An interview with Rick Warren (author of The PDL)

Life is a series of problems: Either you are in one now, you're justcoming out of one or you're getting ready to go into another one. The reasonfor 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 yourlife happy. We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that's not thegoal 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 thetoughest, with my wife, Kay, getting cancer. I used to think that life washills and valleys - you go through a dark time, then you got to themountaintop, back and forth. I don't believe that anymore. Rather than lifebeing hills and valleys, I believ'e that it's kind of like two rails on arailroad track, and at all times you have something good and something badin your life. No matter how good things are in your life, there is alwayssomething bad that needs to be worked on.
And no matter how bad things are in your life, there is always somethinggood you can thank God for. You can focus on your purposes, or you can focuson your problems. If you focus on your problems, you're going intoself-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 offyourself and onto God and others.
We discovered quickly that in spite of the prayers of hundreds ofthousands 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 hercharacter, given her a ministry of helping other people, given her atestimony, drawn her closer to Him and to people...You have to learn to dealwith both the good and the bad of life.
Actually, sometimes learning to deal with the good is harder. Forinstance, this past year, all of a sudden, when the book sold 15 millioncopies, it made me instanfly very wealthy. It also brought a lot ofnotoriety 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 foryou to live a life of ease. So I began to ask God what He wanted me to dowith this money, notoriety and influence. He gave me two different passagesthat helped me decide what to do, Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.
First, in spite of all the money coming in, we would not change ourlifestyle one bit. We made no major purchases. Second, about midway throughlast year, I stopped taking a salary from the church. Third, we set upfoundations to fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan - to plantchurches, equip leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate thenext generation. Fourth, I added up all that the church had paid me in the24 years since I started the church, and I gave it all back. It wasliberating 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 amI 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, ifI don't get anything else done today, I want to know You more and love Youbetter ...God didn't put me on earth just to fulfil a to-do list. He's moreinterested in what I am than what I do. That's why we're called humanbeings, not human doings.