Book Reading

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.” – Mark 12:30 (NIV) “God wants all of you.” Welcome to Day 13 of our Purpose-Driven Life journey! A few days ago we explored the 4 essential keys to developing your friendship with God. Today, Rick Warren reveals what kind of worship actually pleases God and transforms your daily life into a continuous act of worship. God’s All-or-Nothing Request God doesn’t want a part of your life. He asks for all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength. God is not interested in halfhearted commitment, partial obedience, and the leftovers of your time and money. He desires your full devotion, not little bits of your life. This might sound overwhelming, but it’s actually liberating—when you give God everything, you discover the joy of living with complete purpose and meaning. A Samaritan woman once tried to debate Jesus on the best time, place, and style for worship. Jesus replied that these external issues are irrelevant. Where you worship is not as important as why you worship and how much of yourself you offer to God when you worship. The Right Way to Worship There is a right and wrong way to worship. The Bible says, “Let us be grateful and worship God in a way that will please him.” The kind of worship that pleases God has four essential characteristics that transform both your private devotions and your public gatherings. Characteristic #1: God Is Pleased When Our Worship Is Accurate People often say, “I like to think of God as…” and then they share their idea of the kind of God they would like to worship. But we cannot just create our own comfortable or politically correct image of God and worship it. That is idolatry. Worship must be based on the truth of Scripture, not our opinions about God. Jesus told the Samaritan woman, “True worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” Why Accuracy Matters To “worship in truth” means to worship God as He is truly revealed in the Bible. This means: When your worship is based on biblical truth, it has power and authenticity. When it’s based on misconceptions or wishful thinking, it becomes empty ritual. Characteristic #2: God Is Pleased When Our Worship Is Authentic When Jesus said you must “worship in spirit,” He wasn’t referring to the Holy Spirit, but to your spirit. Made in God’s image, you are a spirit that resides in a body, and God designed your spirit to communicate with Him. Worship is your spirit responding to God’s Spirit. Genuine vs. Performance When Jesus said, “Love God with all your heart and soul,” He meant that worship must be genuine and heartfelt. It is not just a matter of saying the right words; you must mean what you say. Heartless praise is not praise at all! It is worthless, an insult to God. When we worship, God looks past our words to see the attitude of our hearts. The Bible says, “Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” Emotions in Worship Since worship involves delighting in God, it engages your emotions. God gave you emotions so you could worship Him with deep feeling—but those emotions must be genuine, not faked. God hates hypocrisy. He doesn’t want showmanship or pretense or phoniness in worship. He wants your honest, real love. We can worship God imperfectly, but we cannot worship Him insincerely. Both Heart and Head Of course, sincerity alone is not enough; you can be sincerely wrong. That’s why both spirit and truth are required. Worship must be both accurate and authentic. God-pleasing worship is deeply emotional and deeply doctrinal. We use both our hearts and our heads. Overcoming Worship Distractions Today many equate being emotionally moved by music as being moved by the Spirit, but these are not the same. Real worship happens when your spirit responds to God, not to some musical tone. In fact, some sentimental, introspective songs hinder worship because they take the spotlight off God and focus on our feelings. Your biggest distraction in worship is yourself—your interests and your worries over what others think about you. Finding Your Authentic Worship Style Christians often differ on the most appropriate way to express praise to God, but these arguments usually just reflect personality and background differences. Many forms of praise are mentioned in the Bible: confessing, singing, shouting, standing in honor, kneeling, dancing, making a joyful noise, testifying, playing musical instruments, and raising hands. The best style of worship is the one that most authentically represents your love for God, based on the background and personality God gave you. Nine Sacred Pathways Gary Thomas, in his book “Sacred Pathways,” identifies nine ways people naturally draw near to God: There is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to worship and friendship with God. You don’t bring glory to God by trying to be someone He never intended you to be. God wants you to be yourself. Characteristic #3: God Is Pleased When Our Worship Is Thoughtful Jesus’ command to “love God with all your mind” is repeated four times in the New Testament. God is not pleased with thoughtless singing of hymns, perfunctory praying of clichés, or careless exclamations of “Praise the Lord.” If worship is mindless, it is meaningless. You must engage your mind. Avoiding Vain Repetitions Jesus called thoughtless worship “vain repetitions.” Even biblical terms can become tired clichés from overuse, and we stop thinking about the meaning. It is so much easier to offer clichés in worship instead of making the effort to honor God with fresh words and ways. Practical Ways to Make Worship Thoughtful Expand Your Vocabulary: Try praising God without using the words praise, hallelujah, thanks, or amen. Instead of saying, “We just want to praise you,” use fresh

“He offers his friendship to the godly.” – Proverbs 3:32 (NLT) “Draw close to God, and God will draw close to you.” – James 4:8 (NLT) Welcome to Day 12 of our Purpose-Driven Life journey! 2 days ago we discovered how to become God’s best friend through constant conversation and continual meditation. Yes, i missed a day, life happened. Today, Rick Warren reveals four more essential keys for developing your friendship with God that will transform your relationship from casual acquaintance to intimate companion. The Truth That Changes Everything You are as close to God as you choose to be. Like any friendship, developing your friendship with God won’t happen by accident. It takes desire, time, and energy. If you want a deeper, more intimate connection with God, you must learn to honestly share your feelings with Him, trust Him when He asks you to do something, learn to care about what He cares about, and desire His friendship more than anything else. The beautiful truth is that God wants this friendship even more than you do. He’s not playing hard to get or making you jump through religious hoops. He’s eagerly waiting for you to draw near to Him. Key #1: I Must Choose to Be Honest with God The first building block of developing your friendship with God is complete honesty—about your faults and your feelings. God doesn’t expect you to be perfect, but He does insist on complete honesty. Perfect People Need Not Apply None of God’s friends in the Bible were perfect. If perfection was a requirement for friendship with God, we would never be able to be His friends. Fortunately, because of God’s grace, Jesus is still the “friend of sinners.” Look at how God’s friends in the Bible were brutally honest about their feelings: Abraham questioned and challenged God over the destruction of Sodom, pestering God and negotiating Him down from fifty righteous people to only ten. David made many accusations of unfairness, betrayal, and abandonment, yet God called him “a man after my own heart.” Jeremiah claimed that God had tricked him, but God didn’t strike him down. Job vented his bitterness during his ordeal, and in the end, God defended Job for being honest and rebuked Job’s friends for being inauthentic. God Wants Your Real Feelings What may appear as audacity, God views as authenticity. God listens to the passionate words of His friends; He is bored with predictable, pious clichés. To be God’s friend, you must be honest with God, sharing your true feelings, not what you think you ought to feel or say. Breaking Down the Hidden Rift It’s likely that you need to confess some hidden anger and resentment toward God for certain areas of your life where you have felt cheated or disappointed. Until we mature enough to understand that God uses everything for good in our lives, we harbor resentment toward God over our appearance, background, unanswered prayers, past hurts, and other things we would change if we were God. Bitterness is the greatest barrier to friendship with God. The antidote is to realize that God always acts in your best interest, even when it’s painful and you don’t understand it. But releasing your resentment and revealing your feelings is the first step to healing. The Psalms: Your Honesty Manual God gave us the book of Psalms—a worship manual full of ranting, raving, doubts, fears, resentments, and deep passions combined with thanksgiving, praise, and statements of faith. Every possible emotion is catalogued in the Psalms. When you read the emotional confessions of David and others, realize this is how God wants you to worship Him—holding back nothing of what you feel. You can pray like David: “I pour out my complaints before him and tell him all my troubles. For I am overwhelmed.” Key #2: I Must Choose to Obey God in Faith Every time you trust God’s wisdom and do whatever He says, even when you don’t understand it, you deepen your friendship with God. Friendship Through Obedience We don’t normally think of obedience as a characteristic of friendship, but Jesus made it clear that obedience is a condition of intimacy with God. He said, “You are my friends if you do what I command.” We are friends with God, but we are not His equals. He is our loving leader, and we follow Him. We obey God not out of duty or fear or compulsion, but because we love Him and trust that He knows what is best for us. The Joy of Loving Obedience Because we have been forgiven and set free, we obey out of love—and our obedience brings great joy! Jesus said, “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey me, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father and remain in his love. I have told you this so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!” Small Acts, Great Impact We are often challenged to do “great things” for God. Actually, God is more pleased when we do small things for Him out of loving obedience. They may be unnoticed by others, but God notices them and considers them acts of worship. Great opportunities may come once in a lifetime, but small opportunities surround us every day. Even through such simple acts as telling the truth, being kind, and encouraging others, we bring a smile to God’s face. Consider Jesus: For thirty years before His public ministry, what gave God so much pleasure? The Bible says nothing about those hidden years except for a single phrase: “He went back to Nazareth with them, and lived obediently with them.” Thirty years of pleasing God were summed up in two words: “lived obediently”! Key #3: I Must Choose to Value What God Values This is what friends do—they care about what is important to the other person. The more you become God’s friend,

“Since we were restored to friendship with God by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be delivered from eternal punishment by his life.” – Romans 5:10 (NLT) “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” – John 15:15 (NIV) Welcome to Day 11 of our Purpose-Driven Life journey! Yesterday we explored the heart of worship through complete surrender to God. Today, Rick Warren reveals perhaps the most shocking truth about your relationship with God: God wants to be your best friend. The Most Shocking Truth Your relationship to God has many different aspects: God is your Creator and Maker, Lord and Master, Judge, Redeemer, Father, Savior, and much more. But the most shocking truth is this: Almighty God yearns to be your Friend! The Original Design In Eden we see God’s ideal relationship with us: Adam and Eve enjoyed an intimate friendship with God. There were no rituals, ceremonies, or religion – just a simple loving relationship between God and the people He created. Unhindered by guilt or fear, Adam and Eve delighted in God, and He delighted in them. We were made to live in God’s continual presence, but after the Fall, that ideal relationship was lost. Only a few people in Old Testament times had the privilege of friendship with God: But fear of God, not friendship, was more common in the Old Testament. Jesus Changed Everything Then Jesus changed the situation. When He paid for our sins on the cross, the veil in the temple that symbolized our separation from God was split from top to bottom, indicating that direct access to God was once again available. Unlike the Old Testament priests who had to spend hours preparing to meet Him, we can now approach God anytime. The Bible says: “Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God—all because of what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us in making us friends of God.” Friendship with God is possible only because of the grace of God and the sacrifice of Jesus. “All this is done by God, who through Christ changed us from enemies into his friends.” The old hymn says, “What a friend we have in Jesus,” but actually, God invites us to enjoy friendship and fellowship with all three persons of the Trinity: our Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. What Jesus Said About Friendship Jesus said: “I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” The word for friend in this verse does not mean a casual acquaintance but a close, trusted relationship. The same word is used to refer to: In royal courts, servants must keep their distance from the king, but the inner circle of trusted friends enjoy close contact, direct access, and confidential information. God’s Passionate Desire That God would want me for a close friend is hard to understand, but the Bible says: “He is a God who is passionate about his relationship with you.” God deeply desires that we know Him intimately. In fact, He planned the universe and orchestrated history, including the details of our lives, so that we could become His friends. The Bible says: “He made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him.” Knowing and loving God is our greatest privilege, and being known and loved is God’s greatest pleasure. God says: “If any want to boast, they should boast that they know and understand me… These are the things that please me.” The Challenge of Intimate Friendship It’s difficult to imagine how an intimate friendship is possible between an omnipotent, invisible, perfect God and a finite, sinful human being. It’s easier to understand: But what does it mean when God wants me as a friend? By looking at the lives of God’s friends in the Bible, we learn six secrets of friendship with God. We’ll look at two secrets today and four more tomorrow. Secret #1: Constant Conversation You will never grow a close relationship with God by just attending church once a week or even having a daily quiet time. Friendship with God is built by sharing all your life experiences with Him. Of course, it is important to establish the habit of a daily devotional time with God, but He wants more than an appointment in your schedule. He wants to be included in: You can carry on a continuous, open-ended conversation with Him throughout your day, talking with Him about whatever you are doing or thinking at that moment. “Praying without ceasing” means conversing with God while shopping, driving, working, or performing any other everyday tasks. Everything Can Be “Spending Time with God” A common misconception is that “spending time with God” means being alone with Him. Of course, as Jesus modeled, you need time alone with God, but that is only a fraction of your waking hours. Everything you do can be “spending time with God” if He is invited to be a part of it and you stay aware of His presence. Brother Lawrence’s Secret The classic book on learning how to develop a constant conversation with God is Practicing the Presence of God. It was written in the seventeenth century by Brother Lawrence, a humble cook in a French monastery. Brother Lawrence was able to turn even the most commonplace and menial tasks, like preparing meals and washing dishes, into acts of praise and communion with God. The key to friendship with God, he said, is not changing what you do, but changing your

“Give yourselves to God… Surrender your whole being to him to be used for righteous purposes.” – Romans 6:13 (TEV) “So then, my friends, because of God’s great mercy to us… offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer.” – Romans 12:1 (TEV) Welcome to Day 10 of our Purpose-Driven Life journey! Yesterday we discovered what makes God smile through five acts of worship from Noah’s life. Today, Rick Warren takes us deeper into the very essence of worship with a challenging truth: The heart of worship is surrender. The Unpopular Word Surrender is an unpopular word, disliked almost as much as the word submission. It implies losing, and no one wants to be a loser. Surrender evokes unpleasant images of: The word is almost always used in a negative context. In today’s competitive culture we are taught to never give up and never give in—so we don’t hear much about surrendering. If winning is everything, surrendering is unthinkable. We would rather talk about winning, succeeding, overcoming, and conquering than yielding, submitting, obeying, and surrendering. But surrendering to God is the heart of worship. It is the natural response to God’s amazing love and mercy. We give ourselves to Him, not out of fear or duty, but in love, “because he first loved us.” What True Worship Really Is After spending eleven chapters of Romans explaining God’s incredible grace to us, Paul urges us to fully surrender our lives to God in worship: “So then, my friends, because of God’s great mercy to us… offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship that you should offer.” True worship, bringing God pleasure, happens when you give yourself completely to God. Notice the first and last words of that verse are the same: offer. Offering yourself to God is what worship is all about. This act of personal surrender is called many things: consecration, making Jesus your Lord, taking up your cross, dying to self, yielding to the Spirit. What matters is that you do it, not what you call it. God wants your life, all of it. Ninety-five percent is not enough. Three Barriers to Total Surrender There are three barriers that block our total surrender to God: fear, pride, and confusion. We don’t realize how much God loves us, we want to control our own lives, and we misunderstand the meaning of surrender. Barrier #1: Fear – “Can I Trust God?” Trust is an essential ingredient to surrender. You won’t surrender to God unless you trust Him, but you can’t trust Him until you know Him better. Fear keeps us from surrendering, but love casts out all fear. The more you realize how much God loves you, the easier surrender becomes. How do you know God loves you? He gives you many evidences: God loves you infinitely more than you can imagine. The greatest expression of this is the sacrifice of God’s Son for you. “God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” If you want to know how much you matter to God, look at Christ with His arms outstretched on the cross, saying, “I love you this much! I’d rather die than live without you.” God is not a cruel slave driver or a bully who uses brute force to coerce us into submission. He doesn’t try to break our will, but woos us to Himself so that we might offer ourselves freely to Him. God is a lover and a liberator, and surrendering to Him brings freedom, not bondage. When we completely surrender ourselves to Jesus, we discover that He is not a tyrant, but a savior; not a boss, but a brother; not a dictator, but a friend. Barrier #2: Pride – “Admitting Our Limitations” A second barrier to total surrender is our pride. We don’t want to admit that we’re just creatures and not in charge of everything. It is the oldest temptation: “You’ll be like God!” That desire – to have complete control – is the cause of so much stress in our lives. Life is a struggle, but what most people don’t realize is that our struggle, like Jacob’s, is really a struggle with God! We want to be God, and there’s no way we are going to win that struggle. A. W. Tozer said: “The reason why many are still troubled, still seeking, still making little forward progress is because they haven’t yet come to the end of themselves. We’re still trying to give orders, and interfering with God’s work within us.” We aren’t God and never will be. We are humans. It is when we try to be God that we end up most like Satan, who desired the same thing. We accept our humanity intellectually, but not emotionally. When faced with our own limitations, we react with irritation, anger, and resentment. We want to be taller (or shorter), smarter, stronger, more talented, more beautiful, and wealthier. We want to have it all and do it all, and we become upset when it doesn’t happen. Then when we notice that God gave others characteristics we don’t have, we respond with envy, jealousy, and self-pity. Barrier #3: Confusion – “What Surrender Really Means” Surrendering to God is NOT: Rather than being diminished, surrendering enhances your personality. C. S. Lewis observed: “The more we let God take us over, the more truly ourselves we become—because he made us. He invented all the different people that you and I were intended to be… It is when I turn to Christ, when I give up myself to His personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.” What Surrender Actually Looks Like Surrender Is Demonstrated in Obedience You say “yes, Lord” to whatever He asks of you. To say “no, Lord”

“You created everything, and it is for your pleasure that they exist and were created.” – Revelation 4:11 (NLT) “The Lord takes pleasure in his people.” – Psalm 149:4a (TEV) Welcome to Day 8 of our Purpose-Driven Life journey! Yesterday we discovered that everything exists for God’s glory – the ultimate reason behind all creation. Today, Rick Warren reveals the first of God’s five purposes for your life: You were planned for God’s pleasure. The Moment You Were Born The moment you were born into the world, God was there as an unseen witness, smiling at your birth. He wanted you alive, and your arrival gave Him great pleasure. God didn’t need to create you, but He chose to create you for His own enjoyment. You exist for His benefit, His glory, His purpose, and His delight. Bringing enjoyment to God, living for His pleasure, is the first purpose of your life. When you fully understand this truth, you will never again have a problem with feeling insignificant. It proves your worth. If you are that important to God, and He considers you valuable enough to keep with Him for eternity, what greater significance could you have? You are a child of God, and you bring pleasure to God like nothing else He has ever created. “Because of his love God had already decided that through Jesus Christ he would make us his children – this was his pleasure and purpose.” God’s Gift of Pleasure One of the greatest gifts God has given you is the ability to enjoy pleasure. He wired you with five senses and emotions so you can experience it. He wants you to enjoy life, not just endure it. The reason you’re able to enjoy pleasure is that God made you in His image. We often forget that God has emotions, too. He feels things very deeply. The Bible tells us that God grieves, gets jealous and angry, and feels compassion, pity, sorrow, and sympathy as well as happiness, gladness, and satisfaction. God loves, delights, gets pleasure, rejoices, enjoys, and even laughs! What Is Worship? Bringing pleasure to God is called “worship.” The Bible says: “The Lord is pleased only with those who worship him and trust his love.” Anything you do that brings pleasure to God is an act of worship. Like a diamond, worship is multifaceted. Anthropologists have noted that worship is a universal urge, hard-wired by God into the very fiber of our being – an inbuilt need to connect with God. Worship is as natural as eating or breathing. If we fail to worship God, we always find a substitute, even if it ends up being ourselves. The reason God made us with this desire is that He desires worshipers! Jesus said: “The Father seeks worshipers.” Expanding Your Understanding of Worship Depending on your religious background, you may need to expand your understanding of “worship.” You may think of: Worship can include these elements, but worship is far more than these expressions. Worship is a lifestyle. Worship Is Far More Than Music For many people, worship is just a synonym for music. They say, “At our church we have the worship first, and then the teaching.” This is a big misunderstanding. Every part of a church service is an act of worship: Actually, worship predates music. Adam worshiped in the Garden of Eden, but music isn’t mentioned until Genesis 4:21 with the birth of Jubal. If worship were just music, then all who are nonmusical could never worship. Even worse, “worship” is often misused to refer to a particular style of music. People say fast songs are “praise” while slow, intimate songs are “worship.” This is a common misuse of the term. Worship has nothing to do with the style or volume or speed of a song. God loves all kinds of music because He invented it all—fast and slow, loud and soft, old and new. You probably don’t like it all, but God does! If it is offered to God in spirit and truth, it is an act of worship. There Is No Biblical Music Style Christians often disagree over music style used in worship, passionately defending their preferred style as most biblical or God-honoring. But there is no biblical style! There are no musical notes in the Bible; we don’t even have the instruments they used in Bible times. Frankly, the music style you like best says more about you – your background and personality, than it does about God. One ethnic group’s music can sound like noise to another. But God likes variety and enjoys it all. There is no such thing as “Christian” music; there are only Christian lyrics. It is the words that make a song sacred, not the tune. There are no spiritual tunes. If I played a song for you without the words, you’d have no way of knowing if it were a “Christian” song. Worship Is Not for Your Benefit As a pastor, Rick Warren receives notes that say, “I loved the worship today. I got a lot out of it.” This is another misconception about worship. It isn’t for our benefit! We worship for God’s benefit. When we worship, our goal is to bring pleasure to God, not ourselves. If you have ever said, “I didn’t get anything out of worship today,” you worshiped for the wrong reason. Worship isn’t for you. It’s for God. Of course, most “worship” services also include elements of fellowship, edification, and evangelism, and there are benefits to worship. But we don’t worship to please ourselves. Our motive is to bring glory and pleasure to our Creator. In Isaiah 29, God complains about worship that is half-hearted and hypocritical. The people were offering God stale prayers, insincere praise, empty words, and man-made rituals without even thinking about the meaning. God’s heart is not touched by tradition in worship, but by passion and commitment. “These people come near to me with their mouth and honor me with their

“Everything comes from God alone. Everything lives by his power, and everything is for his glory.” – Romans 11:36 (LB) “The Lord has made everything for his own purposes.” – Proverbs 16:4 (NLT) Welcome to Day 7 of our Purpose-Driven Life journey! Yesterday we explored how earth is our temporary assignment and our true citizenship is in heaven. Today, Rick Warren reveals the foundational truth that unlocks everything else: It’s all for Him. The Ultimate Reality Check If you’ve been following this journey, you’ve discovered that: But WHY? What’s the point of it all? The answer is both simple and revolutionary: The ultimate goal of the universe is to show the glory of God. It is the reason for everything that exists, including you. God made it all for His glory. Without God’s glory, there would be nothing. What Is the Glory of God? Before we can live for God’s glory, we need to understand what it means. God’s glory is: God’s glory is the expression of His goodness and all His other intrinsic, eternal qualities. Where Is God’s Glory? Just look around. Everything created by God reflects His glory in some way. We see it everywhere: Creation reveals our Creator’s glory. In nature we learn that God is powerful, enjoys variety, loves beauty, is organized, wise, and creative. The Bible declares: “The heavens declare the glory of God.” God’s Glory Throughout History Throughout history, God has revealed His glory to people in different settings: His glory has been portrayed as a consuming fire, a cloud, thunder, smoke, and brilliant light. In heaven, God’s glory provides all the light needed: “The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light.” The Perfect Revelation: Jesus God’s glory is best seen in Jesus Christ. He, the Light of the world, illuminates God’s nature. Because of Jesus, we are no longer in the dark about what God is really like. The Bible says: “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory.” Jesus came to earth so we could fully understand God’s glory: “The Word became human and lived among us. We saw his glory… a glory full of grace and truth.” Two Types of Glory God’s Inherent Glory is what He possesses because He is God. It is His nature. We cannot add anything to this glory, just as it would be impossible for us to make the sun shine brighter. But we are commanded to: Why? Because God deserves it! We owe Him every honor we can possibly give. Since God made all things, He deserves all the glory. “You are worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory and honor and power. For you created everything.” The Great Failure In the entire universe, only two of God’s creations fail to bring glory to Him: All sin, at its root, is failing to give God glory. It is loving anything else more than God. Refusing to bring glory to God is prideful rebellion – the very sin that caused Satan’s fall, and ours too. “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” None of us have given God the full glory He deserves from our lives. This is the worst sin and the biggest mistake we can make. But here’s the hope: Living for God’s glory is the greatest achievement we can accomplish with our lives. God says: “They are my own people, and I created them to bring me glory,” so it ought to be the supreme goal of our lives. How Can I Bring Glory to God? Jesus told the Father: “I brought glory to you here on earth by doing everything you told me to do.” Jesus honored God by fulfilling His purpose on earth. We honor God the same way. When anything in creation fulfills its purpose, it brings glory to God. As St. Irenaeus said: “The glory of God is a human being fully alive!” Five Ways to Bring Glory to God There are many ways to bring glory to God, but they can be summarized in God’s five purposes for your life: 1. We Bring God Glory by Worshiping Him Worship is our first responsibility to God. We worship God by enjoying Him. C.S. Lewis said: “In commanding us to glorify him, God is inviting us to enjoy him.” God wants our worship motivated by love, thanksgiving, and delight – not duty. John Piper notes: “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” Worship is far more than praising, singing, and praying to God. Worship is a lifestyle of enjoying God, loving Him, and giving ourselves to be used for His purposes. When you use your life for God’s glory, everything you do can become an act of worship. 2. We Bring God Glory by Loving Other Believers When you were born again, you became part of God’s family. Following Christ includes belonging and learning to love the family of God. John wrote: “Our love for each other proves that we have gone from death to life.” Paul said: “Accept each other just as Christ has accepted you; then God will be glorified.” It’s your responsibility to learn how to love as God does, because God is love, and it honors Him. Jesus said: “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” 3. We Bring God Glory by Becoming Like Christ Once born into God’s family, He wants us to grow to spiritual maturity. What does that look like? Spiritual maturity is becoming like Jesus in the way we think, feel, and act. The more you develop Christlike character, the more you bring glory to God: “As the Spirit of the Lord works within us, we become more and more like him and reflect his glory even more.” God gave you a new life and nature

“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered, and that my life is fleeing away.” – Psalm 39:4 (NLT) “I am here on earth for just a little while.” – Psalm 119:19 (TEV) Welcome to Day 6 of our Purpose-Driven Life journey! Yesterday we explored how God sees life as a test and a trust. Today, Rick Warren completes the trinity of biblical life metaphors with a truth that will radically shift your priorities: Life on earth is a temporary assignment. The Biblical Reality of Life’s Brevity The Bible is packed with metaphors that teach about the brief, temporary, transient nature of life on earth. Life is described as: The Bible says: “For we were born but yesterday… Our days on earth are as transient as a shadow.” To make the best use of your life, you must never forget two truths: You won’t be here long, so don’t get too attached. You’re Just Visiting Planet Earth Repeatedly, the Bible compares life on earth to temporarily living in a foreign country. This is not your permanent home or final destination. You’re just passing through, just visiting earth. The Bible uses these terms to describe our brief stay: David declared: “I am but a foreigner here on earth,” and Peter explained: “If you call God your Father, live your time as temporary residents on earth.” Your Spiritual Green Card Warren uses a powerful California illustration: Many people work there while keeping citizenship with their home country. They carry a “green card” allowing them to work without being citizens. Christians should carry spiritual green cards to remind us that our citizenship is in heaven. God says His children should think differently about life from unbelievers: “All they think about is this life here on earth. But we are citizens of heaven, where the Lord Jesus Christ lives.” Real believers understand there is far more to life than just the few years we live on this planet. The Danger of Falling in Love with This World Your identity is in eternity, and your homeland is heaven. When you grasp this truth, you’ll stop worrying about “having it all” on earth. God is very blunt about the danger of living for the here and now and adopting the values, priorities, and lifestyles of the world around us. When we flirt with this world’s temptations, God calls it spiritual adultery. “You’re cheating on God. If all you want is your own way, flirting with the world every chance you get, you end up enemies of God and his way.” The Ambassador Analogy Imagine your country asked you to be an ambassador to an enemy nation. You’d need to: But suppose you became so comfortable with this foreign country that you fell in love with it, preferring it to your homeland. Your loyalty would change. Your role as ambassador would be compromised. Instead of representing your home country, you’d start acting like the enemy. You’d be a traitor. The Bible says: “We are Christ’s ambassadors.” Sadly, many Christians have betrayed their King and His kingdom. They’ve foolishly concluded that because they live on earth, it’s their home. It is not. The Clear Biblical Warning “Friends, this world is not your home, so don’t make yourselves cozy in it. Don’t indulge your ego at the expense of your soul.” God warns us not to get too attached to what’s around us because it’s temporary: “Those in frequent contact with the things of the world should make good use of them without becoming attached to them, for this world and all it contains will pass away.” Why Modern Life Makes This Harder Compared with other centuries, life has never been easier for much of the Western world. We are constantly: With all the fascinating attractions, mesmerizing media, and enjoyable experiences available today, it’s easy to forget that the pursuit of happiness is not what life is about. Only as we remember that life is a test, a trust, and a temporary assignment will the appeal of these things lose their grip on our lives. We are preparing for something even better. “The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the things we can’t see now will last forever.” Why Life on Earth Is Difficult The fact that earth is not our ultimate home explains why, as followers of Jesus, we experience: It also explains why: This is not the end of the story. The Divine Design of Dissatisfaction To keep us from becoming too attached to earth, God allows us to feel a significant amount of discontent and dissatisfaction in life – longings that will never be fulfilled on this side of eternity. We’re not completely happy here because we’re not supposed to be! Earth is not our final home; we were created for something much better. Warren illustrates this powerfully: You’ll have happy moments here, but nothing compared with what God has planned for you. How This Should Radically Alter Your Values Realizing that life on earth is just a temporary assignment should radically alter your values. Eternal values, not temporal ones, should become the deciding factors for your decisions. As C.S. Lewis observed: “All that is not eternal is eternally useless.” “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” The Fatal Mistake About God’s Goals It is a fatal mistake to assume that God’s goal for your life is material prosperity or popular success, as the world defines it. Consider the faithful who didn’t “succeed” by worldly standards: But the end of life is not the end! God’s True Hall of Fame In God’s eyes, the greatest heroes of faith are not those who achieve prosperity, success, and power in this life, but those who treat this life as a temporary assignment and serve faithfully, expecting their promised reward in eternity. “All these great

“God has… planted eternity in the human heart.” – Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NLT) “Surely God would not have created such a being as man to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.” – Abraham Lincoln Welcome to Day 4 of our Purpose-Driven Life journey! We’ve learned that life starts with God, you’re not an accident, and you need to examine what drives you. Today, Rick Warren reveals a truth that will revolutionize how you view every day: This life is not all there is, you were made to last forever. The Ultimate Reality Check Here’s a perspective that will transform everything: Life on earth is just the dress rehearsal before the real production. You will spend far more time on the other side of death- in eternity – than you will here on earth. Think about it: This life is preparation for the next. At most, you’ll live a hundred years on earth, but you’ll spend forever in eternity. As Sir Thomas Browne said, your time on earth is “but a small parenthesis in eternity.” The Eternity Instinct Ever wonder why death always seems unnatural and unfair, even though we know everyone eventually dies? You have an inborn instinct that longs for immortality. God designed you in His image to live forever. He wired your brain with the desire for eternal life because that’s exactly what you were created for. The Bible says God has “planted eternity in the human heart” – that longing you feel for something more than this temporary existence isn’t wishful thinking; it’s divine design. Your Temporary Tent vs. Your Eternal House Here’s how the Bible describes your current situation: Your earthly body is just a temporary tent – a camping arrangement, not a permanent dwelling. But God has something better planned: “When this tent we live in – our body here on earth – is torn down, God will have a house in heaven for us to live in, a home he himself has made, which will last forever.” One day your heart will stop beating. That will end your body and your time on earth, but it will not be the end of you. Your earthly body is just a temporary residence for your spirit. The Two Eternal Destinations While life on earth offers many choices, eternity offers only two: heaven or hell. Your relationship to God on earth will determine your relationship to Him in eternity: C.S. Lewis put it perfectly: “There are two kinds of people: those who say to God ‘Thy will be done’ and those to whom God says, ‘All right then, have it your way.’” Tragically, many people will endure eternity without God because they chose to live without Him here on earth. How Eternal Perspective Changes Everything When you fully comprehend that there is more to life than just here and now, you will begin to live differently. Living in light of eternity colors how you handle: Suddenly, many activities, goals, and even problems that seemed so important will appear trivial, petty, and unworthy of your attention. The closer you live to God, the smaller everything else appears. Your Values Will Change When you live with eternal perspective: Time and Money Become Sacred You use them more wisely, knowing they’re investments in eternity. Relationships and Character Trump Everything Fame, wealth, achievements, and even fun take a backseat to what truly matters. Priorities Get Reordered Keeping up with trends, fashions, and popular values just doesn’t matter as much anymore. Paul experienced this transformation: “I once thought all these things were so very important, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done.” The Consequences Are Real If your time on earth were all there is, Warren suggests you should start living it up immediately. You could forget being good and ethical since there would be no consequences. But death is not the end of you! Death is not your termination, but your transition into eternity. There are eternal consequences to everything you do on earth. Every act of your life strikes some chord that will vibrate in eternity. The Problem with Short-Term Thinking The most damaging aspect of contemporary living is short-term thinking. To make the most of your life, you must: Today is just the visible tip of the iceberg. Eternity is all the rest you don’t see underneath the surface. What Will Eternity Be Like? Honestly, our brains cannot handle the wonder and greatness of heaven. It would be like trying to describe the Internet to an ant. The Bible says: “No mere man has ever seen, heard or even imagined what wonderful things God has ready for those who love the Lord.” But God has given us glimpses: We won’t lie around on clouds with halos playing harps! One day Jesus will say: “Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” The Great Story Begins C.S. Lewis captured this beautifully in the Chronicles of Narnia: “For us this is the end of all the stories… But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world… had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read, which goes on forever and in which every chapter is better than the one before.” Preparing for the Inevitable Most people only think about eternity at funerals, and then it’s often shallow, sentimental thinking based on ignorance. You may feel it’s morbid to think about death, but actually it’s unhealthy to live in denial of death. Only a fool would go through life unprepared for what we all know will eventually happen. You need to think more about eternity, not less. Just as the nine months in your mother’s womb prepared you for life, this life is preparation for the next. Your Birthday