Inspiration from
The five minutes it takes you to read this
interview could drastically change your
perspective of why we are here, if not
your life. Be inspired.
Rick Warren Speaks Out
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
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 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 initiativewe 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