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| "Luisa Conde"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
04/01/05 12:05 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 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 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.
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"From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it."
Matthew 11:12
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