For my psychotic homie back home:

As I read this interview by Rick Warren I immediately thought about a friend of mine. She is a psychotic sweetheart and I would do anything for her even though she drives me to the bottle more often than not. I love you little homie.  
 This is an Interview with Rick Warren the author of the book everybody's Grandma owns and buys them for Christmas--"Purpose Driven Life."   
 

In  the interview by Paul Bradshaw with 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 not 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.   
  
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 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.   
  
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 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  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.   
Happy  moments, PRAISE GOD.  
Difficult  moments, SEEK GOD.  
Quiet  moments, WORSHIP GOD.  
Painful  moments, TRUST GOD.  
Every  moment, THANK GOD..