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This is an
absolutely incredible short interview
with Rick Warren,
"Purpose Driven Life " author
and pastor of Saddleback Church in
California. In the interview by Paul
Bradshaw with Rick Warren,
Rick said: People ask me, What is the
purpose of life? And I respond:
In a nutshell,
life is preparation for eternity. We
were made to last
forever, and God wants us to be with Him
in Heaven.
One day my
heart is going to stop, and that will be
the end of my body--
but not the end of me. I may live 60 to
100 years on earth, but I am
going to spend trillions of years in
eternity.
This is the
warm-up act - the dress rehearsal. God
wants us to practice
on earth what we will do forever in
eternity. We were made by God and
for God, and until you figure that out,
life isn't going to make sense.
Life is a
series of problems: Either you are in
one now, you're just
coming out of one, or you're getting
ready to go into another one.
The reason for
this is that God is more interested in
your character
than your comfort. God is more
interested in making your life Holy than
He is in making your life happy. We can be reasonably happy here
on
earth, but that's not the goal of life.
The goal is to grow in
character, in Christ likeness.
This past year
has been the greatest year of my life
but also the
toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting
cancer.
I used to think
that life was hills and valleys - you go
through a dark
time, then you go to the mountaintop,
back and forth. I don't believe
that anymore.
Rather than
life being hills and valleys, I believe
that it's kind of
like two rails on a railroad track, and
at all times you have something
good and something bad in your life.
No matter how
good things are in your life, there is
always something
bad that needs to be worked on. And no
matter how bad things are in your
life, there is always something good you
can thank God for.
You can focus
on your purposes, or you can focus on
your problems. If
you focus on your problems, you're going
into self-centeredness, "which
is my problem, my issues, my pain."
But one of the
easiest ways to get rid of pain is to
get your focus off
yourself and onto God and others. We
discovered quickly that in spite of
the prayers of hundreds of thousands of
people, God was not going to
heal Kay or make it easy for her.
It has been
very difficult for her, and yet God has
strengthened her
character, given her a ministry of
helping other people, given her a
testimony, drawn her closer to Him and
to people. You have to learn to
deal with both the good and the bad of
life.
Actually,
sometimes learning to deal with the good
is harder. For
instance, this past year, all of a
sudden, when the book sold 15 million
it made me instantly very wealthy.
It also brought
a lot of notoriety that I had never had
to deal with
before. I don't think God gives you
money or notoriety for your own ego
or for you to live a life of ease.
So I began to
ask God what He wanted me to do with
this money, notoriety
and influence. He gave me two different
passages that helped me decide
what to do, II Corinthians 9 and Psalm
72.
First, in spite
of all the money coming in, we would not
change our
lifestyle one bit. We made no major
purchases.
Second, about midway through last year,
I stopped taking a salary from the
church.
Third, we set
up foundations to fund an initiative we
call The Peace
Plan to plant churches, equip leaders,
assist the poor, care for the
sick, and educate the next generation.
Fourth, I added
up all that the church had paid me in
the 24 years since
I started the church, and I gave it all
back. It was liberating to be
able to serve God for free.
We need to ask
ourselves: Am I going to live for
possessions?
Popularity? Am I going to be driven by
pressures? Guilt? Bitterness?
Materialism? Or am I going to be driven
by God's purposes (for my
life)?
When I get up in the morning, I sit on
the side of my bed and say,
God, if I don't
get anything else done today, I want to
know You more
and love You better ...
God didn't put
me on earth just to fulfill a to-do
list.
He's more interested in what I am than
what I do. That's why we're called
human beings, not human doings.
Happy moments,
PRAISE GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST GOD.
Every moment, THANK GOD.
Phil 2: 14 -16
Do everything without complaining or
arguing, so that you may become
blameless and pure, children of God
without fault in a crooked and
depraved generation, in which you shine
like stars in the universe as
you hold out the word of life.
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