You will
enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and
him having "wealth" from the book sales. 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 copies, 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.