Called to Die

I was privileged to receive a free copy of this book for review from WaterBrook Multnomah. The books is a quick read at only 120 pages long and about half as tall as a normal book. It’s barley larget than a deck of cards! It could be read easily in one day if you have the time to dedicate. It is, however, a very thought-provoking book, so it may take you longer to read because of that.

The overarching principle of the book, what he calls The Treasure Principle, is this: you can’t take it with you – but you can send it on ahead.

The book starts out with a personal story of how Randy Alcorn came to personally experience these principles. After participating in a peacful protest at an abortion clinic, Alcorn was sued by the clinic and was ordered to pay millions of dollars. After refusing to obey the order because he didn’t want his money to pay for the murder of children, he was forced to resign his position as pastor of a large church because his wages would be garnished. He took a minimum wage job so as to never pay the immoral judgment against him.

Without giving away the book for those that want the surprise, the rest of the book is full of stories on how he has learned these principles the hard way. The book is filled with several key principles that support his main idea stated above. The last chapter is dedicated to a series of questions for us to ask God about our finances and how we are handling God’s money. I found these really helpful.

Would I recommend this book: Yes. This is a solid read for anyone wanting to read about Biblical stewardship. While I personally didn’t learn much new from this book, it was nonetheless a refreshing read and an encouragement on things I already know and try to practice.

You can get a copy of the book for about eight bucks over at Christianbook.com. You can probably find it dirt cheap on half.com as this isn’t a book I’d keep on my shelf to read again. It’s a good read once, but not something I’d pick up again. I think many will feel the same way and want to sell their copy. I’ll only keep my copy to use to loan to others since I’m a pastor. Nonetheless a good read and worthwhile if you get a chance.

David Platt’s first book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, has already touched the lives of countless numbers of people. I personally have read through the book twice and led a group of close to thirty adults through it on a Sunday evening. I’ve seen firsthand the power that this book has as the people of God allow God’s Word to speak to them through the exhortations in this book.

But as helpful as Radical has been to me and many others, I am still left with far more questions than I have answers to at the end of reading it. On April 19, 2011, David Platt will release his next book, Radical Together: Unleashing the People of God for the Purpose of God. I have read an advance reading copy of this book thanks to the wonderful folks at Waterbook-Multnomah Press. I would highly recommend getting this book as a great follow-up to where Radical left off.

In the first Radical book, Platt spoke to us as individuals. Now in Radical Together, Platt speaks to us as a group of believers – the church. I must warn you, however. If you are looking for a quick fix, practical step-by-step guide to implementing the claims of Radical in your church, you will be sorely disappointed by reading this! Because our God is unique and works differently in my church than He does yours, there is no cookie-cutter approach to ministry that will work. Instead, Radical Together poses a series of six ideas – six needed correctives in the American church that can change the way we “do” church if we’ll allow God to speak to us as we study God’s Word through this book.

After all, what is a church anyway? On page 4, Platt gives one of the best summary statements of the church I’ve ever seen. “A church is a community of individuals who have lost their lives to follow Christ.” If we truly are following Christ, we no longer have the right to run the show – in our lives or in His church! These six needed correctives are really six exhortations that can help us turn our churches around to being biblically-based rather than man-centered like so many are today. Let’s look at these six ideas briefly.

1. The Tyranny of the Good. In this chapter, Platt asks some tough questions. I can readily identify with “Mark”, whose story Platt shares at the beginning of the chapter. I too have served on more committees than I can imagine, held more positions than one person probably should have and been there, done that with just about everything in the church. I was a deacon years ago, I’ve been a pastor for several years and now I’m holding a position in our local Baptist Association where I’m the leader of the Association and am sort of the pastor’s pastor. I love the call that God has given to me, but with all the busyness of everything, it’s easy to focus on certain tasks that need to be done rather than make disciples. I can get so caught-up in the “good” that I forget all about the one task that is the “best” – making disciples. Platt puts it like this on page 3, “We must be willing to sacrifice good things in the church in order to experience the great things of God.” Are we willing to put everything in our church on the table and allow God to get rid of those things that are solely focused on us and aren’t fulfilling His mission? Are we willing to do that?

2. The Misunderstood Gospel. Chapter two doesn’t lighten up any! But I really appreciate this chapter. It’s very easy to misunderstand what it means to be a radical follower of Christ. One could easily read the first book and come away with the idea that we just need to do more in order to be pleasing to God. But that’s just not the case at all. This chapter is a great corrective to those that are trying to be radical out of guilt. Platt presents the idea that we can’t do anything to please God apart from faith in Christ. But that the same faith that saves us from work, saves us to work! In other words, we aren’t motivated to care for the poor and share the Word with the lost out of guilt.  We are motivated by the very Gospel which saved us!

3. God Is Saying Something.  I really think this is my favorite chapter of the book. Being in the Southern Baptist faith tradition, we place a lot of prominence on the Word. But I wonder if it’s nothing more than symbolic allegiance for some people. As Platt says on page 49, “It’s not necessarily that we don’t think Bible teaching is important. We just don’t believe it’s enough.” If we really believe the Word, then what God says we will put into action in our lives and into the lives of our churches! God’s Word is enough! Just knowing that God has spoken it ought to be enough for us and yet, how often we fight against Him. Platt puts it this way on page 44, “God has designed us to depend on His Word to lead His people in ways that are utterly disproportionate to who we are.” In other words, fancy speech and guilt trips don’t really motivate people to have Kingdom impact. The Word does the real work! Are we willing to let it? If the drums, guitars and praise band were gone and there were no large stage with the best projection system money could buy with all the right motion backgrounds – if all that were gone and we just had God’s man preaching God’s Word to us, would that be enough? It’s enough for millions of believers in the persecuted church and God moves mightily among them. Is it enough for us? God help us to make our allegiance to Him more than just symbolic!

4. The Genius of Wrong. This chapter is all about how God uses people that the world would think makes no sense to use – like me in other words! The thrust of this chapter is that the focus of God is on people, not programs. Church was never designed to be an attractional system where we have a great band and a great speaker and people are encouraged not to share their faith, but to just let the professionals handle it – just get them to the show and we’ll take it from there. I’ve seen far too many churches like this and I thank God the church I attend isn’t one of them. I’d leave for somewhere else if it were! Instead, the biblical design is that we as believers are sent out into the community to serve the world. The focus is on people, not on programs or places. This is a much needed corrective to many churches today. Platt asks a great question on page 68 that we all need to answer: “Imagine that your church had no building or facilities whatsoever. Could you still make disciples?”

5. Our Unmistakable Task. I love this chapter! The subtitle says it all: “We are living – and longing – for the end of the world.” So true. Our focus as believers is not on the temporal, but on the eternal. Platt goes into great depth with Matthew 24:14 where Jesus says the world will not end until the Gospel has been preached to all people groups. So our question should be this: are we really longing for His return? If we are, then global disciple-making of all of the unreached people groups must be top priority!

6. The God Who Exalts God. This is one of the most refreshing chapters in the book. We really are selfless followers of a very self-centered God! And that’s His design. God alone is worthy of all our worship. We can either waste our lives on things that may seem good in the church or we can spend our lives on what really counts in eternity. We will exalt ourselves by all of our programs that revolve around us? Will we exalt ourselves as we sip our lattes and enjoy the show the band is putting on? Or will we sacrifice these things on the altar and become radically obedient to the mission? Platt also spends a good deal of time discussing how the seeker-sensitive movement is a joke. God alone is the only real seeker since “no one seeks after God” according to Romans 3. If we are going to be sensitive to someone, let it be the Holy Spirit since He is the only true Seeker!

Overall this is a really good read and I would highly recommend this to every believer who is really seeking to follow the Christ revealed to us in the Bible. The book goes on sale on April 19, 2011 and you can get a copy for about ten bucks at most retailers. I’d recommend ordering an advance copy soon, as you’ll be hard pressed to find it when it comes out because it’s so highly anticipated.

We were created for a purpose much greater than a Christian spin on the American Dream. That’s the main premise behind Dr. David Platt’s book called Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream.  Spanning well over 200 pages of soul-searching material, Radical invites us to examine what would happen in our lives if we started living in a way that is upside down from the rest of the world – utterly abandoning everything else for the global purpose of God in our lives.

While the title of the book is Radical, what we find from Scripture is that radical abandonment of our lives to the global purpose of God is really not radical at all – it’s the normal duty of every Christ-follower. Jesus said if we wanted to come after Him, to take up our crosses daily and follow Him. That includes dying to self. David Platt’s book is a great resource to show how as Christians, we are dead to our own desires, our own wants and our own wishes. Our deepest depths of who we are and what we do are rooted in the grace and purpose of Christ.

In the nine chapters of this book, Platt encourages readers on a journey of self-examination. I have read through this book twice in the past year and many questions have come to my mind as a reaction to this book: What does it take to be a real disciple of Jesus? What does that look like? Does my life live up to the demands of Christ? Have I really ever come to Christ on His terms? How does my treatment of the poor and despised of the world show that I am really following Christ? If Jesus is to be found in the dirty places, the despised places and the dangerous places of the world, do I really want to follow Him there?

Overall, I think that the reader who takes these challenges in these nine chapters seriously will actually be left with more questions than when he started! But I think that’s the exact point of the book. This book caused me to love Christ more and to dig deeper into my own selfish heart, allowing Christ to transform it more. Yes, I have a lot of unanswered questions. No, those questions won’t be answered easily or quickly. But the journey of really following Christ is worth it.

Platt argues from Scripture that as human beings, we were created with a two-fold purpose: to enjoy God’s grace in an intimate relationship with Jesus and to extend Christ’s glory to the ends of the earth. Chapter four on The Great Why of God does an excellent job going through the Old and New Testaments showing why this is God’s great purpose for our lives.

The question that comes to mind then is this: have we disconnected the blessings of God from the purpose of God? In other words, if I’m only emphasizing that we were created to enjoy God’s grace and leaving out the extend His glory part, I’m actually disconnecting the relationship with God from the purpose He has in inviting me into a relationship with Him!

I believe that every believer in the American church context needs to read this book and get a reality check. The material is controversial for sure, but it is so refreshing to see these things stated so clearly and concisely. If there is one drawback to the book, it would be that Platt doesn’t emphasize enough that we are not motivated by guilt to care for the poor and to live radically. We are motivated by the Gospel itself! Apart from grace-driven effort, we will fail. While Platt acknowledges this, it’s not well thought-out and apparent from this book. Platt’s follow-up to this book called Radical Together will hopefully clear this up for many. That book is set to release on 4/19/2011. I’ve received an advance copy and am currently reading it. I’ll post that review in a few days.

One final note: Lifebiblestudy.com does offer a small group Bible study to go through the Radical book as a group. I’ve done this study and it’s mediocre at best. If you go to http://www.radicalthebook.com/ and look under the chapter resources section, you get links to David Platt’s sermons where each of the chapters from this book came from. A small group study guide is available for each of those sermons and frankly, those study guides are much better than the Lifebiblestudy.com ones.

Welcome to my blog. I’ll be posting some great articles and book reviews in a few days. Check back soon!