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PlaRadi10-06-089 |
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Radical Taking
Back Your Faith from the American Dream David
Platt Multnomah
Books, 2010, 230 pp. ISBN 978-1-60142-221-7 |
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David Platt is the thirty-something pastor of The
Church at Brook Hills, a 4000-member congregation in Birmingham. David contrasts what Jesus said disciples
would be and do with what we tend to be and do as churches and Christians
living in a North American culture. Exploring
the biblical gospel, we will discover that “our life is found in giving
ourselves for the sake of others in the church, among the lost, and among the
poor.” (21) Chapter One. Someone Worth
Losing Everything For - What Radical Abandonment to
Jesus Really Means “Jesus apparently wasn’t interested in marketing
himself to the masses. His invitations
to potential followers were clearly more costly than the crowds were ready to
accept, and he seemed to be ok with that.” (2) “Jesus actually spurned the things that my
church culture said were most important.”
(2) “I am
convinced that we as Christ followers in American churches have embraced
values and ideas that are not only unbiblical but that actually contradict
the gospel we claim to believe.” (3) “…somewhere
along the way we had missed what is radical about our faith and replaced it
with what is comfortable. We were
settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when
the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves.”
(7) “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.” (14) “For the sake of more than a billion people today
who have yet to even hear the gospel, I want to risk it all. For the sake of twenty-six thousand
children who will die today of starvation or a preventable disease, I want to
risk it all. …” (19) Chapter Two. Too Hungry for
Words - Discovering the Truth and Beauty of the Gospel “Fundamentally, the gospel is the revelation of
who God is, who we are, and how we can be reconciled to him.” “…we desperately need to explore how much
of our understanding of the gospel is American and how much is biblical.”
(28) “Everything in all creation responds in obedience
to the Creator…until we get to you and me.
We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, ‘No.’” (31) “Biblical proclamation of the gospel beckons us
to a much different response and leads us down a much different road. Here the gospel demands and enables us to
turn from our sin, to take up our cross, to die to ourselves, and to follow
Jesus. These are the terms and phrases
we see in the Bible. … Jesus is no longer one to be accepted or invited in
but one who is infinitely worthy of our immediate and total surrender.” (39) Chapter Three. Beginning at the End of Ourselves - The Importance of Relying on God’s Power “The question for us, then, is whether we trust
in his power. And the problem for us
is that in our culture we are tempted at every turn to trust in our own power
instead.” (45) “The dangerous assumption
we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our
own ability.” “Even more important is
the subtly fatal goal we will achieve…to our own glory.” (46)
“This is how God works. He puts his people in positions where they
are desperate for his power, and then he shows his provision in ways that
display his greatness. … I am
concerned that all of us—pastors and church members in our culture—have blindly
embraced an American dream mentality that emphasizes our abilities and exalts
our names in the ways we do church. … We Christians are living out the
American dream in the context of our communities of faith.”(48-50) “What if God in all his might is simply waiting
to show his power in a people who turn their backs on a philosophy of life
that exalts their supposed ability to do anything they want and who instead
confess their desperate need for him?” (54) “This is the great promise of God in prayer. We ask God for gifts in prayer, and he
gives us the Giver. We ask God for
supply, and he gives us the Source. We
ask God for money, and he doesn’t give us cash; instead, so to speak, he
gives us the bank!” (58) “…the
resources of heaven are ready and waiting for the people of God who desire to
make much of him in this world.” (59) “It is the way of Christ. Instead of asserting ourselves, we crucify
ourselves. Instead of imagining all the
things we can accomplish, we ask God to do what only he can accomplish.” (60) Chapter Four. The Great Why of
God - God’s Global Purpose from the Beginning Till Today “Meanwhile, Jesus commands us to go. He 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.” (64) In Genesis 1, God created human beings in his
image. He created them for fellowship
but he also commanded them to multiply and fill the earth, to extend his
glory to the ends of the earth. In
every genre of biblical literature and every stage of biblical history, God
is pouring out his grace on his people for the sake of his glory among all peoples. (65) “The Egyptians and all the nations after them
knew that he is the Lord and he saves his people. God blessed his people in a miraculous way
so that his salvation would be made known among all peoples.” (66) “God goes so far as to say that when he acts
among his people, he doesn’t show his grace, mercy, and justice for their
sake but for the sake of his own holy name among the nations.” (Ezekiel
36:22-23) (68) “God blesses his people
with extravagant grace so they might extend his extravagant glory to all
peoples on the earth. This basic,
fundamental truth permeates Scripture from beginning to end.” (79) “‘God loves me’ is not the essence of biblical
Christianity. … ‘God loves me, so that I might make him—his ways, his salvation,
his glory, and his greatness—known among all nations.’ … We are not the end of the gospel; God is …
We have received salvation so that his name will be proclaimed in all
nations. God loves us for his sake in
the world.” “To disconnect God’s blessing from God’s global purpose is to
spiral downward into an unbiblical, self-saturated Christianity that misses
the point of God’s grace.” (70-71) “But where in the Bible is missions ever
identified as an optional program in the church?” “Indeed, Jesus himself has not merely
called us to go to all nations; he has created us and commanded us to go to
all nations.” (72) “We have unnecessarily (and unbiblically)
drawn a line of distinction, assigning the obligations of Christianity to a few while keeping the privileges of Christianity for us all.”
(73) What about the needs here? “They are smoke screens because most of us
really are not very concerned about the needs right around us.” (75) “As we have seen all over Scripture, God’s
heart is for the world. So when we say
we have a heart of the United States, we are admitting that we have a meager
5 percent of God’s heart, and we are proud of it.” “Certainly there are great needs here. But must we insist on dividing the Great
Commission into an either-or proposition? …shouldn’t every Christian’s heart
be ultimately consumed with how we can make God’s glory known in all the world?”
(76) “Because from cover to cover the Bible teaches that
all the church…is created to reflect all the glory of God to all the world.”
(77) Chapter Five. The Multiplying
Community - How All of Us Join Together to Fulfill God’s
Purpose “But Jesus is so different from us. … his
revolution would not revolve around the masses or the multitudes. Instead it would revolve around a few men. …who
would think as he did, love as he did, see as he did, teach as he did, and
serve as he did. All he needed was to
revolutionize the hearts of a few, and
they would impact the world.” (88) He told the disciples, ‘Now you go out and do the
same with others.’ Any Christian can
do this. Jesus says every Christian
must to this. (90) When we read about Jesus teaching, we mustn’t mentally
jump to a classroom. “On the contrary,
the world was a perpetual classroom for Jesus and his disciples, providing
opportunities for instruction at every moment.” (99) When there is teaching we must jump from our
self-centered mindset (What can I get out of this?) to ask, “How can I listen to his Word so that I am
equipped to teach this Word to others?”
(102) “Making disciples by
going, baptizing, and teaching people the Word of Christ and enabling them to
do the same thing in other people’s lives—this is the plan God has for each
of us to impact nations for the glory of Christ.” (103) “Whereas disinfecting Christians involves
isolating them and teaching them to be good, discipling Christians involves
propelling Christians into the world to risk their lives for the sake of
others.” (105) Chapter Six. How Much is Enough? - American
Wealth and a World of Poverty “Today more than a billion people in the world
live and die in desperate poverty.
They attempt to survive on less than a dollar per day.” (108) “If I am going to address urgent spiritual
need by sharing the gospel of Christ or building up the body of Christ around
the world, then I cannot overlook dire physical need in the process.” (109) “Caring for the poor is one natural overflow and
a necessary evidence of the presence of Christ in our hearts. If there is no sign of caring for the poor
in our lives, then there is reason to at least question whether Christ is in
our hearts.” (110) “I wonder if followers of Christ 150 years from
now will look back at Christians in America today and ask, ‘How could they
live in such big houses? How could
they drive such nice cars and wear such nice clothes? How could they live in such affluence while
thousands of children were dying because they didn’t have food and
water? How could they go on with their
lives as though the billions of poor didn’t even exist?’” (111) In the story of Lazarus and the rich man, “I am
much like the rich man, and the church I lead looks a lot like him too. …
Meanwhile, the poor man is outside our gate.” (115) We find no verse in the New Testament where
God’s people are told to build a majestic place of worship. (117)
What are our priorities? In the
U.S. we spend more than $10 billion each year on church buildings. Church real estate is worth more than $230
billion. (118) “Our
possessions can be deadly. They can be
subtly deadly.” “We are fine with
thinking of affluence, comfort, and material possessions as blessings. But they cannot be barriers. We think the way the world thinks—that wealth
is always to our advantage. But Jesus
is saying the exact opposite. He is
saying that wealth can be a dangerous obstacle.” (125) “Why not begin operating under the idea that God
has given us excess, not so we could have
more, but so we could give more?”
(127) “What would
happen…if we stopped asking how much we could spare and started asking how
much it was going to take?” (130) “…the war against materialism in our hearts is exactly
that: a war. It is a constant battle
to resist the temptation to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, and to
live more comfortably.” (136) “Ultimately,
I don’t want to miss eternal treasure because I settle for earthly trinkets.”
(138) Chapter Seven. There is No Plan
B - Why Going is Urgent, Not Optional [Apologetic against universalism] Americans believe all men are created equal and
we tend to extrapolate that to faith, that all religious views are
equal. There are two errors of
universalism: 1) believing that one
doesn’t have to trust Christ for salvation (intellectual universalism) and 2)
living as if people will be okay in
the end without Christ (practical universalism). (142) “If people are dying and going to hell without
ever even knowing there is a gospel, then we clearly have no time to waste
our lives on an American dream.” (143) The author’s exposition of Romans demonstrates
that all are guilty before God, are condemned for rejecting God, and need God’s
way of salvation that comes through faith in Christ—which is the church’s
responsibility. “This is God’s
plan. He sends servants, and his
servants preach.” (155) “So there you
have it—the simple divine plan for taking the gospel to all peoples of the
world. God sends his servants. ® His servants preach. ®People hear. ® Hearers believe. ® Believers call. ®Everyone who calls is saved.” (156) The one potential breakdown is when the servants
of God do not preach the gospel to all peoples. (156) “A soft-drink company in Atlanta has done a
better job getting brown sugar water to these people than the church of Jesus
Christ has done in getting the gospel to them.” (159) “This is a case worth living for. It is a cause worth dying for. … Some
wonder if it is unfair for God to allow so many to have no knowledge of the
gospel. But there is no injustice in
God. The injustice lies in Christians
who possess the gospel and refuse to give their lives to making it known
among those who haven’t heard. That is
unfair.” (159) “In the middle of a Christian culture asking, ‘How
do I find God’s will for my life?’ I bring good news. His will is not lost.” “The question, therefore is not ‘Can we
find God’s will?’ The question is ‘Will we obey God’s will?’” (160) Chapter Eight. Living When
Dying is Gain - The Risk and Reward of the Radical Life “The reward of the American dream is safety,
security, and success found in more comfort, better stuff, and greater
prosperity. But the reward of Christ
trumps all these things and beckons us to live for an eternal safety,
security, and satisfaction that far outweigh everything this world has to
offer us.” (171-72) “The key is realizing—and believing—that this
world is not your home. …we must focus our lives on another world, …a
heavenly one. … If your life or my life is going to count on earth, we must
start by concentrating on heaven.”
(179) “This, we remember, is the great reward of the
gospel: God himself. When we risk our
lives to run after Christ, we discover the safety that is found only in his
sovereignty, the security that is found only in his love, and the
satisfaction that is found only in his presence. This is the eternally great reward, and we
would be foolish to settle for anything less.” (181) Chapter Nine. The Radical
Experiment - One Year to a Life Turned Upside Down The challenge is for one year:
Jesus told his disciples to ask the Lord of the
harvest to send out workers (Mt 9:36-38).
“When Jesus looked at the harassed and helpless multitudes, apparently
his concern was not that the lost would not come to the Father. Instead his concern was that his followers
would not go to the lost.” (187) “When God chose to bring salvation to you and me,
he did not send gold or silver, cash or check. He sent himself—the Son.” “If we are going to accomplish the global
purpose of God, it will not be primarily through giving our money, as
important as that is. It will happen
primarily through giving ourselves.”
(198) “Going starts where we live, but it doesn’t stop
there…. If there are a billion people
who have never heard the gospel and billions of others who still have not
received the gospel, then we have an obligation to go to them. This is not an option. This is a command, not a calling. What is a matter of calling is where we
will go and how long we will stay. We
will not all go to the same places, and we will not all stay the same length
of time. But it is clearly the will of
God for us to take the gospel to the nations.” (200)
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