Radical Actions Required

     WARNING! Unless you are ready to look at your life in a completely different way, you should avoid reading Radical by David Platt. From the opening chapter, he convicts you with the admonishment that we have traded the radical nature of faith in Christ and replaced it with a comfortable theology that supports the American dream. Once started, I had a difficult time putting the book down. It is filled with sound biblical arguments that we have filtered the commands of Christ to fit our comfortable (and excessive) lifestyles.
     True followers of Jesus must be willing to believe and obey His words before you ever hear them. Once heard, the commands must then be acted upon. When looking at the words Jesus spoke to His disciples and applying them to today, Platt notes "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'." The commission of the gospel involves the willingness to change your life to His standards and not ours.
The book begins with the foundation of who God is, who we are, and how we can be reconciled 

to Him. Jesus is someone for whom we should be willing to lose everything. Then, there are the statistics. The numbers of people in the world who have not heard the gospel and why we should be spending every effort possible to take the gospel to them. But to do that, we must be willing to give of ourselves. Giving of our money is important, but giving of ourselves is necessary.
Being involved in spreading the gospel must be done through the church-God's instrument for sharing the news of His Son. Taking our lives lived in excess and converting them to lives lived to sufficiency will mean more available to the poor and hungry. We are called by God. We are His plan and "there is no Plan B".

Platt closes with a one-year challenge to all disciples. The challenge to pray daily for the world, read the Word through in a year, sacrifice money for a specific purpose, spending 2% of your time in another context (i.e. missions work outside your community), and being involved in a community of faith that is multiplying. While reading this book, I talked about the premises daily, to the point that my wife may have become nervous. The truth is, you can't read this without being convicted, charged up, and ready to go. The Great Commission to make disciples of all nations is not a suggestion...it is a command.