Interview with Rick Warren: What is the purpose of life?

[loco]

Feb 9

An Interview with Rick Warren

You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having ‘wealth’ from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, ‘Purpose Driven Life’ author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California. 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’S 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 selfcenteredness, 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.

http://www.negroschronicle.com/?p=2987

[Government_Controlled]

Feb 9

An Interview with Rick Warren

    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

I have to respectfully disagree. According to my research on this matter, this is what I have come up with. If old age and death were natural and part of some master plan, wouldn't we welcome them? But we don’t. Why not? The answer is found in the way we were made. The Bible says: “[God] has even put eternity into [our] minds.” (Ecclesiastes 3:11, Byington) Because of this desire for an endless future, people have long searched for a so-called fountain of youth. They want to stay young forever. This raises the question, Do we have the potential for longer life?

Writing in the magazine Natural History, biologist Austad presented the common view: “We tend to think of ourselves and other animals in the same way we think of machines: wearing out is simply inevitable.” But this is not true. “Biological organisms are fundamentally different from machines,” Austad said. “They are self-repairing: wounds heal, bones mend, illness passes.”

Thus, the intriguing question, Why do we age? As Austad asked: “Why, then, should [biological organisms] be subject to the same sorts of wear and tear as machines?” Since bodily tissues replace themselves, couldn’t they continue to do that forever?

In Discover magazine, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond discussed the marvelous capacity of physical organisms to repair themselves. He wrote: “The most visible example of damage control applied to our bodies is wound healing, by which we repair damage to our skin. Many animals can achieve much more spectacular results than we can: lizards can regenerate severed tails, starfish and crabs their limbs, sea cucumbers their intestines.”

Concerning replacement of teeth, Diamond stated: “Humans grow two sets, elephants six sets, and sharks an indefinite number during their lifetime.” He then explained: “Regular replacement also goes on at a microscopic level. We replace the cells lining our intestine once every few days, those lining the urinary bladder once every two months, and our red blood cells once every four months.

“At the molecular level our protein molecules are subject to continuous turnover at a rate characteristic of each particular protein; we thereby avoid the accumulation of damaged molecules. Hence if you compare your beloved’s appearance today with that of a month ago, he or she may look the same, but many of the individual molecules forming that beloved body are different. While all the king’s horses and men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again, nature is taking us apart and putting us back together every day.”

Most cells of the body are periodically replaced by newly formed ones. But some cells, such as brain neurons, may never be replaced. However, Hayflick explained: “If the cell has had every part replaced it is not the same old cell. The neurons you were born with might appear today to be the same cells, but in reality many of the molecules that composed them when you were born, may have been replaced with new molecules. So non-dividing cells may not be the same cells you were born with after all!” This is because the components of the cells are replaced. Thus, replacement of body materials theoretically could keep us alive forever!

Recall that Dr. Hayflick spoke of “the miracles that take us from conception to birth.” What are some of these? Lets take a look at those. As we briefly examine them, consider the possibility of the implementation of what he called “a more elementary mechanism to simply maintain those miracles forever.”

An adult is composed of some 100 trillion cells, each of which is incomprehensibly complex. To illustrate the complexity, Newsweek magazine compared a cell to a walled city. “Power plants generate the cell’s energy,” the magazine said. “Factories produce proteins, vital units of chemical commerce. Complex transportation systems guide specific chemicals from point to point within the cell and beyond. Sentries at the barricades control the export and import markets, and monitor the outside world for signs of danger. Disciplined biological armies stand ready to grapple with invaders. A centralized genetic government maintains order.” Consider how you, some 100 trillion cells of you came about. You began as a single cell that was formed when the sperm from your father united with an egg cell from your mother. At that uniting, the plans were drawn up within the DNA (short for deoxyribonucleic acid) of that newly formed cell to produce what eventually became you an entirely new and unique human. The instructions within the DNA “if written out,” it is said, “would fill a thousand 600-page books.”

In time, that original cell began dividing, making two cells, then four, eight, and so on. Finally, after about 270 days, during which time thousands of millions of cells of many different kinds had developed within your mother to form a baby, YOU were born. It is as if that first cell had a huge room full of books with detailed instructions on how to make you. But just as wonderful is the fact that these complicated instructions were passed along to every succeeding cell. Yes, amazingly, each of the cells in your body has all the same information as the original fertilized egg contained!

Consider this also. Since each cell has the information to produce all kinds of cells, when it came time, say, to make heart cells, how were the instructions to make all the other cells suppressed? Seemingly, acting like a contractor with a complete cabinet of blueprints for making a baby, a cell picked from its file cabinet a blueprint for making heart cells. Another cell picked out a different blueprint with instructions for producing nerve cells, yet another took a blueprint for making liver cells, and so on. Surely, this still unexplained ability of a cell to select the instructions needed to produce a particular kind of cell and at the same time suppress all other instructions is another of the many “miracles that take us from conception to birth.”

Yet, there is much more to it. For example, the cells of the heart need to be stimulated so that they contract rhythmically. Thus, within the heart a complex system was constructed for generating electrical impulses to cause the heart to beat at a proper rate to sustain the body in the activity in which it is engaged. Truly, a miracle of design! No wonder doctors have said of the heart: “It is more efficient than any machine of any kind yet devised by man.”

An even greater wonder is the development of the brain, the most mysterious part of the human miracle. Three weeks after conception, brain cells start forming. In time, about 100 billion nerve cells, called neurons, as many as there are stars in the Milky Way, are packed into a human brain.

“Each one of these receives input from about 10,000 other neurons in the brain,” reported Time magazine, “and sends messages to a thousand more.” Noting the possible combination possibilities, neuroscientist Gerald Edelman said: “A match head’s worth of the brain contains about a billion connections that can combine in ways which can only be described as hyperastronomical, on the order of ten followed by millions of zeros."

What potential capacity does this give the brain? Astronomer Carl Sagan said that the human brain can hold information that “would fill some twenty million volumes, as many as in the world’s largest libraries.” Author George Leonard went further, exclaiming: “Perhaps, in fact, we can now propose an incredible hypothesis: The ultimate creative capacity of the brain may be, for all practical purposes, infinite.”

Thus, we should not be surprised by the following statements: “The brain,” said molecular biologist James Watson, co-discoverer of the physical structure of DNA, “is the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.” Neurologist Richard Restak, who resents the comparison of the brain to a computer, said: “The brain’s uniqueness stems from the fact that nowhere in the known universe is there anything even remotely resembling it.”

Neuroscientists say that during our present life span, we use just a small part of our potential brain power, only about 1/10,000, or 1/100 of 1 percent, according to one estimate. If that is true, why do we grow old?  Think about it. Is it reasonable that we would be given a brain with such miraculous possibilities if it was never to be used fully? Is it not reasonable that humans, with the capacity for endless learning, were actually designed to live forever? Look at what the Bible teaches about the earth and mankind.:



Psalms 139: 13-16:

"For you yourself produced my kidneys; You kept me screened off in the belly of my mother. (14) I shall laud you because in a fear-inspiring way I am wonderfully made.Your works are wonderful, As my soul is very well aware. (15) My bones were not hidden from you. When I was made in secret, When I was woven in the lowest parts of the earth. (16) Your eyes saw even the embryo of me, And in your book all its parts were down in writing, As regards the days when they were formed. That the purpose of God for the earth has not changed is made clear in the Bible, where God promises:

“The righteous themselves will possess the earth, and they will reside forever upon it.” Even Jesus Christ said in his Sermon on the Mount that the mild-tempered ones would inherit the earth. (Psalm 37:29; Matthew 5:5).

Psalms 115:16:

"As regards the heavens, to God the heavens belong, but the earth he has given to the sons of men."


Isaiah 45:18:

"For this is what God has said, the Creator of the heavens, He the [true God], the Former of the earth and the Maker of it, He the One who firmly established it, who did not create it simply for nothing, who formed it even to be inhabited: I am God, and there is no one else."


Psalms 10:30:

"As for the righteous one, to time indefinite he will not be caused to stagger; but as for the wicked ones, they will not keep residing on the earth"


2 Peter 3:13:

"But there are new heavens and a new earth that we are awaiting according to his promise, and these righteousness is to dwell."



I'm not sure where he is getting his info regarding ALL people are going to heaven. Sure, there are "a select few, or rather anointed" ones that are spoken of as going on to heaven, however, not the majority.

is 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.  The goal is to grow in character, in Christ’s likeness.We can be reasonably happy here on earth, but that’s not the goal of life.

But what if Adam had not sinned? What if he had not disobeyed God and he had been granted to eat of the tree of life? Where would he have enjoyed God’s gift of everlasting life? In heaven? No! God said nothing about Adam’s being taken to heaven. His work assignment was here on earth. The Bible explains that “God made to grow out of the ground every tree desirable to one’s sight and good for food,” and it says: “God proceeded to take the man and settle him in the garden of Eden to cultivate it and to take care of it.” (Genesis 2:9, 15) After Eve was created as a mate for Adam, the two were given additional work assignments here on earth. God told them: “Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth.” (Genesis 1:28.) Think of the marvelous earthly prospects those instructions from God opened for Adam and Eve! They were to rear perfectly healthy sons and daughters in the earthly Paradise. As their children grew older, these would share with them in being fruitful and in doing pleasant garden work to maintain that Paradise. With all the animals in subjection to them, humankind would be very contented. Think of the joy of extending the boundaries of the garden of Eden so that eventually the entire earth would be a paradise! I can't believe that a reasonable human would not enjoy life with perfect children in such a beautiful earthly home, without any concerns about growing old and dying? So, It's really hard for me to be able to accept this reasoning.




P.S. Please disregard lack of paragraphing, I'm not an English expert. *LOL*.




GC/DEA_AGENT

[Deicide]

Feb 9

An Interview with Rick Warren

You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren has, with his wife now having cancer and him having ‘wealth’ from the book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview with Rick Warren, ‘Purpose Driven Life’ author and pastor of Saddleback Church in California. 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’S 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 selfcenteredness, 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.

http://www.negroschronicle.com/?p=2987

That guy is a sick mofo...

[Nordic Superman]

To give new life via procreation is the purpose.

[loco]

Have a Purpose in Life? You Might Live Longer

TUESDAY, June 16 (HealthDay News) -- If you have a purpose in life -- lofty or not -- you'll live longer, a new study shows.


It doesn't seem to matter much what the purpose is, or whether the purpose involves a goal that's ambitious or modest.


"It can be anything -- from wanting to accomplish a goal in life, to achieving something in a volunteer organization, to as little as reading a series of books," said study author Dr. Patricia Boyle, a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center and an assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.


"We found that people who reported a greater level of purpose in life were substantially less likely to die over the follow-up period -- only about half as likely to die over the follow-up period -- as compared to people with a lower level of purpose," Boyle said. The follow-up period averaged nearly three years.


Boyle and her colleagues studied 1,238 older adults already participating in two ongoing research studies at Rush, the Rush Memory and Aging Project and the Minority Aging Research Study. The participants were all dementia-free when the study began and averaged 78 years old.


At the start of the study, the participants answered questions about their purpose in life, rating themselves on different areas meant to measure the tendency to derive meaning from life and to feel that one is working toward goals.


The average score on the sense-of-purpose evaluation was 3.7 of a possible 5, Boyle said.


When comparing scores, Boyle found that those with a higher sense of purpose had about half the risk of dying during the follow-up period as did those with a lower sense of purpose. And that was true, she said, even after controlling for such factors as depressive symptoms, chronic medical conditions and disability.


"What this is saying is, if you find purpose in life, if you find your life is meaningful and if you have goal-directed behavior, you are likely to live longer," she said.


Though much other research has found that having a purpose in life is crucial to maintaining psychological wellness and can be important for physical health as well, Boyle said she believes the new study is one of the first large-scale investigations to examine the link between life purpose and longevity.


The finding follows another recent study, done by others, in which the researchers found that retirees older than 65 who volunteered had less than half the risk of dying during about a four-year follow-up period as did their peers who did not volunteer their time.


What's the link? Boyle can't say for sure. But it could be that having a greater sense of purpose helps multiple systems of the body function better, conferring protection in the face of illness.


The findings make sense to Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He said he often sees the effects of not having a purpose among older patients. "I see a number of people who have lost that purpose," he said. "Their health declines."


Still, he said, ''it's not clear there is cause and effect" between a sense of purpose and longevity. Perhaps the longevity could be explained by another variable the researchers did not examine, he said.


Boyle said that in future research they hope to find out if people can be inspired to have purpose in life, perhaps by being taught to set goals and work toward them.


More information


The U.S. Corporation for National and Community Service has more about the benefits of volunteering.

http://guy

[Deicide]

Have a Purpose in Life? You Might Live Longer

TUESDAY, June 16 (HealthDay News) -- If you have a purpose in life -- lofty or not -- you'll live longer, a new study shows.


It doesn't seem to matter much what the purpose is, or whether the purpose involves a goal that's ambitious or modest.


"It can be anything -- from wanting to accomplish a goal in life, to achieving something in a volunteer organization, to as little as reading a series of books," said study author Dr. Patricia Boyle, a neuropsychologist at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center and an assistant professor of behavioral sciences at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.


"We found that people who reported a greater level of purpose in life were substantially less likely to die over the follow-up period -- only about half as likely to die over the follow-up period -- as compared to people with a lower level of purpose," Boyle said. The follow-up period averaged nearly three years.


Boyle and her colleagues studied 1,238 older adults already participating in two ongoing research studies at Rush, the Rush Memory and Aging Project and the Minority Aging Research Study. The participants were all dementia-free when the study began and averaged 78 years old.


At the start of the study, the participants answered questions about their purpose in life, rating themselves on different areas meant to measure the tendency to derive meaning from life and to feel that one is working toward goals.


The average score on the sense-of-purpose evaluation was 3.7 of a possible 5, Boyle said.


When comparing scores, Boyle found that those with a higher sense of purpose had about half the risk of dying during the follow-up period as did those with a lower sense of purpose. And that was true, she said, even after controlling for such factors as depressive symptoms, chronic medical conditions and disability.


"What this is saying is, if you find purpose in life, if you find your life is meaningful and if you have goal-directed behavior, you are likely to live longer," she said.


Though much other research has found that having a purpose in life is crucial to maintaining psychological wellness and can be important for physical health as well, Boyle said she believes the new study is one of the first large-scale investigations to examine the link between life purpose and longevity.


The finding follows another recent study, done by others, in which the researchers found that retirees older than 65 who volunteered had less than half the risk of dying during about a four-year follow-up period as did their peers who did not volunteer their time.


What's the link? Boyle can't say for sure. But it could be that having a greater sense of purpose helps multiple systems of the body function better, conferring protection in the face of illness.


The findings make sense to Dr. Gary Kennedy, director of geriatric psychiatry at Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He said he often sees the effects of not having a purpose among older patients. "I see a number of people who have lost that purpose," he said. "Their health declines."


Still, he said, ''it's not clear there is cause and effect" between a sense of purpose and longevity. Perhaps the longevity could be explained by another variable the researchers did not examine, he said.


Boyle said that in future research they hope to find out if people can be inspired to have purpose in life, perhaps by being taught to set goals and work toward them.


More information


The U.S. Corporation for National and Community Service has more about the benefits of volunteering.

http://guy

Utterly irrelevant to whether or not this religious garbage is true or not.

[loco]

Utterly irrelevant to whether or not this religious garbage is true or not.

Deicide = No purpose in life other than to attempt to kill faith in God 

[Deicide]

Deicide = No purpose in life other than to attempt to kill faith in God 

No purpose in life true enough, but meh, not even that...