Rick Warren on Lifes Purpose

This, like much of the stuff I end up publishing here, ended up in my email box. I wish I could give proper attibution but I cant trace the originator of the printed version. It is from an interview with Pastor Rick Warren by Paul Bradhsaw in early 2006. The information on the health of Ricks wife kay, is not current. Here is a comment from Pastor Rick, “You reference Kay’s having cancer, but I wanted to assure you that the interview/article you cite is a few years old, and Kay is healthy and in remission. Would you kindly make note on your site that Kay is currently cancer-free and that the article was not written recently? (And I agree that there are definitely points in it that are timeless!) As you can imagine, when people read that “Kay is ill,” they are burdened for her health, unnecessarily so, and it causes much confusion. Rick Warren”

As a side note it is usually not a good idea to use content that is not original on your site, at least from an SEO perspective. Google has ways that you are penalized in rankings for content that is re-cylced somehow and not original. The obvious second area is that of a character or integrity standpoint. If I dont write the content, every effort is made to give you the originator for proper recognition of that persons effort. As the reason for this site is not just monetization, I do use many other peoples content and just deal with the serach engine penalties if they actually exist.
So there you have it, enjoy.

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 not 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.