|
The Warm-Up
- The Dress
Rehearsal |
This is
an incredible brief
interview with Rick Warren,
"Purpose Driven Life" author
and pastor of Saddleback
Church n California.
In the
interview with Paul
Bradshaw, 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 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.
TThat's
why we're called human
beings, not human doings.
