Rick Warren, AIDS and Urbana
Pastor and author Rick Warren will be speaking at Urbana 06 in St. Louis on Saturday night, December 30, 2006, focusing on how our lifestyle reflects our calling as followers of Jesus. He outlines some of the ways he’s going to address that topic in an interview now appearing at www.urbana.org:
We’re going to have to shift from self-centeredness to God-centeredness. The very first line of Purpose-Driven Life is, “It’s not about you.” That’s a pretty counter-cultural statement, when everything in society says “It’s all about you.” We need to ask ourselves, “What could God do through me if I were dead to my own desires, and alive and totally committed to his purposes for my life and for the world?” That’s the first shift: from self-centeredness to God-centeredness.
Another shift would be from local orientation to global orientation. That is, God has a place for your life that is bigger than simply your own community. We have to think bigger than we ever have before. God says, “Ask of me and I’ll give you the nations.” In Acts 1:8 he says, Jerusalem, Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world—you’ll go to all of these, not just one. You’ll go to Jerusalem and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the world. This is the first generation that has the option of literally being world-class Christians. Because of technology and the internet and transportation, you can go anywhere in the world within 24 hours. No other generation could do that. If you don’t believe that, just ask any travel agent. Say, “I want to be on the top of a mountain in Nepal,” and in 24 hours they’ll have you there. So we shift from local to global.
Another shift would be from temporal values—temporary values—to eternal ones. What I mean by that is, to not be distracted by things. The greatest things in life aren’t things. The Bible says, the thing you should want most is God’s Kingdom: “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” and don’t worry about what you’re missing. You’re going to find all you need if you make him your primary concern. When you start talking about the eternal destiny of millions of people, all of a sudden a lot of things that have seemed important don’t seem all that important anymore. We have to help people realize that their net worth is not their self worth. They’re two different issues. Their values are different from their valuables. Things like that. So moving away from the idea that life is about the acquisition of things—which it’s not: Jesus said “a man’s life consists not of the abundance of things that he possesses. That’s a shift—from temporary values to eternal values.
Another one might be shifting our thinking from security to service. Jesus said over and over again, that only those who give away their lives for my sake, and for the sake of the good news, will ever know what it means to really live. Whatever it is that stands in the way of you fulfilling your mission in life—you need to get rid of it. Your security has to be in something that can’t be taken away from you. Everything can be taken away, except your relationship with God. You can lose your family, you can lose your job, you can lose your health, you can lose your wealth, your money and all of that. That’s a shift from security to service, and along with that, let me give you one more.
The shift from comfort to sacrifice. Being willing to do for the truth what cults are willing to do for a lie. We need to shift our thinking, saying life is not about comfort. It’s not. We’re going to have trillions of years in heaven to enjoy comfort. Life here is about character. It’s about service—serving God by serving others. That’s why the Bible tells us, give every part of yourself to be tools in the hands of God. Romans 12:1-2 says, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice.”
The rest of the interview with Rick Warren can be found at http://www.urbana.org/_articles.cfm?RecordId=1020.
The impact of the ministry of Rick Warren on a church in Rwanda is reported in the Washington Times
A story on the Missions Through the Lens of AIDS track at Urbana 06 is also online at urbana.org.
Urbana.org is interviewing other Urbana plenary speakers, such as Ray Bakke.