While we were in the U.S. for the birth of our daughter Haley, we again traveled to raise prayer and financial support to return overseas. During our travels, we had opportunity to listen to a message series about “What the Gospel Demands” from David Platt.
This message series would eventually turn into a book called Radical.
We would love to encourage you to listen to these messages at:
- What the Gospel Demands
- The Gospel Demands Radical Sacrifice
- The Gospel Demands Radical Compassion
- The Gospel Demands Radical Urgency
- The Gospel Demands Radical Giving
- The Gospel Demands Radical Abandonment (Part 1)
- The Gospel Demands Radical Abandonment (Part 2)
- The Gospel Demands Radical Abandonment (Part 3)
Our encouragement would be to listen to one message a week, every week, until you have listened to all eight, while we continue writing weekly articles leading up to our message series on a Great Awakening in February 2020. Each one will help you better understand what Jesus has been teaching Shellie and me as everyday disciple makers.
After Shellie and I listened to these messages, worked through the wounded warrior stage (previous article), and finished our travels around the U.S., we were ready to return to life overseas.
We learned the blessing of the wounded warrior stage is that God uses this time in a person’s life to dethrone the god of self and enthrone Jesus as king of your heart.
Without Jesus as king, a person can not live an extraordinary life. Without Jesus as king, there is no way forward in the Kingdom of God.
Jesus is a good king, and He leads us in the best adventures. Typically, those adventures are challenging, and they come with difficulty. But the promise that Jesus will be with us in the midst of those adventures (Matthew 28:20) is all the confidence we should need to follow Him on the path of extraordinary living.
It is as we obediently and wholeheartedly follow Jesus that He makes our lives count in this world. Platt shares,
“You and I have an average of about seventy or eighty years on this earth. During these years we are bombarded with the temporary. Make money. Get stuff. Be comfortable. Live well. Have fun. In the middle of it all, we get blinded to the eternal. But it’s there. You and I stand on the porch of eternity. Both of us will soon stand before God to give an account for our stewardship of the time, the resources, the gifts, and ultimately the gospel he has entrusted to us. When that day comes, I am convinced we will not wish we had given more of ourselves to living the American dream. We will not wish we had made more money, acquired more stuff, lived more comfortably, taken more vacations, watched more television, pursued greater retirement, or been more successful in the eyes of this world. Instead we will wish we had given more of ourselves to living for the day when every nation, tribe, people, and language will bow around the throne and sing the praises of the Savior who delights in radical obedience and the God who deserves eternal worship.”¹
Shellie and I were renewed and ready to make our lives count for King Jesus. We were not going to let American culture influence us in ways that could keep us from fulfilling all that God wanted from our lives among the nations.
We would soon be off to our next adventure, but this time, God had some different lessons to teach us. It is not easy to follow Jesus, but it truly is extraordinary.
We’d Love to hear from you!
What lessons have you learned while following Jesus? Share your comments below.
1 Platt, David. Radical. pp. 215-216
