Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Prayer gettin' us through it all...
Now, If I can only figure out for myself how to sustain living AND serve my lord better. It continues to be a difficult decision-making process....I have a great salary and benefits, and if I could embrace this community...things might become different for me. But for some reason, I can't bring myself to do it....I don't know if it's because the job I do is so crazy, I am simply just overwhelmed and cannot be creatively giving...but I am giving myself this month to face it before calling the decision to move here a failure. I spent much of the day Monday searching online for employment in my "dream" areas of the country....Oregon and Florida....Now I need time to pray...and for anyone reading this blog...to pray for me on a decision. It was another nice time at softball last night...a scrimmage because the other team didn't have enough players show up. There were "encouragers" of my unathletic self and I had a good time speaking encouragement to others as well. This week begins a 13 week run of a contest to commemmorate our station's 50th anniversary on the air...it will hopefully be fun to do, and it is so far not looking good for an outdoor event with us serving cake during a concert in the park gathering weather-wise...but that also...might be something to inspire...
In any case...I hope anyone that would read this might be inspired...by either my thoughts, or the thoughts I pasted below from one of my favorite authors sent in an e-mail chain recently....have a great day/week/whenever I get back to you again!
In an interview by Paul Bradshaw with reknown "Purpose Driven Life" series writer 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 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.
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, 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 the book)(Purpose Driven Life) sold 15 million co pies, 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 gene ration.
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.
