Rick had the following insightful comments:
People ask me what the purpose of life is, 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 in 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.
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.
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 my
book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly very wealthy.
It also brought a lot of fame that I had never had to
deal with before. I don't think God gives you money or
fame 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, fame, 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.
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