Hey everyone, I'm so glad you're here with us today.

This is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope with Rick Warren.

And today we start a series called The Keys to a Blessed Life.

In these messages, Rick walks through Jesus' Sermon on the Mount and shows us how to live a truly hopeful and purpose-filled life.

Now, let's get started with part one of it depends on who you depend on.

You know, probably the most common greeting that, you know, you hear, particularly among believers, is God bless you.

And we say it not just when people sneeze, we say God bless you.

Have you ever thought out, what in the world does that mean?

What's a blessing?

How do you define a blessing?

Would you know a blessing if it slapped you in the face?

I mean, the Bible says that sometimes a problem is a blessing.

So when you say, God bless them really great, you say, given a bunch of problems?

Really, what in the world is a blessing? And if you pray for God to bless somebody, how do you

even know if it's happened or not? If you don't know what a blessing is.

The word blessed in the Bible is the Greek word macarius, macarius.

And macarius is the word for happy, happy.

It is the word for happiness.

To be blessed is to be happy. To have a blessing is to have happiness in your life. And when Jesus talks about you're blessed if you do this, you're saying you're going to be happy if you do this. It's the exact same word. Now today we're going to begin quite a long series through Jesus' most famous sermon. It's called the sermon on the Mount. And Jesus begins the sermon on the Mount by talking

about eight ways to be blessed by God. Eight ways to receive God's blessing on your life.

You could call it eight ways to be happy.

The truth is, I want you as your pastor, I love you, I love you.

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