Preaching should be more than entertaining but life changing
1. All behavior is based on a belief.
If you get divorced, it’s because you believe that disobeying God will cause you less pain than staying in your marriage. It’s a lie, but you believe it. When somebody comes to you and says, “I’m leaving my husband, and I’m going to marry this other man because I believe God wants me to be happy.” They just told you the belief behind their behavior. It’s wrong, but they believe it.
2. Behind every sin is a lie I believe.
Titus 3:3 (NIV) declares, “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.” When you live in sin, you’re living in deception and believing a lie.
3. Change always starts in the mind
4. To help people change, we must change their beliefs first.
5. Trying to change people’s behavior without changing their belief is a waste of time.
This is true in life. When people have learned something over and over, being taught by the world’s way of thinking, they’re programmed to go that way. What if a man is programmed to pick up a cigarette every time he’s under tension? But one day he thinks, “This is killing me! I’m going to get cancer.” So he grabs the steering wheel and turns it around forcibly, throws the pack away and says, “I am going to quit!”
He makes it a week without a cigarette, a week and a half, two weeks … but the whole time he’s under tension because he hasn’t changed the programming in his mind. Eventually, he’s going to let go and pick up a cigarette again.
If you want to change people radically and permanently, you have to do it the New Testament way. You have to be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Just telling people, “You need to stop smoking … You need to stop doing this … You need to stop doing that …” isn’t going to work. You’ve got to help them change their belief pattern.
6. The biblical term for “changing your mind” is “repentance.”
But the word “repentance” is a wonderful word—metanoia—which means in Greek “to change your mind.” Repentance is just changing the way we think about something by accepting the way God thinks about it. That’s all repentance is. The new words for repentance are “paradigm shift.”
7. You don’t change people’s minds, the applied Word of God does.
2 Samuel 23:2 (NIV) says, “The Spirit of the Lord spoke through me. His word was on my tongue.”
8. Changing the way I act is the fruit of repentance.
Technically, repentance is not behavioral change. Behavior change is the result of repentance. Repentance does not mean forsaking your sin. Repentance simply means to change your mind.
9. The deepest kind of preaching is preaching for repentance.
John the Baptist: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is near.” (Matt. 3:2 NIV)
Rick Warren
is the founding pastor of Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, Calif., one of America’s largest and best-known churches. In addition, Rick is author of The New York Times best-seller The Purpose Driven Life, which was named one of the 100 Christian books that changed the 20th century. Learn more from Rick at
