Special thanks to Marie, for sending this to me.
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.
Friday, August 29, 2008
Monday, August 25, 2008
I gain The Confidence That God Truly Understands My Pain (excerpt)
p. 236 -238 Where Is God When It Hurts? Philip Yancey
Because of Jesus, I need never cry into the abyss "Hey, you up there---do you even care?" The presence of suffering does not mean that God has forsaken me. To the contrary, by joining us on earth God gave solid historical proof that He hears our groans, and even groans with us. When we endure trials, he stands beside us, like the fourth man in the fiery furnace.
Why did Jesus have to suffer and die? The question deserves an entire book, and has prompted many books, but among the answers the Bible gives is this most mysterious answer; suffering served as a kind of "learning experience" for God. Such words may seem faintly heretical, but I am merely following the phraseology from the book of Hebrews.
Hebrews was written to a Jewish audience saturated in the Old Testament. The author strives to show that Jesus is "better"-----a key word throughout the book. How is He better than the religious systems they were used to? More powerful? More impressive? No, Hebrews emphasizes that Jesus is better because he has spanned the chasm between God and us. "Although He was a Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (5:8) Elsewhere the book tells us that the author of our salvation was made perfect through suffering (2:10)
These words, full of fathomless mystery, surely mean at least this: the Incarnation had meaning for God as well as us. Human history revolves not around our experience of God, but his experience of us. On one level of course God understands physical pain, for he designed the marvelous nervous system that warns against harm. But had he, a Spirit, ever felt physical pain? Not until the Incarnation, the wrinkle in time when God himself experienced what it is like to be a human being.
In some incomprehensible way, because of Jesus God hears our cries differently. The author of Hebrews marvels that whatever we are going through, God Himself has gone through. "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are---yet was without sin." (4:15)
We have a high priest who, having graduated from the school of suffering, "is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness" (5:2) Because of Jesus God understands, truly understands, our pain. Our tears become his tears. We are not abandoned.
Because of Jesus, I need never cry into the abyss "Hey, you up there---do you even care?" The presence of suffering does not mean that God has forsaken me. To the contrary, by joining us on earth God gave solid historical proof that He hears our groans, and even groans with us. When we endure trials, he stands beside us, like the fourth man in the fiery furnace.
Why did Jesus have to suffer and die? The question deserves an entire book, and has prompted many books, but among the answers the Bible gives is this most mysterious answer; suffering served as a kind of "learning experience" for God. Such words may seem faintly heretical, but I am merely following the phraseology from the book of Hebrews.
Hebrews was written to a Jewish audience saturated in the Old Testament. The author strives to show that Jesus is "better"-----a key word throughout the book. How is He better than the religious systems they were used to? More powerful? More impressive? No, Hebrews emphasizes that Jesus is better because he has spanned the chasm between God and us. "Although He was a Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered" (5:8) Elsewhere the book tells us that the author of our salvation was made perfect through suffering (2:10)
These words, full of fathomless mystery, surely mean at least this: the Incarnation had meaning for God as well as us. Human history revolves not around our experience of God, but his experience of us. On one level of course God understands physical pain, for he designed the marvelous nervous system that warns against harm. But had he, a Spirit, ever felt physical pain? Not until the Incarnation, the wrinkle in time when God himself experienced what it is like to be a human being.
In some incomprehensible way, because of Jesus God hears our cries differently. The author of Hebrews marvels that whatever we are going through, God Himself has gone through. "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are---yet was without sin." (4:15)
We have a high priest who, having graduated from the school of suffering, "is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness" (5:2) Because of Jesus God understands, truly understands, our pain. Our tears become his tears. We are not abandoned.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Keeping His own Rules (How Does faith Help?)
pp 228-237 excerpted from "Where Is God When It hurts?" by Philip Yancey
Old Testament characters like Job and Jeremiah sometimes wondered aloud if God had "plugged his ears" to their cries of pain. Jesus put an abrupt and decisive end to such speculation. Not only had God not plugged his ears, he suddenly took on ears....literal eardrum--ossicle--cochlea human ears. On the cracked and dusty plains of Palestine, God's Son heard firsthand the molecular vibrations of human groans; from the sick and needy, and from others who groaned more from guilt than from pain.
Clear your mind and reflect for a moment on Jesus life. He was the only person in history able to plan his own birth. Yet he humbled himself, trading in a perfect heavenly body for a frail body of blod and sinew and cartilege and nerve cells. The Bible says that there is no temptation known to man that Jesus did not experience. He was lonley, tired, hungry, personally assaulted by Satan, beseiged by leeching admirers, persecuted by powerful enemies.
As for physical appearance, there's only one description of Jesus in the Bible...."He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering" (Isaiah 53:2-3)
When Jesus first began his ministry the people hooted "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" An ancient ethnic joke; Jesus, the hick, the the country bumpkin from Nazareth. In keeping with that reputation, he seemed to gravitate toward other rejects; lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, paralytics, notorious sinners.
Jesus neighbors once ran him out of town and tried to kill him His own family questioned his sanity. The leaders of the day proudly reported that not one authority or religious leader believed in him. His countrymen traded his life for that of a terrorist.
No other religion,.... not Judaism, not Hinduism, not Buddhism or Islam..... offers this unique contribution of an all-powerful God who willingly takes on the limitations and suffering of his creation. As Dorothy Sayers wrote,
"For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is-----limited and suffering and subject to sorrow and death----He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with His creation, he has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not already exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money, to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile"
The fact that Jesus came to earth where he suffered and died does not remove pain from our lives. But it does show that God does not sit idly by and watch us suffer in isolation. He became one of us. Thus, in Jesus God gives us an up-close and personal look at His response to human suffering. All our questions about God and suffering should be filtered through what we know about Jesus.
And when Jesus himself faced suffering, he reacted much like any of us would. He recoiled from it, asking three times if there was any other way.There was no other way, and then Jusus experienced, perhaps for the first time, that most human sense of abandonment. "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" In the gospel accounts of Jesus last night on earth I detect a fierce struggle with fear, helplessness, and hope-----the same frontiers all of us confront in our suffering.
The record of Jesus life on earth should forever answer the question, How does God feel about our pain? In reply God did not give us words or theories on the problem of pain. He gave us Hiself. A philosophy may explain difficult things, but it has no power to change them. The Gospel, the story of Jesus life, promises change.
Old Testament characters like Job and Jeremiah sometimes wondered aloud if God had "plugged his ears" to their cries of pain. Jesus put an abrupt and decisive end to such speculation. Not only had God not plugged his ears, he suddenly took on ears....literal eardrum--ossicle--cochlea human ears. On the cracked and dusty plains of Palestine, God's Son heard firsthand the molecular vibrations of human groans; from the sick and needy, and from others who groaned more from guilt than from pain.
Clear your mind and reflect for a moment on Jesus life. He was the only person in history able to plan his own birth. Yet he humbled himself, trading in a perfect heavenly body for a frail body of blod and sinew and cartilege and nerve cells. The Bible says that there is no temptation known to man that Jesus did not experience. He was lonley, tired, hungry, personally assaulted by Satan, beseiged by leeching admirers, persecuted by powerful enemies.
As for physical appearance, there's only one description of Jesus in the Bible...."He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering" (Isaiah 53:2-3)
When Jesus first began his ministry the people hooted "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" An ancient ethnic joke; Jesus, the hick, the the country bumpkin from Nazareth. In keeping with that reputation, he seemed to gravitate toward other rejects; lepers, prostitutes, tax collectors, paralytics, notorious sinners.
Jesus neighbors once ran him out of town and tried to kill him His own family questioned his sanity. The leaders of the day proudly reported that not one authority or religious leader believed in him. His countrymen traded his life for that of a terrorist.
No other religion,.... not Judaism, not Hinduism, not Buddhism or Islam..... offers this unique contribution of an all-powerful God who willingly takes on the limitations and suffering of his creation. As Dorothy Sayers wrote,
"For whatever reason God chose to make man as he is-----limited and suffering and subject to sorrow and death----He had the honesty and courage to take His own medicine. Whatever game he is playing with His creation, he has kept His own rules and played fair. He can exact nothing from man that He has not already exacted from Himself. He has Himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money, to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. When He was a man, He played the man. He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile"
The fact that Jesus came to earth where he suffered and died does not remove pain from our lives. But it does show that God does not sit idly by and watch us suffer in isolation. He became one of us. Thus, in Jesus God gives us an up-close and personal look at His response to human suffering. All our questions about God and suffering should be filtered through what we know about Jesus.
And when Jesus himself faced suffering, he reacted much like any of us would. He recoiled from it, asking three times if there was any other way.There was no other way, and then Jusus experienced, perhaps for the first time, that most human sense of abandonment. "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" In the gospel accounts of Jesus last night on earth I detect a fierce struggle with fear, helplessness, and hope-----the same frontiers all of us confront in our suffering.
The record of Jesus life on earth should forever answer the question, How does God feel about our pain? In reply God did not give us words or theories on the problem of pain. He gave us Hiself. A philosophy may explain difficult things, but it has no power to change them. The Gospel, the story of Jesus life, promises change.
Where Is God When It Hurts? (excerpt)
(p 260-261)
For a good portion of my life I shared the perspective of those who rail against God for allowing pain. Suffering pressed in too close. I could find no way to rationalize a world as toxic as this one.
As I visited people whose pain far exceeded my own, though, I was surprised by it's effects. Suffering seemed as likely to reinforce faith as sow agnosticism.
The problem of pain will have no ultimate solution until God recreates the earth. I am sustained by faith in that great hope. If I did not truly believe that God is a Physician and not a Sadist, I would abandon all attempts to plumb the mysteries of suffering.
My anger about pain has melted mostly for one reason: I have come to know God. He has given me joy and love and happiness and goodness. They have come in unexpected flashes, in the midst of my confused, imperfect world, but they have been enough to convince me that my God is worthy of trust. Knowing Him is worth all enduring.
Where does that leave me when I stand by a hospital bed the next time a close friend gets Hodgkins disease? After all, this search started at a bedside. It leaves me with faith in a Person, a faith so solid that no amount of suffering can erode it.
Where is God when it hurts?
He has been there from the beginning, designing a pain system that, even in the midst of a fallen world, still bears the stamp of His genius and equips us for life on this planet.
He transforms pain, using it to teach and strengthen us, if we allow it to turn us toward him.
With great restraint, he watches this rebellious planet live on, in mercy allowing the human project to continue in its self-guided way. He lets us cry out, like Job, in loud fits of anger against him, blaming him for a world we spoiled.
He allies himself with the poor and suffering, founding a kingdom tilted in their favor. He stoops to conquer.
He promises supernatural help to nourish the spirit, even if our physical suffering goes unrelieved.
He has joined us. He has hurt and bled and cried and suffered. He has dignified for all time those who suffer, sharing their pain.
He is with us now, ministering to us through his Spirit, and through members of his body, who are commissioned to bear us up and relieve our suffering for the sake of the Head.
He is waiting, gathering the armies of good. One day he will unleash them, and the world will see one last terrifying moment of suffering before full victory is ushered in. Then God will create for us a new, incredible world. And pain shall be no more.
"Listen, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we will all be changed...in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperisable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory"
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
( I Corinthians 15:51-55)
For a good portion of my life I shared the perspective of those who rail against God for allowing pain. Suffering pressed in too close. I could find no way to rationalize a world as toxic as this one.
As I visited people whose pain far exceeded my own, though, I was surprised by it's effects. Suffering seemed as likely to reinforce faith as sow agnosticism.
The problem of pain will have no ultimate solution until God recreates the earth. I am sustained by faith in that great hope. If I did not truly believe that God is a Physician and not a Sadist, I would abandon all attempts to plumb the mysteries of suffering.
My anger about pain has melted mostly for one reason: I have come to know God. He has given me joy and love and happiness and goodness. They have come in unexpected flashes, in the midst of my confused, imperfect world, but they have been enough to convince me that my God is worthy of trust. Knowing Him is worth all enduring.
Where does that leave me when I stand by a hospital bed the next time a close friend gets Hodgkins disease? After all, this search started at a bedside. It leaves me with faith in a Person, a faith so solid that no amount of suffering can erode it.
Where is God when it hurts?
He has been there from the beginning, designing a pain system that, even in the midst of a fallen world, still bears the stamp of His genius and equips us for life on this planet.
He transforms pain, using it to teach and strengthen us, if we allow it to turn us toward him.
With great restraint, he watches this rebellious planet live on, in mercy allowing the human project to continue in its self-guided way. He lets us cry out, like Job, in loud fits of anger against him, blaming him for a world we spoiled.
He allies himself with the poor and suffering, founding a kingdom tilted in their favor. He stoops to conquer.
He promises supernatural help to nourish the spirit, even if our physical suffering goes unrelieved.
He has joined us. He has hurt and bled and cried and suffered. He has dignified for all time those who suffer, sharing their pain.
He is with us now, ministering to us through his Spirit, and through members of his body, who are commissioned to bear us up and relieve our suffering for the sake of the Head.
He is waiting, gathering the armies of good. One day he will unleash them, and the world will see one last terrifying moment of suffering before full victory is ushered in. Then God will create for us a new, incredible world. And pain shall be no more.
"Listen, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we will all be changed...in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperisable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory"
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
( I Corinthians 15:51-55)
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