Insights from Rick Warren, author of "Purpose Driven Life " and pastor
of Saddleback Church in California now that his wife has cancer and
he's wealthy from book sales.
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 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
