“Was I going to obey Jesus?â€� “My biggest fear, even now, is that I will hear Jesus’ words and walk away, content to settle for less than radical obedience to him.â€� How often in our lives do we settle for what is comfortable, predictable, expected? Who am I to claim that I want to live a life like Jesus and yet not truly abandon myself and my own selfish desires? “…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.â€� I don’t want to live a comfortable faith; I want to live a radical faith! What’s comfortable? Routine, the Sunday routine is comfortable. Playing with the babies in Sunday school is comfortable. Sitting through service listening to the Preacher is comfortable. Listening to bible verses in AWANAS on Sunday night is comfortable. What’s radical? Caring for orphans in Romania is radical. Preaching with ten minutes notice in Kenya, led by the Spirit, is radical. Sharing bible verses with women trapped in Human Trafficking in Malaysia is radical. Not everyone is given the same radical calling but everyone is called to move beyond comfortable. Everyone who follows Jesus is called to abandon everything … “… if you follow him, you abandon everything — your needs, your desires, even your family. Give up everything you have, carry a cross, and hate your family. This sounds a lot different than ‘Admit, believe, confess, and pray a prayer after me.’â€� Sometimes we treat the Salvation prayer as the end all, be all of our faith. We have a Christian check list — read my bible, pray, go to church, drop my offering in the plate, join a committee to be an active member of church, do this, and do that. Where is our heart in those activities, are we truly absorbing and living out every word we read, do we mean every word that we pray, do we go to church to worship Christ or to make a spectacle of ourselves, showing how good of a Christian we are? We need to check our intentions more than our actions — not everything “Christianâ€� we do is following God’s calling for our lives. We can do the familiar, but what if God calls us to the unexpected, the unsafe, the radical? Are we bold enough to heed the command God gave to his disciples many years ago? “‘Follow me’ — contained radical implications for their lives. Jesus was calling them to abandon their comforts, all that was familiar to them and natural for them… Jesus was calling them to abandon their careers … their possessions… their family and their friends… Ultimately, Jesus was calling them to abandon themselves. They were leaving certainty for uncertainty, safety for danger, self-preservation for self-denunciation.â€� More than radical this seems utterly crazy … leave everything you know, no looking back, follow him. Follow him wherever he leads, abandon everything comfortable and familiar and GO. Following Jesus is not for the faint of heart, there is no way to partially follow, you are either obeying God or disobeying God — there is no in between. Where do you stand? Are you settling for the comforts of this world or are you willing to give it all up, every last thing to follow God. What if we weren’t just talking about that physical stuff that is excess in our life, what if we are called to give up the people most dear to us? What if we are called to give up our attitudes, our mindsets, and our behaviors? What about our life — are we willing to risk our lives to follow Jesus? In China there are underground churches meeting everyday propelling the Gospel to a nation where sharing your faith and worshipping is forbidden. Pastors, Parents, and Youth are risking their lives, not only to hear the Word of God, but to share the Word of God. That is radical … “I have told my family that I will likely never come back home. I am going to hard places to make the gospel known, and it is possible that I will lose my life in the process.â€�
This is the beginning of “The Radical Series” aka my interaction with this new book I started, Radical, by David Platt – I will be going through chapter by chapter pulling out the passages that stand out (quoted below) and providing my commentary – questions, observations, and personal experiences. Through this I hope your heart is stirred to live a life for Jesus radically and that you can see my heart and passion for this worldwide mission trip that I pray you will invest in prayerfully and/or financially as you partner with me, and as I seek a life that is completely RADICAL…
*What Radical Abandonment to Jesus Really Means*
I have been called to live a life of abandon, to follow Jesus, radically …
To Be Continued …
