A few insights that stuck out to me from David Platt's book "Radical".
We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.
Based on what we have heard from Jesus in the gospels, we would have to agree that the cost of discipleship is great. But I wonder if the cost of nondiscipleship is even greater. The price is certainly high for people who don't know Christ and who live in a world where Christians shrink back from self-denying faith and settle into self-indulging faith. While Christians choose to spend their lives fulfilling the American dream instead of giving their lives to proclaiming the kingdom of God, literally billions in need of the gospel remain in the dark.
Yes, you are abandoning everything you have, but you are also gaining more than you could have any other way. So with joy- oh what joy!- you sell it all, you abandon it all. Why? Because you have found something worth losing everything else for. This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something- someone- worth losing everything for.
This is how Gos works. He puts people in positions where they are desperate for his power, and then he shows his provision in ways that display his greatness.
God delights in using ordinary Christians who come to the end of the,selves and choose to trust in his extraoridinary provision. He stands ready to allocate his power o all who are radically dependent on him and radically devoted to making much of him.
Certainly few of us would be so bold as to say we "would just as soon God annihilate all those people and send them to hell", but if we do not take the gospel to them, isn't that where they will go?
[Jesus] has created each of us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth, and I propose that anything less than radical devotion to this purpose is unbiblical Christianity.
The message of biblical Christianity is not "God loves me, period", as if we were the object of our own faith. The message of biblical Christianity is "God loves me so that I might make him- his ways, his salvation, his glory, and his greatness- known among all nations. Now God is the object of our faith, and Christianity centers around him. We are not the end of the gospel; God is.
But where in the Bible is missions ever identified as an optional program in the church? We have just seen that we were all created by God, saved from our sins, and blessed by God to make his glory known in all the world. Indeed, Jesus himself has not merely called us to goto all nations; he has created us and commanded us to go to all nations.
But what if we don't need to sit back and wait for a calling to foreign missions? What if the very reason we have breath is because we have been saved for a global mission? And what if anything less than passionate involvement in global mission is actually selling God short by frustrating the very purpose for which he created us?
Making disciples is not an easy process. It is trying. It is messy. It is slow, tedious, even painful at times. It is all thses things because it is relational. Jesus has no given us an effortless step-by-step formula for impacting nations for glory. He has given us people, and he has said, "Live for them. Love them, serve them, and lead them. Lead them to follow me. In the process you will multiply the gospel to the ends of the earth."
Disciple making is not about a program or an event but about a relationship. As we share the gospel, we impart life, and this is the essence of making disciples. Sharing the life of Christ.
If the Son of God thought it necessary to focus his life on a small group of men, we are fooling ourselves to think we can mass-produce disciples today. God's design for taking the gospel into the world is a slow, intentional, simple process that involves every one of his people sacrificing every facet of their lives to multiply the life of Christ.
So what is the difference between someone who willfully indulges in sexual pleasures while ignoring the Bible on moral purity and someone who willfully indulges in the selfish pursuit of more and more material possessions while ignoring the Bible on caring for the poor? The difference is that one involves a social taboo in the church and the other involves a social norm in the church.
If our lives do not reflect radical compassion for the poor, there is reason to question just how effective we will be in declaring the glory of Christ to the ends of the earth. More pointedly, if our lives do noot reflect radical compassion for the poor, there is reason to wonder if Christ is really in us at all.
The logic that says, "I can't do everything so I won't do anything" is straight from hell.
Orphans are easier to ignore bbefore you know their names. They are easier to ignore before you see their faces. It is easier to pretend they're not real before you hold them in your arms. But once you do, everything changes.
God would not be just in condemning people for not believing in a Savior they never heard of. But don't forget; people are not ultimately condemned for not believing in Jesus. They are ultimately comdemned for rejecting God.
In other words, for these 1.5 billion unreached and unengaged peoples, almost every individual within them is born, lives, and dies without ever hearing the gospel. Even worse, no one is currently doing anything to change their situation. No one.
Soon thereafter he found himself in another remote village with people who had never heard the gospel... one man went into his small shop and reappeared moments later with a classic red Coke cam\n.. Immediately, it hit home with my friend. A soft-drink company in Atlanta had done a better job getting brown sugar water to these people than the church of Jesus Christ had done in getting the gospel to them.
This is a cause worth living for. It is a cause worth dying for. It is a cause worthy of moving urgently on. We have the gospel of Christ in us, and we do not have time to waste. Some wonder if it is unfair for God to allow so many to have no knowledge of the gospel. But there is no unjustice in God. The injustice lies in Christians who possess the gospel and refuse to give their lives in making it known among those who haven't heard. That is unfair.
The reality is that if we really become like Jesus, the world will hate us. Why? Because it hated him.
To everyone wanting a safe, untroubled, comfortable life free from danger, stay away from Jesus. The danger in our lives will always increase in proportion to the depth of our relationship with Christ.
Satan's strategy to stop God's people through the stoning of Stephen only served to accomplish God's purpose through the scattering of the church.
We have nothing to fear, for God is soverign.
Your life is free to be radical when you see death as a reward.
If you and I ever hope to free our lives from worldly desires, worldly thinking, worldly pleasures, worldly dreamms, worldly ideals, worldly values, worldly ambitions, and worldly acclaim, then we must focus our lives on another world.
While exploring post-undergrad options, a friend stumbled upon a sweet program that intertwines grad school and the peace corps. To be completely honest, it was the first option that I found that actually excited me.
