RICK WARREN INTERVIEW
George E. Crumbly (Sunday AM)
April 9, 2006 UMC Humphrey Arkansas
James 4
My sister in Florida sent me an email this week of an interview with Rick Warren regarding his new book “Purpose Driven Life.” He started off by saying:
”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”.
It made me do some serious thinking about life. Not just about life in general but thinking about MY LIFE!! You see one day my heart is going to stop, and that will be the end of my body-- but not the end of me.
It is so easy to get so caught up in living down here that we forget about living up there. Man pretty much EXPECTS things to be hunky-dory down here. The scripture the Lord has given me today is actually scripture you would use during a funeral.
James 4: verses 12-17
There is one lawgiver and judge who is able to save and to destroy. So who, then, are you to judge your neighbor? 13 Come now, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money." 14 Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist (“vapor”KJV) that appears for a little while and then vanishes. 15 Instead you ought to say, "If the Lord wishes, we will live and do this or that." 16 As it is, you boast in your arrogance; all such boasting is evil. 17 Anyone, then, who knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, commits sin.
I may live 60 to 100 years on earth, but I am going to spend trillions & trillions & 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 we figure that out, life isn’t going to make sense. (most folks no matter how evil do want to make sense out of life)
Life is a series of problems: Either we are in one now, just coming out of one, or getting ready to go into another one.
The reason for this is that God is more interested in our character than our comfort. (we have so much to look forward to going to heaven)
God is more interested in making our life holy than He is in making our 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. (the Lord never ever promised me that I would be rich, or happy BUT He did promise me that he would be with me to the end)
RICK WARREN: “This past year has been the greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer”. He goes on to say: “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”.
I believe personally that no matter how good things are in our life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked on. And no matter how bad things are in our life, there is always something good we can thank God for.
We can focus on our purposes, or we can focus on our problems.
I’ve learned that if I focus on my problems, I will go into self-centeredness, "which becomes my problem, my issues, my pain." It can very easily & very quickly become all about ME….. Life is not about me or you or my problems….Life is ALL ABOUT GOD!!!
One of the easiest ways to get rid of pain is to get our focus off ourselves and onto God and others.
RICK WARREN: 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.
We have to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of life. Sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. Something Rick Warren said in the interview led me to read the first 10 verses of our text this morning:
James 4: 1-10 “Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? 2 You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures. 4 Adulterers! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God. 5 Or do you suppose that it is for nothing that the scripture says, "God yearns jealously for the spirit that he has made to dwell in us"? 6 But he gives all the more grace; therefore it says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble." 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded. 9 Lament and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy into dejection. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you”.
(HIGHLIGHTED SCRIPTURE) this is not all that concerns life!!
RICK WARREN: 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.
When we do what God tells us to do THINGS HAPPEN. Verse 7 say’s 7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.
Look at what Rick Warren did when God got a hold of him:
1. In spite of all the money coming in, they would not change their lifestyle one bit. They made no major purchases.
2. About midway through last year, He stopped taking a salary from the church that he started.
3. He set up foundations to fund an initiative he calls “The Peace Plan “ to plant churches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next generation.
4. He added up all that the church had paid him in the past 24 years since he started the church, and he gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for free.
I want to encourage each of you this morning 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)?
God didn’t put us 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.
Next Sunday is Easter. This week is a special week for the Christian. Let’s pray every day this week for the service Sunday morning as there will be families in churches everywhere that normally do not go to church. Pray for God to have His way in the service.
