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Comments from Rick
Warren forwarded to us by Jim Hendrix
This is an incredible interview with Rick
Warren, "Purpose Driven Life” author and pastor of Saddleback
Church in California. His wife now has cancer, and he now has
"wealth" from the book sales.
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 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, or 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
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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 GO
Men's Council
The Men's Council has been meeting regularly to pray
and seek direction on how to best serve God and the men of this
congregation and community.
The Council has begun by committing themselves to
prayer. Prayer for the needs of the men of this congregation.
Prayer for the ways in which God wants to use us uniquely within this
community. Prayer for the way in which we can best share the joy
of our new life in Christ with one another.
If you have ideas on how we might better serve our
men please pass the ideas along to the newly formed council. It
comprises of: Richard Arrington, Tony Evans, Hubert Hunt, Willie
Sims, Bill Snyder, and Steve Lyons.
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