by vintage_dog » Mon Jul 25, 2005 5:53 pm
In an interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, author of The
Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren 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 trillion 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 come 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 got 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 you to
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, 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 fulfil 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.