WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF LIFE?

With his wife now having cancer and him having "wealth" from the sale of his book, The Purpose Driven Life. Author Rick Warren has some new insights I would like to share with you.

People ask me, "What is the purpose of life"? And I respond, "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 60-100 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 practi9ce 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: 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. In spite of all the money that I earned from my books, we did not change our lifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, midway through last year I stopped taking a salary from the church. We set up a foundation 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. Then we added up all that the church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church and gave it all back. We need to ask ourselves, "Am I going to live for possessions or popularity? Am I going to be driven by pressures, guilt or bitterness or materialism?

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.

In happy moments, praise God: in difficult moments, seek God; in quiet moments, worship God; in painful moments, trust God and in every moment, thank God.