Purpose

I got this email from my landlady today. Funny, I'd just been listening to a song called "Seize The Day" by Carolyn Arends, and thinking how much I need to do that.

I've read The Purpose Driven Life a while ago, but I guess I didn't really let it get to me that much. This did, tho - especially the bit about not being a human doing, but a human being. For the longest time, I have lived with a sense of frustration that I'm not doing enough with my life... wasting so many days... perhaps I've been going around it the wrong way... instead of trying to force myself to do something productive with my day, maybe I need to focus on my true purpose... to know God... and everything else will flow out of that...

Having a daily prayer time helps too. I actually did that today... first one in ages. It's amazing how much more focussed you feel when you do that...

Anyway, here's the email. I'm gonna bold the bits that meant a lot to me:


Subject: Fw: interview with Rick Warren

interview with Rick Warren

This is absolutely incredible , "Purpose Driven Life " author and pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California .The interview was so inspiring to me that I wanted to share it with as many people as I could.

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, you're just
coming out of one, or you're getting ready to go into another one. (I've always thought something like that to myself.)

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. (What!?!?)

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? (ouch)

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.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God,

And die to find out there isn't,

Than live my life as if there isn't,

And die to find out there is.

So there you have it, pretty profound, huh?

And now for the quote of the day from homestarrunner.com. In the new game, dungeonman 3, if you type "go west" in an area where you can't actually go west, it comes up, "Well, aren't you the king of wishful thinking? It's a shame you can't go that way, because I've heard that life is peaceful there." Brilliant!!