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In an interview by Paul Bradshaw with Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, Rick Warren 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 trillion 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.

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 got 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.

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 you to own ego or foryou 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,
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.

"Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life"

Dolly, do you remember a few months ago when the prisoner being brought into court in Georgia shot a female guard and killed the judge in the courtroom and escaped (later killing a Federal agent, too), and ended up at the apartment of a single woman (20's) in Augusta, Georgia?

Augusta is the nearest to us, sizable city, so I watch their television stations and the news, and they had extensive coverage for a long time.
She played it calmly and coolly for several hours, and even drove him to a convenience store, and then cooked his breakfast.

Think Pam was her name, and he expressed appreciation of her attitude, and she began to steer him with a discussion of that very book!
It sunk in, and she stressed perhaps God wanted him to testify to others in prison, knowing he would definitely be incarcerated, giving him new focus to replace his desperation.

There were many follow-ups, and interesting things brought out. Six years before, her husband had been shot and killed, and the case never solved. She has a small daughter, temporarily with a relative until she gets on her feet.

The lovely side effect of it all was renewed interest in the husband's murder, and others posted a monetary reward for new leads...and the perp was FOUND and will undergo trial! You wonder how many harbored the notion she was perhaps responsible/complicit in his death, and this new light brought out the truth!

She received a large reward for leading the police to him, and he surrendered peacefully after getting her out of the apartment so she'd not be hurt.

It was wonderful to see it unfold in a lot of detail, of such interest here.

Augusta also was where the police caught the rapist/murderer of the little 9-year old girl (within sight of her trailer home, held her a few days, continuing abuse,' and then killed and buried her nearby) in Florida.
He had fled to NC - took a bus to Augusta before heading up North, and had stayed at the Salvation Army Shelter...was recognized and caught.

Rick Warren's book is now on the Top Ten..:))
Wonderfully simple and effective, God long ago selecting him to write it, *seeing* down a long road for Pam and the murderer...