This is the continuation of “The Radical Series” aka my interaction with this new book I started back in January (Hopefully for the remainder of this series it won’t take 3 months between each chapter, haha!), 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…
If you haven’t read my post on Chapter One: Someone worth Losing Everything For, please click here for Part 1 and here for Part 2!
*Discovering The Truth And Beauty Of The Gospel*
“God’s Word is enough for millions of believers who gather in house churches … His Word is enough for millions of other believers who huddle in African jungles, South American rain forests, and Middle Eastern cities. But is His Word enough for us?�
“What is it about God’s Word that creates a hunger to hear more? And not just to hear the Word but to long for it, study it, memorize it, and follow it? What causes followers of Christ around the world literally to risk their lives in order to know it?�
Are you truly passionate about reading the Word of God? Not just gleaning the words but truly internalizing the message of the Bible, the beautiful story of God’s love for His people. Sometimes I struggle with finding this passion. Growing up with the Bible being completely accessible and hearing all the stories time and time again has unfortunately created complacency. You know that been there, read that mentality … that is sometimes my mindset – that hunger just isn’t there.
When did the Gospel become less impressive? When did the fact that Jesus bore my sins on the Cross, suffering – separated from His perfect home and His perfect father – become something normal? Like a child, I find myself feeling entitled to this life, “Yeah God, you sent your Son to die for me, but I mean you knew you were going to do that, and I mean it’s really cool and all but I already know what you did, and I already know of the stories in the Bible, so now others need to know about you, I’m good.â€� No, No, No. When did the Gospel become any less awe inspiring? When did the Gospel become any less important to me? When did it become acceptable for me to no longer hunger for the Word? How can I convey to others the importance of Jesus if I have lessened my desire to remain filled up on Him?
“Fundamentally, the gospel is the revelation of who God is, who we are, and how we can be reconciled to him. Yet in the American Dream, where self reigns as king (or queen), we have a dangerous tendency to misunderstand, minimize, and even manipulate the gospel in order to accommodate our assumptions and our desires.�
If we truly look into the Word, and strive to see who God is then we wouldn’t be able to make Him any less than the amazing, awe inspiring, wonderful lover of our souls. We would truly desire to love him with our whole hearts, 100% of the time – there wouldn’t be part time worship and part time adoration, but a full time hunger for the Lord. Unfortunately though,
“We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in His Word, we might discover that he evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him.�
Who We Really Are:
“The gospel confronts us with the hopelessness of our sinful condition. But we don’t like what we see of ourselves in the gospel, so we shrink back from it. We live in a land of self-improvement. Certainly there are steps we can take to make ourselves better. So we modify what the gospel says about us.�
Let’s be honest, who hasn’t bought a self-help book, gleaned a self-help article, or watched a self-help special on TV – if you answered No, then you have found another way to try and improve yourself. All of us have sought non-Godly ways and some point in our life to minimize how truly hopeless we are in our present state. Without Christ, there is no formula that could ever come close to improving the condition of our lives. These days we even try and turn salvation into a cookie cutter formula where we are still in control, picking and choosing when we will be “saved.â€� Salvation has no set time or place in our life, we can’t come to Christ on our own terms, He has laid out the straight and narrow path and in this the modern-day gospel drastically differs from the biblical gospel.
“We already have a fairly high view of our morality … The modern-day gospel says, ‘God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.’ Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, ‘You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, and in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that you need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore, you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do.’�
What (or Whom) We Really Need:
“This is the gospel. The just and loving Creator of the universe has looked upon hopelessly sinful people and sent his Son, God in the flesh, to bear his wrath against sin on the cross and to show his power over sin in the Resurrection so that all who trust in Him will be reconciled to God forever.�
