101 Cherishable Rick Warren Quotes on Love, Devotion and Prayer

He’s sold millions of books worldwide with Biblically based teachings for a worldwide audience. Rick Warren is committed to sharing his knowledge on love, devotion and prayer all the while enabling others to discover our purpose for which God created us.

Rick Warren was born in California in 1954 and is an American Baptist evangelical Christian pastor and author. He is the founder and senior pastor of Saddleback Church, an evangelical megachurch affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention in Lake Forest, California.

Warren’s involvement in the ministry began when he was just 19, and a student of California Baptist University. He began a bible study group in 1980 and held the first public service at Saddleback Church that same year on Easter Sunday. His methods led to rapid expansion as the church grew to almost 80 facilities in it’s 35-year history. It now averages 20,000 people in attendance each week.

He released his book, The Purpose Driven Life in 2002 which became a New York Times’ best seller. The novel offers readers a 40-day personal spiritual journey and presents what Warren says are God’s five purposes for human life on earth. By 2020, 50 million copies had been sold.

Warren has also become an active spokesperson for mental illness after his 27 year old son ended his life in 2013 by suicide. In 2004, Warren was named by Time as one of the leaders who mattered the most and in 2005 he was named by Time as one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.

He’s been through a lot and done a lot, with passionate cause and purpose driven content. Warren’s own life journey of love, devotion and prayer is evident in every word he says with memorable lines of empowerment which continue to inspire us all.

1. All leaders are learners. The moment you stop learning, you stop leading.

Rick Warren

2. Grief is a good thing because it gets you through the transitions of life.

Rick Warren

3. Great opportunities may come once in a lifetime, but small opportunities surround us every day.

Rick Warren

4. Vision is not the ability to foretell the future. Vision is the ability to see an opportunity in the current circumstance and jump on it. To be fast, fluid and flexible.

Rick Warren

5. A pretentious, showy life is an empty life; a plain and simple life is a full life.

Rick Warren

6. In experiments you fail most of the time but you learn to fail fast.

Rick Warren

7. Everybody wants to be relevant. We want to be relevant personally. We want to be relevant in our businesses.

Rick Warren

8. If your activities don’t match your priorities, you are wasting your life.

Rick Warren

9. Don’t try to be in style because things invariably go out of style. If you tie your identity to the spirit of the age, nothing stays the same.

Rick Warren

10. Measured against eternity, our time on earth is just a blink of an eye, but the consequences of it will last forever.

Rick Warren

11. I build what I’m called to do on things that aren’t going to change.

Rick Warren

12. Those who follow the crowd usually get lost in it.

Rick Warren

13. Honor the emotions of people who invested in the previous thing.

Rick Warren

14. Relevance is a choice. Relevance is a decision you choose to do. If you don’t choose it, you become irrelevant very, very quickly.

Rick Warren

15. Growing organizations require growing leaders. The moment you stop growing your organization stops growing.

Rick Warren

16. Never let an impossible situation intimidate you. Let it motivate you – to pray more, trust more, expect more.

Rick Warren

17. Forgiveness must be immediate, whether or not a person asks for it. Trust must be rebuilt over time. Trust requires a track record.

Rick Warren

18. The search for the purpose of life has puzzled people for thousands of years. That’s because we typically begin at the wrong starting point – ourselves.

Rick Warren

19. When the speed of change around an organization is faster than the speed of change within the organization, the organization becomes irrelevant.

Rick Warren

20. The more God gives you, the more responsible he expects you to be.

Rick Warren

21. If you have felt hopeless, hold on! Wonderful changes are going to happen in your life as you begin to live it on purpose.

Rick Warren

22. We are products of our past, but we don’t have to be prisoners of it.

Rick Warren

23. Everything is getting faster…Nothing is slowing down. The tendency towards irrelevance is much faster than it was 10 years ago.

Rick Warren

24. God is much more concerned about your character than your career, because you will take your character into eternity, but not your career.

Rick Warren

25. I have still 60 people with me from the church 32 years ago. Can you imagine their culture shock?

Rick Warren

26. The truth is, almost everything we do is done poorly when we first start doing it – that’s how we learn.

Rick Warren

27. The deepest level of worship is praising God in spite of pain, trusting Him during a trial, surrendering while suffering, and loving Him when He seems distant.

Rick Warren

28. God intentionally allows you to go through painful experiences to equip you for ministry to others.

Rick Warren

29. Those who have hurt you in the past cannot continue to hurt you now unless you hold on to the pain through resentment.

Rick Warren

30. At Saddleback we’re not that smart we’re just not afraid to fail.

Rick Warren

31. Why is this happening to me? Why am I having such a difficult time? One answer is that life is supposed to be difficult! It’s what enables us to grow. Remember, earth is not heaven!

Rick Warren

32. Other people are going to find healing in your wounds. Your greatest life messages and your most effective ministry will come out of your deepest hurts.

Rick Warren

33. Relationships are always worth restoring.

Rick Warren

34. If not to God, you will surrender to the opinions or expectations of others, to money, to resentment, to fear, or to your own pride, lusts, or ego.

Rick Warren

35. We’re not completely happy here because we’re not supposed to be! Earth is not our final home; we were created for something much better.

Rick Warren

36. Instant obedience will teach you more about God than a lifetime of Bible discussions.

Rick Warren

37. Whenever you serve others in any way, you are actually serving God.

Rick Warren

38. The more you pray, the less you’ll panic. The more you worship, the less you worry. You’ll feel more patient and less pressured.

Rick Warren

39. If you’re going to stay relevant, there are 3 factors you’re going to have to deal with the rest of your life. 1. Corporate Culture. 2. Personal Leadership. 3. Stakeholder Emotions, and that’s the most important to deal with.

Rick Warren

40. It’s not what you do, but how much love you put into it that matters.

Rick Warren

41. Life minus love equals zero.

Rick Warren

42. Resentment always hurts you more than it does the person you resent. While your offender has probably forgotten the offense and gone on with life, you continue to stew in your pain, perpetuating the past.

Rick Warren

43. You have to create a culture where you’re constantly experimenting and you never, never, never stop experimenting.

Rick Warren

44. If you want God to bless you and use you greatly, you must be willing to walk with a limp the rest of your life, because God uses weak people.

Rick Warren

45. Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope.

Rick Warren

46. You cannot fulfil God’s purposes for your life while focusing on your own plans.

Rick Warren

47. Don’t’ call it a failure, call it an education. Some of us are very educated.

Rick Warren

48. People in your organization during change who you think are oppositional are just grieving.

Rick Warren

49. If you always do what you’ve always done you’re going to be irrelevant because you can’t use yesterday’s solutions in tomorrow’s world.

Rick Warren

50. You weren’t put on earth to be remembered. You were put here to prepare for eternity.

Rick Warren

51. You have to learn to honor the past without perpetuating the past.

Rick Warren

52. Time is your most precious gift because you only have a set amount of it. You can make more money, but you can’t make more time.

Rick Warren

53. We become whatever we are committed to.

Rick Warren

54. You are as close to God as you choose to be.

Rick Warren

55. I don’t know the keys to success, but one key to failure is to try to please everyone.

Rick Warren

56. Your value is not determined by your valuables, and God says the most valuable things in life are not things!

Rick Warren

57. The way you think determines the way you feel, and the way you feel determines the way you act.

Rick Warren

58. Unkind people need your kindness the most. They advertise their pain.

Rick Warren

59. Trusting God completely means having faith that He knows what is best for your life. You expect Him to keep His promises, help you with problems, and do the impossible when necessary.

Rick Warren

60. Your gonna have to learn with people’s emotions.

Rick Warren

61. What worked with 50 people, didn’t work with 150, didn’t work at 350 people, didn’t work at 1000, didn’t work at 2000, didn’t work at 5000, didn’t work at 10,000, didn’t work at 20,000.

Rick Warren

62. When you give someone your time, you are giving them a portion of your life that you’ll never get back.Your time is your life. That is why the greatest gift you can give someone is your time.

Rick Warren

63. Worry is a waste of energy. It cant change the past. It cant control the future. It only makes today miserable.

Rick Warren

64. What’s life going to be like in 10 years. The truth is nobody knows.

Rick Warren

65. The more you care about the powerless, the more power you have. The more you serve those with no influence, the more influence God gives you. The more you humble yourself, the more you’re honored by others.

Rick Warren

66. The world lost a great man; a friend and mentor who taught me much.

Rick Warren

67. Growth requires loss because you have to let go of the old to grab hold of the new.

Rick Warren

68. The best use of life is love. The best expression of love is time. The best time to love is now.

Rick Warren

69. If you’re alive, there’s a purpose for your life.

Rick Warren

70. You were made by God and for God and until you understand that, life will never make sense.

Rick Warren

71. If you prayed as much as you worry, you’d have nothing to worry about.

Rick Warren

72. The only really happy people are those who have learned how to serve.

Rick Warren

73. Being successful and fulfilling your life’s purpose are not at all the same thing; You can reach all your personal goals, become a raving success by the worlds standard and still miss your purpose in this life.

Rick Warren

74. The only way to be eternally relevant is to be timeless.

Rick Warren

75. God is always more interested in why we do something than in what we do. Attitudes count more than achievements.

Rick Warren

76. Surrender… sacrificing my life or suffering in order to change what needs to be changed.

Rick Warren

77. If you have ever said, “I didn’t get anything out of worship today,” you worshipped for the wrong reason. Worship isn’t for you. It’s for God.

Rick Warren

78. There is no growth without change. There is no change without loss. There is no loss without pain. There is no pain without grief.

Rick Warren

79. Satan tries to limit your praying because he knows your praying will limit him.

Rick Warren

80. Grief won’t kill your company. Fear will. Resentment will. Bitterness will. Failure to change will. But grief won’t kill your company.

Rick Warren

81. People may refuse our love or reject our message, but they are defenceless against our prayers.

Rick Warren

82. Humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less. Humility is thinking more of others. Humble people are so focused on serving others, they don’t think of themselves.

Rick Warren

83. Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you. Don’t waste your pain; use it to help others.

Rick Warren

84. If you want your life to have impact, focus it! Stop dabbling. Stop trying to do it all. Do less. Prune away even good activities and do only that which matters most. Never confuse activity with productivity. You can be busy without a purpose, but what’s the point?

Rick Warren

85. Frankness is not a license to say anything you want, wherever and whenever you want. It is not rudeness.

Rick Warren

86. For the first 15 years of Saddleback Church, we grew 47% a year on average which meant every year I had to have a new structure.

Rick Warren

87. I don’t know what’s going to change in Orange County in the next 10 years. I know what’s not going to change – People are still going to get married. People are still going to get divorced. People are still going to have babies. People are still going to deal with worry, fear, and anger and bitterness and loneliness.

Rick Warren

88. If you prayed as much as you complain and quarrel, you’d have a lot less to argue about and much more peace of mind.

Rick Warren

89. Start today by practicing constant conversation with God and continual mediation on his Word. Prayer lets you speak to God; mediation lets God speak to you.

Rick Warren

90. You discover your identity and purpose through a relationship with Jesus Christ.

Rick Warren

91. God changes caterpillars into butterflies, sand into pearls and coal into diamonds using time and pressure. He’s working on you, too.

Rick Warren

92. If God only used perfect people, nothing would get done. God will use anybody if you’re available.

Rick Warren

93. God sometimes removes a person from your life for your protection. Don’t run after them.

Rick Warren

94. Because God is with you all the time, no place is any closer to God than the place where you are right now.

Rick Warren

95. If you try to serve people, it impresses them. If you try to impress people it irritates them.

Rick Warren

96. Our culture has accepted two huge lies. The first is that if you disagree with someone’s lifestyle, you must fear or hate them. The second is that to love someone means you agree with everything they believe or do.

Rick Warren

97. It is never too late to start growing.

Rick Warren

98. You’re never wasting your time when you’re sharpening your ax.

Rick Warren

99. Happy moments, PRAISE GOD. Difficult moments, SEEK GOD. Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD. Painful moments, TRUST GOD. Every moment, THANK GOD.

Rick Warren

100. Let me tell you how worthwhile you are. You are infinitely valuable to God. First, God created you. Second, Jesus died for you. Third, he puts his Spirit within you. Fourth, he wants you to be with him forever in eternity. That’s how valuable you are to God. You are infinitely valuable to God.

Rick Warren

101. It’s not dedication. It’s not desire. Skill brings success.

Rick Warren