A Little Help From a Friend

I find it so interesting how God chooses to help us through our difficulties! Even before I finished writing my last blog, a long-time friend sent me the following interview via email. Patty is one of the FEW people I let send me "forwards," et al, because she almost never sends junk. It's either real powerful, funny or just plain hits the spot for me. In fact, many times her stuff becomes the meat of some of my blogs!

Now I'm not "over" my struggling yet, but this is definitely one of the pieces to the puzzle that will help me solve my seeming conundrum. Thanx Patty- you're the best!

All bolding below is my highlighting great thoughts from the interview. I will comment in between with {red italic} lettering.

- - -

This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, "Purpose-Driven Life" author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California: "God wants us to be with Him in Heaven." 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. 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 of God who 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. {Rick Munn says it this way (about the church): "The church is a MESS!" You know, they're both right. We're never going to get to that hoped for place in life where everything's perfect. It's all about learning how to cope with the mess.}

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's 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 of 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 for which you can thank God.

You can focus on your purposes, or you can focus on your problems. {As with a camera, what develops is what you focus on.}

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. {Wow! How simple; how true! William Booth got it right- "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." {This is my new DAILY prayer!}

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. {Why can't we seem to get this straight? Why is it we work so hard to DO things, when that's just not the answer? I don't have any problems with doing things, we just need to take the emphasis off of doing and aim for being. If we make this change, we won't see the results as obviously. But God will. Can we live with that?}

In happy moments, PRAISE GOD.
In difficult moments, SEEK GOD.
In quiet moments, WORSHIP GOD.
In painful moments, TRUST GOD. {This is the HARD one here!}
In every moment, THANK GOD.