect to immigrants. Now this is one that's actually
mentioned over and over. It's not mentioned just one time, it's mentioned over and over. I am to show respect to immigrants. In fact, let me show you this verse too because this is a
hot-button issue right now, particularly in the United States. Leviticus 19:33-34 says this, "You must never mistreat any foreigner "who is living in your country. "Instead you must treat them "just as you treat your own citizens." I didn't say this, God did, God did. "Love foreigners as you love yourselves "because you remember that
your ancestors were foreigners "at one time in a new country. "And I am the Lord your God." I don't have time to go
into this but the Bible, very clearly, God gets
mad, he gets ticked off when we don't show foreigners
or immigrants respect. Number nine, these are getting harder. Number nine, I am to show
respect to my opponents, to enemies, to the people who attack you or maybe persecute you or
maybe try to put you down or plan for your defeat. It's easy to show respect
to people you like. It's hard to show respect
to people you dislike or people who have a
different political persuasion or different religious persuasions. Do you show respect to people who violently disagree with you? That's a mark of a Christian. Here's what Jesus said,
these are the words of Christ himself, Matthew 5:44-47. I wanna read this one to you too. Jesus said, "You've heard
it said, "Love your neighbor "and hate your enemies but I tell you," he said no, not love your
neighbor and hate your enemies. "I tell you, love your enemies "and pray for those who persecute you. "In this way, you show
that you are the children "of your heavenly Father,
your father in Heaven." It shows you're follower of
Christ, you're in the family. "If you only love those who love you, "do you deserve a reward?" Obviously, no. "Are you doing anything remarkable," notice there's that word, remarkable. "Are you doing anything remarkable "if you only welcome your friends?" The answer is obviously
not everybody does that. In God's Word translation. How to be a remarkable person? When they are attacking
you, you give nothing but love back, when they're
disrespectful to you, you are respectful to them. So that's how you know,
you really have been saved, that you're in the family
of God and then number 10, this one's hard too sometimes. I am to show respect to
government leaders, oh really? Really, even the opposite party, whatever? The Bible tells us over and over that we are to respect the position even when people are not
doing respectful things. Now that's just a list
and I just gave you 10, if I could have given you
30, 40, very specific groups. But let's go to my panel
of moms and teachers here and let's talk about how do you learn to treat everybody with respect? How did you learn it? How do you teach kids how to learn it? - One of the things, growing
up, for my sister and I is we grew up in an
unbelieving, unchurched home. And unfortunately, my
parents had lots of pain from their childhood and they
ended up drinking alcohol and became alcoholics. So it was a very tumultuous
upbringing and it was in an unstable environment and as I grew and got older,
it was more and more difficult to just respect my dad. And he was stubborn, he
was difficult, he was rude and very hurtful. When I finally did say
yes to Jesus myself, my sister and I had used that time to just share, we shared
over 20 years who Christ was and shared His love but there was a day when I was having such a
hard time forgiving him because he hurt me so
much and in that moment, God changed me and he
showed me that my dad had been raised with so
much pain in his life that he really did not know
how to do anything differently. As my sister and I
continued to pray for him, he came to Christ.
- Wow. - His heart was softened but
I had to learn to respect him before he was kind to me. - You're never gonna win anybody to Christ that you disrespect. You say, "Well, what they're
doing is not respectable." That's not what we're talking about. We're not talking about their behavior. If you only respected perfect people, nobody would respect you
because you're not perfect and I'm not, nobody else is. By the way, some of you, you had parents who were pretty disrespectable
in their behavior. Maybe you didn't even know them. Why did God choose your parents for you? So you go, "Why didn't
God give me a good parents "like she has or like he has?" Because if God had given
you different parents, you wouldn't exist. Now let's listen very carefully. God chose your parents to be your parents not because they were good at parenting. God chose your parents to be your parent, some of you didn't even know them, maybe you were abandoned by
them but God chose your parents to be your parents because
they had just the DNA to create you and nobody
else could create you. And God is far more
interested in creating you than he was in their parenting skills. They may have been terrible at parenting but without your mother's
DNA and your dad's DNA, you would not exist. And God was interested in creating you and He can do it out of all
kinds of bad circumstances. So when it says honor
your father and mother, it doesn't mean honor
the pain they gave you, doesn't mean honor the harm or the hurt, it means honor the fact that
God chose them to create you. You can honor that because without them, your mother's DNA and
dad's, you would not exist. And that's what God wants us to honor. - Well, I was gonna say
for us, in our family, we wanna model respect to our kids. I think I have a teenager
and a soon-to-be teenager and so sometimes they don't
always talk respectfully to me and it's easy to wanna react in anger back and just whatever I'm
feeling just triggers out and I start to explode
on them and I'm realizing that we need to respond in love. It's easy to want to react but instead, we need to slow down and think before because we're showing
them how to treat people with respect and if we
can't show them respect then they're not gonna
show anyone else respect. So there's that great verse that says, "Be quick to listen, slow
to speak and slow to anger." So we have to slow down
so we can respond in love, not react in anger. - That's great, I hope you
hear what Jodi's saying. When I'm angry with you, it's highly unlikely that
I'm being respectful. Because it's hard to be
respectful to somebody when you're ticked off. You might need to let
that cool, cool down first and what you just said is, if I want my kids to be
respectful, I have to respect them. I have to model it. How do you be respectful even when you're upset with somebody? You can be respectful
when you totally disagree with something that somebody's done or a value or a decision or a choice. But you can always show
respect no matter what. And we have to model that for our kids. - When I think about
respect and how we do it and in fairness, I work with little guys and I have little kids so I
think of how important it is to model but then to also be explicit with what respect looks like
and what the picture of that is because the kids hear that word a lot, they hear it in schools,
they hear it from us but sometimes they don't
know these specific actions of what that looks like in practice. The more clear you can
be with them about that, so you know with my kids
if we're getting ready to go into a situation and
it's your birthday party and you're gonna have
lots of different friends from lots of different groups, what does it look like to
respect all of those people? And having that conversation with them and I do it with kids but then
I think I also do with adults on the other end, when we talk
about professional respect because someone comes
into my office to say, "I can't deal with this person
anymore, I'm done with them." Then you get to have a great conversation about so what does
professional respect look like? What are the action steps that I can take to show someone what that looks like? How do I deal with my own emotion and then what do I do moving forward? - It's not rocket science,
this first quality. The foundation of life,
just treating everybody with respect, treating
everybody with dignity, even people you disagree with and even people who are
not respectful to you. It's pretty simple and kids don't have to learn 100 different rules, they just need to have to learn one rule. It's called The Golden Rule. And The Golden Rule is the
next verse on your outline, where Jesus said in Matthew 7:12, this is the famous Golden Rule of Jesus, "In everything you do, do to others "what you would want them to do to you. "This sums up all the
law and the prophecy." So the whole Bible is summed up in this. To treat people the way
you'd like to be treated. Well, that's not rocket science. A little child can learn
how do I wanna be treated? That's the way I treat others. And if I learn that one
rule, treat other people the way I'd like to be treated, then I am going to be respectful. That makes sense? Let's go to the second one. The second R in a remarkable life, if I want to build a remarkable life and a remarkable career, second thing I have to learn is not just how to show
respect, I'm gonna have to learn to be reliable, reliable. Because if you're not reliable,
nobody's gonna trust you and if nobody trusts you, you
can't do business with them, you can't lead them, you can't have any impact in their life. In the Bible, the word
reliable is not used that often because it's a fairly modern term but the concept is all through Scripture and it's called being trustworthy. Trustworthy is the same
thing as being reliable, being worthy of trust. Another word that the
Bible uses for reliable is the word faithful and the Bible talks about being a faithful friend,
being a faithful spouse, being a faithful leader,
being faithful to God, being faithful to your
church and your family and your friends and on and on. And the Bible says that faithfulness, people who are reliable,
that you can count on them, says they're very rare. They're very remarkable
because most people are not reliable, they're not. Now let me give you a definition. Reliability means being
dependable, being trustworthy, being honest, being loyal. The Bible says in Proverbs
20:6, "There are plenty "of people who will tell
you, 'You can trust me!'" Yeah, all right, run for the border. "But it's hard to find someone
who is truly trustworthy." A lot of people, in King James it says, "Every man will proclaim
his own faithfulness "but who can find a faithful man?" In other words it's rare, it's remarkable when you find somebody
that you can totally trust. Employers pay big bucks for
people who are reliable. They go, "I can count on them." How do I do that, how
do I grow reliability, how do I develop a reputation
for being a reliable person? Well, there are lots of ways
but let me just give you three from Scripture, write these down. Number one, this is kind of obvious always tell the truth. Duh, if you don't always tell the truth, then you're not reliable. If I'm honest 80% of the
time, is that reliable? No, it's kind of like, if
I said to my wife, Kay, "Honey I'll be faithful
to you 28 days a month." Really? Partial faithfulness is unfaithfulness. It's either all or nothing
and reliability means I'm always there and I
always tell the truth. The Bible says in Proverbs 17:7, "Respected people do not tell lies." Number two, always do what I promise. That shows reliability. It shows it to a boss,
to employee or supervisor always do what I promise to do. The Bible talks about
like clouds without rain is a friend who promises to do something and then doesn't do it. Proverbs 28:13 says
this, "Reliable friends "who do what they say "are like cool drinks in a
sweltering heat, refreshing!" (chuckles) I like that in
the message paraphrase. Here's another verse, there
in your outline problem, Psalm 15:4 say this,
"They keep their promises "to their neighbors even when it hurts." Do you do that? Have you ever made a commitment and you know there's no problem with that but then something else
comes up that's better, then you go, "I wanna get
out of this commitment "because this is a better
thing and I'll have more fun. "I'll make more money "or it'll be more relaxing or whatever." Well, the Bible says,
"They keep their promises "to their neighbors even when it hurts." In other words, when it's to my detriment, I'm not gonna lose money
on this or whatever. That's reliability that is so rare that it's remarkable because most people are not that kind of reliable. So I always tell the truth and I always do what I say
I'll do and number three: I always keep confidential information. This was one of the 10 career limiting problems that people have, gossip. Gossip keeps a lot of people
from being promoted in life because they can't keep a secret, they just have to share
it with somebody else. Reliable people know how
to keep their mouth shut, they know how to keep confidential
information confidential. Do you? If somebody tells your
secret, can you be counted on and not tell anybody? That's pretty rare, that's remarkable. Proverbs 11:13, "Gossips
can't keep secrets "but a trustworthy person can." You'll never be remarkable
if you can't keep a secret. You'll never be remarkable as a gossip. By the way, when people gossip to you, you can be certain, they
will gossip about you. You just need to know
that, you may not think so. Well they're my friend, if
they're gossiping to you, then they will gossip about you because they get power
by spreading information. It makes them feel superior,
it makes them feel in control and anybody who has to share
bad news about other people and gossip to you is gonna
gossip about you also. And the Bible tells you over
and over and over and over avoid gossips, don't hang out with them, don't be friends with them,
stay away from them, why? Because it's contagious. Proverbs 11:13 in the New
Living Translation says this, "A gossip goes around revealing secrets "but those who are trustworthy,"
in other words, reliable, "can keep a confidence." Again, corporations pay
big money for people who are not just respectful
but they're reliable. So how do you do that, how
do you build reliability, these qualities and
some of the other things are related to in yourself and in kids? - I think reliability comes
to mind when I'm teaching my children how to be trustworthy, how to make the right decisions but if you do make the wrong
decision to own up to it and my sweet daughter allowed
me to tell this story, she was in first grade and she had looked at someone else's paper
and she felt so guilty, that night she told us
about it and we said, "Well, you're gonna need to
tell your teacher about it "the next day," and she
just walked into first grade and she'd let her teacher
know that she made a mistake. And I think when we
teach them to be reliable and trustworthy, when we
give them the opportunity to be empowered to do that rather than me or my husband going in and
talking to the teacher, she really owned it and then she learned that she needed to do what the right thing and it's a process. - That's a huge lesson
for her to go by herself and we'll come back to
that but that's good. - Well, I always tell my kids my response is my responsibility and their response is their responsibility and
when I think about this thing with gossip, so many
times we have the choice whether we're gonna participate
in the gossip or not. So someone else might be saying something and we get to choose,
are we gonna respond, are we gonna participate or same thing with telling the truth,
are we going to choose to tell the truth or
are we gonna sail a lie because we don't wanna get in trouble? And so that's one of the
things I try to teach my kids, my response is my responsibility. - In most states, for you to
willingly receive stolen goods and you know they're stolen, the penalty is the same as stealing it. That's true of stolen
information in gossip. That you say, "Well, I don't gossip," but you're receiving it so
you're perpetuating the problem in that office. That's not being reliable
and it's not, well, I don't share it but if you take it, you're receiving stolen
property, stolen information. What is gossip? It's sharing information
when you're neither part of the problem nor the
solution, that's gossip. If you're part of the problem, then you need to deal with it. If you're part of the solution, you need to go to that person. - So I'm thinking about
how much we can learn from non-examples and from
the moments where people aren't reliable for us
and how we use that pain to fuel being better
and being more reliable. So when a child is gossiped about or when we're gossiped
about and we remember how much it hurts to hear that, how much that can reinforce our commitment to being better and so for
me, and for the kids I serve and for everyone else,
I think that's probably the biggest piece is
using those non-examples and those moments of hurt
to fuel being more reliable. - So we're talking about
not the three Rs of reading, writing, arithmetic, we're
talking about the four Rs of character that build a remarkable life. And the first one we
said is to be respectful, then the second is to be reliable. Here's the third one, resourceful. If I want to build a remarkable life, if I want to build a remarkable career, I must learn to be resourceful. I'm gonna explain this to
you but again, as I said, companies pay top dollar,
pay a lot of money for people who are resourceful and who are resourceful people? They're people who figure
out solutions to problems. They are resourceful in
that they look for ways to do a workaround or create a solution, they're figuring out
ways to solve problems. Here's a definition,
resourcefulness is two things; it's making the most of what I have, you know how to do that? Not waiting for something else to come in before you actually start living, making the most of what I
have and finding solutions to problems that others have overlooked. That's what it means to be resourceful. My dad's motto and I heard him say it over and over growing up, was
I will do the best I have, best I can, with what I
have for Jesus Christ today. I like that. I'll do the best I can with what I have for Jesus Christ today. I'm not waiting for
everything to fall in place, if I'm waiting for perfect environment, nothing's ever gonna get done. I'll do the best I can with what I have. That's resourcefulness. You need resourcefulness in your finances because you're never gonna
have unlimited finances. You need resourcefulness in your time, you're never gonna have unlimited time. You need resourcefulness
in creative solutions, in relationships, in your
health and in a lot of things because we live, as I said,
in a broken, imperfect world. You're never gonna have perfect
circumstances for anything. Nothing in your life will ever
have perfect circumstances. There'll always be
something wrong with it. That's why you need to
learn to be resourceful, where you do the workarounds
with the problems, with the weather, with
the lack of this resource or whatever, whatever we need. One of the great examples
of resourcefulness would be Paul and in
Philippians 4:12, he says this, the Apostle Paul, he says, "I know how to live on almost
nothing or with everything. "I've learned the secret of
living in every situation, "whether it is with a full
stomach or an empty one, "with plenty or with little." He goes, I don't care if I'm up or down, if I'm in poverty or I'm in prosperity, if things are going good,
if things going bad, I've learned how to live
in it, what's he saying? I'm resourceful and people
who are resourceful, who don't have to have
everything just right are the people who get ahead in life. They're the people who change the world. They're the people who make an impact, who live remarkable lives. Let me go back to my panel of moms. You guys doing great so talk
to me about resourcefulness, how do we teach kids to be resourceful so that they're not dependent upon us? - So one of the things that I think about is not always answering their questions, helping them to find solutions. A lot of times, children
and even young adults need to learn how to make
decisions on their own. So instead of answering their question or solving their problem,
which I did for a long time, with my own kids, I realized they needed to understand their choices and decisions and how to go about making them. So I began asking them
questions and asking them how they were gonna solve the problem and what they thought about it. And it really made a
difference in how they came up with solutions, say, pray about it. God would just start this
creativity in their mind and pretty soon they had a
solution that had formed. - [Rick] That's great. - So in my classroom,
I'm a science teacher and we do a lot of engineering labs now. And a lot of them are problem-solving labs and so the students have to
work as a team and collaborate and problem-solve and so a lot of times, they'll get stuck somewhere
and it'd be really easy for me to just tell them the right answer but I want them to have
to troubleshoot problems, learn that skill of problem-solving. So I always just say, "How are you gonna solve that problem?" And maybe give a little hint but I usually do not give them the answer and so they work together as a team. And what I find is
after they've solved it, without my help, it's empowering. They feel very proud of themselves, they've worked together
and they solve the problem. And if I just gave them the answer, I'm kind of robbing them
from having that empowerment that they feel when they
solve it themselves. - [Rick] Yeah, great, go ahead Julia. - My husband had been
laid off three times. The first two times,
we learned some lessons and some good things. The third time was the charm,
my husband had come to me and said, "Look, we're gonna obey God, "we're gonna surrender,
we're gonna trust him. "He's gonna provide for us," and really what God was
doing is he was showing us that my husband needed to
change careers and we're older so that was a little bit
of a scary thing for us but we trusted God and today,
he's in a whole new career at 57 years old that
was hard but with God, he gave us the ability and the resources to move through that
season and the connections into something new that he wanted. - [Rick] Wow. - So this is such a tough
thing to do with kids and with adults because when
you can see the solution, you wanna give it to someone but-- - [Rick] And I wanna be seen
as the authority to my child. - And you don't want them
to hurt and sometimes, I think of how I do it, even in my office, when someone presents a problem, it's so much quicker sometimes
for me to just solve it than it is for me to allow the struggle because that takes so much more
time and so much more energy and sometimes I have to watch my kids hurt or be frustrated or those kinds of things but that ultimately, I'm giving them more by letting them go through
that struggle than I would be if I gave them the solution
right in that moment. - Wow, I mentioned this
in a previous session, that anytime you take
responsibility for people, you take it away from them. When you make all the
decisions for your child or you solve all their problems, you're actually creating dependency, you're robbing them of dignity, you're keeping them from growing up. Stop solving all your kids' problems! (members of the congregation laughing) One day they're gonna
get out on their own, they're not gonna have any, let me tell you something,
it's more important that they learn how to solve a problem than it is to actually solve the problem because the problem won't last
but the skills that you learn in problem-solving do and
I like what Julia said and actually, I think Jody
said it and Deanna talked about it too, is that
you have to leave them, we're not talking about
leaving them on their own like you go figure it
out, but you can lead them with questions. Jesus was the master at this. Jesus taught people by
asking them questions and when they come to
you, your kids come to you with a problem, you go,
"Well, let's talk about that. "How do you think you
might solve that problem? "That's a problem, that's a
real problem, I agree with you. "I think I've seen it
before, maybe I've never seen "it before but that's a problem. "Let's talk about it, what
might be some options? "Let's try to think of,
let's play the game of three. "Can we think of three different ways "we might solve this
problem or one to 10." I remember when I would
play the game of one to 10 when they're starting this church. I didn't have any money,
we didn't have a building so where we gonna meet? and I just got out a piece of
paper and I wrote one to 10 and I thought, "Where could we meet?" I wrote down, I think number
one was a Jewish synagogue because they don't meet on Sunday. (members of the congregation laughing) That might be open. I think number two was a
Seventh-Day Adventist Church. Because they don't meet on Sunday. Number three was get a tent. Number four was like in a park. Number five was like
what about Sunday morning at a movie theater because
nobody goes to movies at 9:00 a.m. on Sunday morning. And I literally just made a
list and started working that and I think number seven was get a school and that's where we ended up. You just force yourself to think through. You can ask questions and don't
solve the problems for them. Now, you're not leaving them on their own, you're guiding them and when they start to go down the wrong way, "Well, no. "Well, that might, think about this: "what might that be the
consequence of that?" But you're building the muscle by letting them learn problem-solving because that's what resourcefulness is. If you solve them
problems for all of them, if you treat your kids as babies, you're gonna have to diaper
them the rest of your life. The same goes for employees. Same goes for Church staff. People would come to me and say, "What do you think we should do?" I said, "What do you think you should do?" They said, "Well, you're the pastor." "Yeah, I am and I'm telling you, "what do you think you should do?" And you force them, you say,
"They might make a mistake." Well, I don't wanna make
all the mistakes myself. I wanna spread the blame
around in this church. I want you making some of the era. I don't wanna make all the failures. So come on, share the blame. (mumbles) How do you become wise? Through experience. How do you get experience? By making wrong decisions. And then when you make wrong
decisions, you get wisdom. And then that gives you good decisions. Anybody else wanna say
anything more about that? - The only thing I'll add is
that one of my favorite things is when current research
matches biblical truth and exactly what you're saying, is what's out there right now. There's a book called
The Multiplier Effect that talks about
employers and the best way to be a supervisor is to
not give all the answers to your staff and to multiply talent is to make them solve problems
and to make them find things. - That's great, this is why
when we go on peace trips, we don't do stuff for other
people in other countries, we help them do it for themselves. A lot of people come here and go, "I wanna go somewhere
and build an orphanage." Please don't, first place
in a list of 99 things to do for orphans, I'd
put it at number 99. Ask any kid in the world, "Do you want to be in an
institution or a family?" 100% I'll say, "In a family." Be actually better to pay an aunt who doesn't have the money to
take on a couple of extra kids than to put them in an institution because when you take a kid, when their mom and dad
die and you take that kid and put them in orphanage, you're guaranteeing perpetual poverty because they lose all their
land rights in most countries. And what we think is
helping is actually hurting. We don't build orphanages,
we put kids in families. In fact, we've been shutting
down all the orphanages in Rwanda and we're now down to three. We had one last year, we shut
down, we're down to three. Rwanda will hopefully be the
first nation in the world with no orphanages. (members of the congregation clapping) Now, what we do is it doesn't
say in the Great Commission, "Go do things for other people." It says, "Teach them to do the
things I've commanded you." So that's training. Let's go to the last one. Number four, if I want to
build a remarkable life, if I want to build a remarkable career, I've got to learn the fourth R, which is I must learn to
be resilient, resilient. And that means you don't
give up when you stumble, when you fall, when you
make a mistake, you get up, you dust yourself off and you move ahead. You're resilient, you bounce back. You don't fall apart
when things fall apart. We live in a nation
today filled with people who do not know how to be resilient. And when something goes
wrong, they just give up. If at first you don't succeed, their motto is not try, try again, it's give up and expect the government to
do it for you or whatever. When you have resilience, you don't label yourself as a victim or as case as you choose joy. He has the same problems
everybody else does but you choose to keep going, you choose to keep moving ahead. Here's the definition,
resilience is the ability to bounce back and to recover from a loss or from failure, or from
stress, or from disappointment. This is one of the most important skills and people who learn to be respectful and reliable and
resourceful and resilient, they're never gonna have
a problem getting a job because bosses are looking for
that kind of quality person. Let me give you a couple verses. Proverbs 24:16, "When good people stumble, "even if they fall seven
times, they will get back up!" And I'd like for you to
circle the phrase: good people because notice that even
good people stumble. I love this verse, one of my
favorite verses in the Bible. It says in King James, "Though a righteous man falls
seven times, he rises again." Even righteous people mess up. Even righteous people stumble. Even righteous people make
bad decisions and mistakes. But failure is never final. Failure is never fatal. Failure is how you
learn what doesn't work. So don't ever call it a failure. Call it an experiment
because that's how you learn what doesn't work. Thomas Edison, I think
tried, I don't know, 800 plus different metals
before he came up with tungsten as the effective metal for
the incandescent lightbulb. He didn't say, "Well, I failed 800 times." He said, "I know 800
things that don't work." If you have that learning mentality, we're gonna talk about
this in the next series, a learning mentality, it's
not like I failed 800 times, it's like I had to just try
before I find out what works. One of the keys of Saddleback Church is that we're not afraid to fail. I just teach our lay
leaders, our volunteers, our staff and they just fail fast. I tell all the staff, "I
want you failing every week. "If you're not failing, you're
not trying anything new." It's not a failure to try
something that doesn't work, it's just how we know that doesn't work. What is bad is if you keep
failing doing the same thing over and over and over
and not learning from it. Make it a new failure, make it a doozy. So as your pastor, I'm
telling you to go out and fail this week, it won't hurt. It's how you learn to be a success. Someday, I'll write a book,
1000 Ways to not Grow a Church. Because I know every one of
them, we've tried them all. We tried 99 things, they don't
work and number 100 works then we go out and teach a
seminar to 3,000 pastors, pretend like we know what we're doing. But we're not that smart,
it's just trial and error. Studies have shown that parents who try to protect their kids from failure and try to buffer them
and if they do fail, they won't let them feel it. It's okay to let your kids feel bad because they'll learn
that it doesn't kill you. The people who fear failure the most are those who were not
allowed to fail growing up. They were not allowed to
fail and when they did fail, we immediately switched the subject, we didn't let them feel it. It's part of growing up. Feeling bad is part of life. The sooner you teach
your kids law number one, everything on earth is broken, the better. Law number two, nothing
is perfect on this planet except the Word of God, it's perfect and God's love for you is perfect. But everything else is
broken, it's all flawed because of sin and so we
shouldn't expect it to be perfect. And if we give our kids the idea that life's gonna be a
combination of my little pony and Rainbow Brite with pastels and flowers coming down in unicorns, they're gonna be pretty upset when they hit the real world. Life is tough, everything's
broken, nothing's perfect but God is good and life can
be good even in a broken world. And marriage can be good
even though we're all broken. And so can everything
else, and ultimately, we're gonna go to a place where
it's all good, all the time and that's heaven but this is not heaven. Here we have lymphoma
and here we have abuse and here we have a lot
of war, a lot of other but life can be good
even in the middle of bad but it's choice and the choice
is to learn to be resilient. A good example is Paul, again. 2 Corinthians 4:8-9. Paul says, "We're often
pressured from every side." Ever feel like that,
pressured from every side? "We're often pressured from every side "but we're never crushed. "Sometimes we don't know what
to do but we never despair. "Sometimes were attacked and we're abused "but God never abandons us. "And we get knocked
down but we get up again "and we keep going." That is resilience, 2 Corinthians 4:8-9. The Phillips translation says, "We get knocked down but
we're not knocked out. "But we get back up again." Team of panel of moms and teachers, how do we help people be more resilient, how do we teach that? - Well I think you can't
learn how to be resilient until you've gone through something hard. You have to experience
a heartbreak or loss or disappointment and then you
can learn how to bounce back and be resilient and 4 1/2 years ago, our family went through
a really hard time, we went through a divorce
and it was really painful. And the kids and I struggled through it and I learned that the way to be resilient is not to depend on my own strength because I didn't have enough
but to depend on God's strength and He would get me through the hard time that I went through and I
taught my kids that as well. And I think we wanna protect
our kids and shelter them but we need to show them that
they will go through loss. Everyone experiences
something in their life and help them learn how to walk through it and depend on God through it
and he's able to be faithful and get us through the toughest of times. And so that, to me, is
what showing resilience is. - I can't overstate the value
of being authentic and real and what you've just done
in front of a ton of people about our own mistakes
and our own failures and how not only is that
so valuable for your kids because it teaches them how to respond but it endears the people around you. People are so much more
attracted to you when they see that you're flawed too and
that you've made a mistake than they might be otherwise. There's opportunities to
do it when you go through something tough and there
are small opportunities that happen all the time
because we're human. You know it. It happened in my house last
week when my daughter looked at me and said, "That
wasn't a respectful way "to talk to dad." There's a moment where you think, "Oh, I just failed as a
mom," but in that moment, to be able to honestly look at your child and say, "You're right, I did. "And here's what I'm gonna do about it." You teach them that this
is what it looks like on a daily basis that there's
an action step beyond this. I take a minute and then I move forward. - I love what you said because
I think we all make mistakes and repairing the rupture
is a huge part of owning it and saying to your kids, "I
messed up, I wasn't respectful "or I wasn't respectful to
speaking with how I talked," with whoever you were speaking with and just saying I'm sorry
and repairing that rupture. That's a really important part. - I read this card, it was
so awesome at the store the other day and it said, "Put on your brave and
decide to be amazing." And I thought that's really good when it comes to resilience. Get up after you've
tripped and you stumbled and you fall or if there's a mess or something that's been created
but just put on your brave and decide to be amazing. - Is this a needed quality
in our world today? Yeah, because we give up too
soon, we give up too soon. All four of these qualities
are qualities of Jesus Christ. And the more you build these
qualities in your life, the more Christ-like you're going to be. But I love the fact that all
three of these women shared that we often help people best
by sharing our weaknesses, not our strengths. We often think, what
are people gonna learn from your weaknesses. No, they actually learn
more from your strengths. We actually learn more
from your weaknesses. I could sit up here in this service and I could tell you all the
good things that I'm good at. And you'd go, "Well, goody for you Rick. "Whoopty doo, whoopty
doo, you're just you, "painted the moon." And it doesn't help anybody,
doesn't draw us closer. Just go, "That guy's got
a problem with his ego." On the other hand, if I get up here and I talk to you as I have
about how Kay and I struggle with all different kinds
of marriages problems over the year, we've
been married 42 years. (members of the congregation clapping) But we're more in love than
ever before but the problems, it wasn't always easy, wasn't always easy in the first couple years. We were so close to splitting up except we just didn't wanna admit it. The problem is that when
Matthew took his life, my son, after a lifelong struggle
with mental illness, committed suicide. Well somebody as visible as Kay and me, we decided we're gonna
use this to teach people how to grieve correctly. We weren't gonna waste our pain. We're gonna go, if you're
gonna go through pain, you might as well use it
to help somebody else. You know that pain you've
gone through, don't waste it. If you'll be honest to God
about it, honest to yourself and honest with other
people, God will use it. Your greatest ministry will often come out of your biggest failure
or your deepest pain or your worst regret and the
stuff that you don't even wanna talk about that
you're embarrassed about, somebody out there needs it. Who could help somebody
better who struggled with being abused than somebody who went through the pain of abuse? Who can better help somebody
who's struggling with prejudice and bigotry and racism than
somebody who's felt the sting of prejudice and bigotry and racism? Who could better help someone
who struggled with alcohol or alcoholic parents as
we mentioned here earlier than somebody who went
through that situation? That's what celebrate
recovery is all about. God does not wanna waste
anything in your life and part of resilience comes
from being able to share with others where you're
able to help other people. Now this one's so important,
starting next weekend I'm gonna do a whole series on it. And we're gonna do a series on how to turn your setbacks into comebacks. Everybody loves a comeback
story but we don't realize there is no comeback unless
first you have a setback. Setback's part of the story in your life! Setback is what makes you hero! You don't have any setbacks,
you're never gonna be a hero! You just got it all fed to
you with a silver spoon. No, the real heroes in life
are those who have setback after setback after setback. Some of you had health setbacks, I'm going through one right now. Some of you had financial
setbacks, relational setbacks, mental health setbacks, spiritual setbacks. I mean that's why you need
to be here at this church. That's why you need to bring
people who have setbacks here to this church because
if you've had a setback, we're gonna help you have
a comeback at Saddleback. (members of the congregation
clapping and laughing) Saddleback is the place for comebacks. It's why the S in our
name, each of our values, S stands for second-chance place of grace. This place was built on
helping people have comebacks, have second acts in life. I don't care how messed
up your past has been. Next week, we start a new series on how to have the greatest
comeback of your life, how to set the stage for the comeback, what's gonna be your next
act, your second act? So start praying about who
to bring to this service and the reason we have resiliency is not because we're better
than other people, we're not. It's because of what we know. And we're gonna look at all. There's a phrase that's used
all through the Bible says because we know. And because we know this, we can do this, because we know this, we can do this. Because we know that it's
all about perspective. I'll end with one verse. Look at this verse on
the screen Romans 5:3 and it says this, "We can
rejoice even when we run "into problems and trials," even in an imperfect broken
world we can rejoice, "because we know," that's the key, "because we know that they're good for us; "they help us learn endurance." What's endurance? It's another word for resilience. Endurance, determination, persistence, all of these things are
what the person who learns to be resourceful and
reliable and respectful and resilient has the world at their feet. Because they are
remarkable, they are rare. Because everybody has those other things, those 10 self-defeating limitations that keep you from moving
forward in your life. Let's bow for prayer. These all come from Jesus Christ. And if you get Christ in your life, then you're gonna get the power you need but you have to make the choices because you can listen to all these things and not do anything about it. You can go home and do nothing,
turn on the TV and forget it but if you say, "I really want
to be a remarkable person. "I wanna be different I
want the rest of my life "to be different." Okay, let's make that choice
right now in this moment. Just follow me in this prayer,
say something like this, "Dear God, I wanna stop
blaming other people "for my problems. "I wanna stop making
excuses for my problems. "I wanna learn to be responsible "and I wanna learn to be reliable. "And I wanna speak the truth
and do what I say I'll do "and learn to keep confidences. "I wanna learn to be
respectful for everybody "even when they disrespect me. "They can't control my response. "I'm in control of that. "So god I wanna learn to be like Jesus; "to respect people and their dignity, "even when I disagree with them, "to be resourceful. "Help me to learn how to solve problems, "to not wait for other
people to solve them, "to not wait for the
government, anybody else "but to use the brain that you gave me. "Help me to be not just
resourceful and respectful "but to be resilient and reliable. "God, you know the
things that get me down. "You know how many times
I've wanted to give up. "You know how many times I've wanted "to just throw in the towel. "I'm asking for your help. "Help me to remember because we know "that you work all things for good, "because we know that you
will never stop loving us, "because we know that you
use even the bad stuff "in good ways in our lives. "I wanna be one of those righteous people "that when I fall seven
times, I get right back up. "And I want, starting this week, "the rest of my life to be different. "I want this to be a turning point." If you've never opened
your life to Jesus Christ, say something like this,
"Jesus, I wanna get to know you. "I don't understand at all
but I wanna get to know you. "I wanna learn to trust you. "I wanna ask you to fill my
life with faith instead of fear "and with love instead of insecurity "and with purpose and meaning "and I wanna know your plan for my life "and I wanna start this
journey by just saying to you, "Yes Jesus Christ, I'm in. "I wanna accept what you
did for me on the cross "and I wanna start growing "and I wanna live a remarkable life. "And I humbly ask this in your name, amen. - Thanks for checking out
this message on YouTube. My name is Jay and I'm
Saddleback's online pastor. I wanna invite you to take your next step by checking out our online community or help get you connected to
a local Saddleback campus. Three things we have
to offer you right now; first, learn more about
belonging to a church family by taking class 101. Second, don't live life
alone and get into community with others by joining
an online small group or a local home group in your area. Third, join our Facebook
group to be more engaged with our online community
throughout the week. Take your next step and
learn where a local campus is near you by visiting
saddleback.com/online or email online@saddleback.com. Hope to hear from you soon.
