Radical...

I just finished a book called ‘Radical’ by David Platt. I would like to recommend it to everyone. The book is about how Jesus said His followers would leave everything, security, money, convenience, comfort, even family, for the sake of the gospel.

‘Radical’ doesn’t tell everyone to become a missionary and literally leave home to follow Christ, but to simply obey God’s call in the everyday, and to actually take up your cross daily.

God really challenged me while I was reading this book. I mean here I am, actually living on the other side of the world, living very little according to North American standards, but still, I have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, I eat every day, I have access to clean drinking water, and so I am part of the top 15% of the world for wealth.

It made me realize that although I have given up so much for the sake of the Gospel, I actually have a lot more left to give. I read Gospel For Asia’s stories of how their pastors and missionaries are starving and beaten and persecuted. The church in Africa has a huge number of people dying because of aids or starvation. There are people around the world who live in areas where hearing machine gunfire or other sounds of war are just a normal part of life. Imagine growing up in the middle of a war.

Here’s a paraphrase from ‘Radical’:
Statistically 1/3 of the world is classified as being ‘Christian’, whether religiously, socially, or politically. Likely, not all of them are actually followers of Christ. But even if we assume they are that still leaves 4.5 billion people who are going to hell.

4.5 billion

That’s a lot. Platt writes: Jesus commands us to go. He has created each of us to take the gospel 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 book ends with a challenge, called The Radical Experiment, which is to last a year. The reader is challenged to 5 things:

1.       To pray for the entire world

2.       Read through the entire Word

3.       Sacrifice your money for a specific purpose (not give, but sacrifice)

4.       Spend your time in another context (to go on a short term missions trip, etc)

5.       Commit your life to a multiplying community (in other words, to build disciples)

I don’t necessarily recommend Nickleback as good, edifying & uplifting music, but I want to quote you something from one of their songs:

One more depending on a prayer and we all look away/People pretending everywhere , it’s just another day/There’s bullets flying through the air and  we still carry on/We watch it happen over there and we just turn it off//We must stand together...Hand in hand forever/That’s when we all win//They tell us everything’s alright and we just go along/How can we fall asleep at night, when something’s clearly wrong/When we could feed a starving world with what we throw away/But all we serve are empty words that always taste the same// We must stand together...Hand in hand forever/That’s when we all win

If a secular band can see the need for this, the value for community, the need to share wealth, the need for war to end, the need for physical and emotional healing in people, the need for us to do something...then what are we doing as the church? What are we doing as the people who are supposed to know of true freedom, true peace, true salvation?

One of my friends from Australia sent me the book. On the inside cover she wrote this:

Live Radical lives normally, as in, live your everyday life radically. After all, we serve a radical Saviour!

So yeah, I recommend that you read ‘Radical’ but if you are too busy to read another book, I want to challenge you just to read the Bible and live out what you find written in the gospels. It’s my challenge to myself as well, I want to take up my cross and die daily...