What is the Purpose of Life?

Incerptions from Rick Warren's interview

Interviewed by Paul Bradshaw:


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 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 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 its 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, 2Corinthians 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 a foundations to fund an initiative we call "The Peace Plan" to plant churches, equip leaders, assist 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 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.


Rick Warren is the Senior Pastor of Saddleback Church; He is also the author of the book: The Purpose Driven (www.purposedriven.com)

"De-cluttering"

Do you have clutters in your house? closets? work room? I thought so! I believe we all have clutters to sort-out or tidy-up in our homes or work place, that is waiting to be sorted out or tidied up. The clutters are just there waiting for us to give it some time or to sit down and plan a "de-cluttering goal!"

Yes, it is a goal, as most of us just have the tendency to say it can wait or I'll do it later (procrastination) - we all are guilty of this. No matter how organise a person is, he/she has clutter to sort-out. As the days, weeks, months or years passed by we added more clutters to our homes, closets or work place.

I was "de-cluttering" my place the other day. I usually do it twice a year. First quarter of the year and third quarter of the year. But I haven't done any of "de-cluttering" - I was hoping to do it early this year but was not able to do so - in short, I procrastinated!

As I was going through my closets and work place, I realised that I had so much "clutters" that needed sorting out, so I did! I was going through all of my "clutters" and I realised that more of the "clutters" that was in the closets are just junk and was just taking so much space in my closets, that made it full and just muddled with stuff!

Spent hours doing some sorting and tidying up and guess what? yes, you are right - half of the stuff that was in my closets are just "junk clutters" that needed to be thrown out! Papers, documents, old clothes, etc., that is been sitting there and taking so much space that can be thrown-out and free-up some space and get the closets more organise if I have given it some time to "de-cluttered" early on instead of procrastinating.

As I was "de-cluttering" my closets and work place, my mind went into comparing our hearts and thoughts to our homes or closets. In the same way that we gathered or accumulated "clutters" into our homes/closets - we do accumulated "cluttters" as well into our hearts/thoughts everyday.

Most of us (if not all) has too much "junk clutters" in our hearts/thoughts, that we've been carrying for ages that instead of "de-cluttering" our hearts/thoughts with pain, hurts, bitterness, pride, immorality, etc. - we keep on dumping more of these negative emotions into our muddled hearts and later on we find it hard to carry-on with life.

Then life became too heavy with burdens, things started to look bleak, hopeless, unhappy, and later on depression and discouragement started to sit-in and leads to isolation and hating life and everything around us. It's 'coz of the "junk clutters" that we are carrying in our hearts/thoughts that we wouldn't let go of, or keep holding on, life later on became meaningless.

I believe that, if we regularly take some time do some "de-cluttering" of our hearts/thoughts then we will find out that life is beautiful and we will have lots of room to learn and experience new things, happiness, joy, relationships, etc. - and may also find out that, life can be a source of life itself, if we only do a regular "de-cluttering" that gives freedom, lighten the burdens, gives new space for experiences, relationships, and other things that we will enjoy.

Right now, I am happy and enjoying the space that I freed from all the "junk clutters" that I have thrown out and was able to organised my closets and work place well. I am happy whenever I open my closets and I see how organise and neatly piled up everything are inside! It gives me a feeling of joy and fulfilment.

I have peace and can think more clearly and I am more productive when everything is in order and organised around me - it does have that effect on me or my thinking!:)

Dew Drops

I just want to share this sweet and warm musing of a dear friend that she wrote and sent to me.....


Thank you so much Joms, I love you too!:)


dew drops...

i know for a fact that every snowflake is unique, not one ever the same. i thought of rain and i mused that every pouring is called for as the heaviness of the grey skies could bear but one more. and the bareness of the dry land awaits every trickle that may have been born a name. you think a rain drop is unique from another? what could this name be? the skies are dark and dreary, the winds howling calling forth each name.

a joy to step out after past a storm. dew drops always abounding, gentle and fresh in the morn. sending this to a dear sister who's played with them snow balls. who's probably thought of each snow flake's little but majestic life, freezed on somebody's nose so tall. yes we just had the latest typhoon news back here at home. but i'm glad our Father placed you where snows are by a heap to share them blessed heart warmed from a land of tropical heat. so tell each snow flake her unique name, a beauty beyond splendor called forth by the Name.

so tears ever flowing never ever escape, the One who has the time to stop & pause, bend over a Heart so great to spruse the skies with stars to twinkle on those eyes that needs to see how awesome things can be and would be beyond the rains, the winters, the storms; and how gentle dew drops are on quite new mornings.

i love you ate sarita. a note penned just for you out from my tired musing. would you share this to your study group girlfriends there who may need a little warm smile today over those empty cold vodka bottles. a happy distraction may not hurt.


much love,
joms :)

Time of Trouble...

"The LORD also will be a refuge for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble." Psalm 9:9

"In times of trouble." The word "times" is an indication that trouble is not a "one time thing". As we go through the journey of life, we will face many "times" of trouble. Sometimes trouble will come back to back with no time to even catch your breath before the next one comes- as was the case with Job. Then at other times it seems as though trouble takes a break and leaves us alone for a while, but before we know it--- it's back.

Trouble also comes in many forms and invades many different areas of our lives. It can attack us in our health, our finances, our personal relationships and in our relationship with God. They also come in different sizes. They can be as small as the little foxes or as big as a giant. The Bible says that "man is born to trouble and his days are full of them". If I stopped here with that statement it would seem that life was hopeless, we could never expect anything but trouble- no happiness, no joy, no peace, just trouble, trouble, trouble. But thank God we don't have to stop there. When we have "times" of trouble there is hope, His name is Jesus!

Jesus sticks with us in times of trouble- He does not run out on us, He does not leave us to handle it by ourselves, He does not forsake us. In times of trouble He is our refuge, our hiding place, our security, our safety. When facing times of trouble we don't face them alone- He leads, guides and directs us so that we can safely navigate through them to the other side.

Are you facing one of those "times" of trouble this morning? There is hope and help for you. Look to Jesus. He is big enough to handle whatever trouble comes your way and however many times it comes.

Have a great day. Each time that trouble comes, He will always be our refuge.



Excerpted from Coffee Break by: Lorraine Ezell

Combating with Self-Discipline

Have you experienced combating with self-discipline? I have, many times and I say it is not an easy task at all!

There are times that I succumbed to my flesh and do what it wants but there are times that I successfully denied myself of its desires to do what it wants, and that took lots of courage and working myself out to the point of literal exhaustion (emotionally, physically and spiritually).

Learning different languages is not easy task and it requires lots of self-discipline, especially when you are doing a self-study of it. I have to force and discipline myself to do a language study at least an hour everyday for the past few years. But there are times that my flesh just don't want to spend that hour in studying instead spending that hour infront of computer blogging! I have to literally drag myself out infront of my pc and make myself get my language books and workbooks and painstakingly make myself focus on language study.

For those of you that is studying languages, I am sure you can relate with me on this. And its not just studying languages that needs self-discipline. It's just one of many things that I need to do and make myself discipline to do so everyday.

Everyday we combat the need to stay disciplined and keep our focus to the things that are priorities versus important. First things first though, we have to know which are priorities and which are important, as those two are not the same. Learning and knowing the difference will help us a lot in tackling the issues that are infront of us everyday.

I am sure each one of us has different issues that we need to combat with self-discipline everyday. In my experience, self-discipline will not be instilled in our lives if we don't take hold of our daily activities and control our desires to be laxed in self-discipline. Knowing priorities from important will help us a lot in tackling everyday issues. We have a choice to make a better and focused life if we have self-discipline, but to do so, we have to combat self-discipline daily and purposely.

Having a discipline life makes life easier to deal with, as we are focus and we know the difference of priorities from important. This save us lots of confusion, headaches, stress, etc. Saying "NO" is an important factor in combating self-discipline. Learning to say "NO" can simplify our lives.


Question:

Have you learned to differentiate your priorities from important issues in your life?


Action:

Take sometime today and get a pen and a sheet of paper and list down the issues or concerns that you have. Make two columns and write down on each column which you think or feel are your priorities and which are important.

Then make sure to stick with your list and discipline yourself to work on them accordingly.

Fatherless Generation: coming to terms with the loss...

With Father’s Day right around the corner (that’s right, don’t forget to drop that card in the Outgoing Mail slot sometime this week), we decided to tackle one of the prevailing issues of our generation: fatherlessness. Whether it’s a father who’s physically absent, or one who is emotionally distant or hurtful, the lack of a father has left a noticeable mark on our society. RELEVANT talks to Rick Johnson, author of Better Dads, Stronger Sons and founder of Better Dads, a fathering skills program designed to equip men to be more engaged in the lives of their children, about the impact of fatherlessness and what the Church can do about it.

Do you think fatherlessness is a big problem in our society?

As a culture, we tend to think the physical absence is the only form of fatherlessness, but a father can be emotionally distant, uninvolved in their children’s lives, workaholics, abusive or addictive. I believe fatherlessness is a huge problem in our culture. In fact, I believe every problem our culture has can be directly or indirectly traced to fatherlessness in one form or another. Kids from fatherless homes are five times more likely to be poor, and 10 times more likely to be extremely poor. Kids from fatherless homes are twice as likely to be high-school dropouts, girls are three times more likely to be unwed teenage mothers, 90 percent of runaways come from fatherless homes, and three out of four teen suicides come from fatherless environments. About 70 percent of men in prison come from fatherless homes. I speak a lot on the prisons, and when I talk to men, I survey them. When I ask them not only if they came from a home without a dad at all but if they had a poor role model for a father figure, it bumps that number up to about 90 percent. If you look at just that—the consequences, devastation and destruction that men in prison have caused to our culture and families—that’s pretty significant.

Why has fatherlessness become so prevalent today? In your experience, what are some of the major reasons or symptoms?

One of the reasons I think has to do with our culture’s mentality in general. Our culture now has more of an instant gratification kind of mentality. When I talk to young people, they’re frankly a little bit hopeless that marriage can last for a long time. It’s because they’ve experienced growing up in a culture of divorce. Why we’re seeing more of it now is because clearly, the role models we have growing up are things that we tend to emulate. When people have been brought up in a broken home, or a fatherless environment, boys tend to model that behavior, sometimes unconsciously. A lot of men vow to never leave their wife or children, yet because they’ve kind of been programmed that way, they’re almost helpless to be able to stop a chain of events that leads to that kind of conclusion.

The same with young women. For a variety of reasons, they tend to make choices where they end up in a situation where they’re either pregnant and not married or in a broken relationship. Just having had that model, we tend to imitate that. We see generational cycles. I know families where the great-grandmother was a single mom, the grandmother was a single mom, the mom was a single mom and now the daughter is a single mom. Those generational cycles are hard to break sometimes, especially if we don’t recognize that it’s contributing to the problem.

How has this affected the 18- to 34-year-old age bracket? What are some characteristics that define this generation that stem from father issues?
I think there are some specific things that affect the younger, up-and-coming generation, because a lot of them have been raised in environments without a father. When I talk to young men, I feel a real eagerness and need. They want to be good dads and good husbands, but haven’t had that model for them. A lot of them grow up saying, “I’m a dad—now what do I do? I know what I don’t want to do, but an older man has never shown me what I’m supposed to do—what my role as a man, a father and a husband is.” There’s a lot of confusion, and I think a lot of times, especially in males, it manifests itself in anger. I think there’s a lot of angry young men out there, and it’s not because they’re necessarily angry as much as they are afraid. Males typically are reluctant to do the things we possibly are going to fail at, because it’s humiliating to fail. Either we leave, rather than face potential failure, or we become angry to cover that humiliating feeling of failure or fear.

For females, I think there are certain things that manifest themselves in the younger generation as well. I think the way a lot of young women view themselves can be directly related to how they perceived [the way] their father viewed them. If they had a loving father, they tend to feel good about themselves, are more confident and have more self-esteem. If they didn’t have a man growing up, they tend to not have that self-esteem and that kind of self-assessment that they’re worthy and valuable. The common theme of women and girls who did not have a father is an inability to trust a man. It’s a leap of faith for them, because a permanent relationship with a man is kind of theoretical. These women tend to test men who are in their lives by starting fights, finding flaws, expecting to be abandoned—things like that that are pretty destructive to relationships to begin with. We all have cravings for affection in our lives, and I think the women who didn’t have that in a father have a void in their lives. They search for that, not having experienced healthy, masculine affection. Sometimes they’re willing to replace that need in some destructive ways, like confusing sex for love.

How do you think it affects people spiritually? Do you think there is a correlation between the way they view their father and the way they view God?
Studies have proved that people’s perceptions of their earthly father is how they perceive God. There’s a lot of confusion, anger and maybe even turning away from God because of what’s been modeled by their earthly father. The other day my wife and I were driving in the car, and we were listening to Angela Thomas [on the radio]; she wrote My Single Mom Life. She was talking about how her husband left her with four kids. It was really tough, as you can imagine. She was exhausted and was praying to God that she just couldn’t go on. She heard God talking to her, asking her what she could do, encouraging her like a father would do. He called her His sweet baby girl, and my wife teared up, and I asked her what was wrong. She said, “I grew up without a father. I can’t even imagine a heavenly father calling me [that].” I never even thought about that, but she was right. Because she didn’t have an example of that growing up, it was hard for her to believe that there’s a loving, heavenly father that would have that kind of unconditional love for her, because she had never experienced it.

What are some short-term and long-term steps we could take, as a Church, to combat the trend?
There are so many opportunities for the Church to reach out to the hurting community out there. One of the things we do a lot of work with is on single moms raising boys. We have mentoring programs for fatherless boys, and we pair them up with college-aged men to hang out with. We have camps for single moms and their families, where they come out and we just serve and honor the single moms while teaching and letting the kids play with men so they can get a healthy example of what healthy masculinity looks like, for both boys and girls. These are great, nonthreatening opportunities for the Church to make a difference as I believe God would have us do as Christians, particularly to reach out to the widows and orphans in our community. My frustration is that I see very few churches who are willing to do that. In fairness, I think the Church is recognizing the problem of fatherlessness, but I think they’re a little overwhelmed by the whole thing and tend to be paralyzed and not do anything. There are a couple of churches that are doing some significant things to reach out to the fatherless community, and I think they’re going to make a huge difference in the world. I think churches could very easily host and encourage ministries like ours that have nonthreatening outreaches to the community that introduce biblical principles in a nonthreatening way, while getting into areas of the community that would never even set foot in a church. Because we’re reaching out and giving them something that they need without any expectations in return, they are going to be much more open to hearing the good news of the Gospel than they might normally.


Author: Sarah Moore

Sarah Moore is an editorial intern at RELEVANT Media Group