This Is Really Worth Passing On To Your Loved Ones.

 

Well worth passing on....hope you appreciate it.  

You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now 
having cancer and him having 'wealth' from the book sales. This is an 
absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren,  'Purpose 
Driven Life ' author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California .   
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 
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. 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..

If you do not pass it on, nothing will happen. But it will just be nice 
to pass it on  to a friend....just like I have done.

God's Blessings   

HE ARRIVED THIS MORNING, WE HAD PRAYER; SPENT SOME TIME JUST TALKING, 
AND HE HELD ME FOR AWHILE BECAUSE I WAS HAVING A BAD MORNING.. THEN, HE 
WAS ON HIS WAY TO YOUR PLACE. When He gets to your PC, escort Him to 
the next stop. Please don't allow Him to sleep on your PC. The message 
He is carrying is very important and needs to go round. May God bless  
you as you do this- AMEN.

In God we trust!