My friend send me this... v inspiring ..

In an interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, author of The Purpose
Driven Life, 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 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 trillion 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 got 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 you to 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, 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 fulfil 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.

** smiLed aT
2:25 PM