Someone Worth Losing Everything For

I finished week 3 today!!! Woohoo!!! I can't believe I've made it this far and I am beyond excited. It was my Kenpo day. I just love this workout. I think I had a smile on my face the whole time I worked out. I'm sure for most people that wouldn't be the case. That's okay, because I love it and I have fun doing it! My kicks are getting better and higher. I'm also punching harder too. So watch out, I'm rough and tough!! I will start week #4 which is my Recovery week on Monday. I'm not sure what to expect, but I know it will be great.

So when I started my P90x journey, I also said that I would be doing a book review. I started Radical this week and I have finished Chapter 1. All I can say is WOW! This book is going to absolutely rock my world and challenge me in so many ways. Chapter 1 is entitled, "Someone Worth Losing Everything For, What Radical Abandonment Really Means". David Platt doesn't mess around, he just puts it all out there. I just want to share some of the highlights from Chapter 1. He starts the book with saying that Jesus is more like a minichurch pastor. He poses two questions from the start. He says that Jesus actually spurned the things that today's church culture said were most important. The first question, was I going to believe Jesus? The second question, was I going to obey Jesus? Platt is convinced that as Christ followers in American churches, we have embraced values and ideas that are not only unbiblical but that actually contradict the gospel we claim to believe. He says we have 2 choices, continue with business as usual or we can take an honest look at the Jesus of the Bible and dare to ask what the consequences might be if we really believed him and really obeyed him.

He said that he could not help but think that 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. Platt cites Dietrich Bonhoeffer a German theologian. Bonhoeffer wrote in one of his books, the first call every Christian experiences is "the call to abandon the attachments of this world." The theme of the book is summarized in one potent sentence: "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." Bonhoeffer entitled this book, "The Cost of Discipleship." Platt says that while Christians choose to spend their lives fulfilling the American dream instead of giving their lives to proclaiming the kingdom of God, literally billions in need of the gospel remain in the dark. Platt challenges us to wake up to the countless multitudes who are currently destined for a Christless eternity.

He says this brings us to the crucial question every professing or potential follower of Jesus must ask: Do we really believe he is worth abandoning everything for? Do you and I really believe that Jesus is so good, so satisfying, and so rewarding that we will leave all we have and all we own and all we are in order to find our fullness in him? Do you and I believe him enough to obey him and to follow him wherever he leads, even when the crowds in our culture and maybe in our churches turn the other way? He closes the chapter with this, "Here we stand amid an American dream dominated by self-advancement, self-esteem, and self-sufficiency, by individualism, materialism, and universalism. Yet I want to show you our desparate need to revisit the words of Jesus, to listen to them, to believe them, and to obey them. We need to return with urgency to a biblical gospel, because the cost of not doing so is great for our lives, our families, our churches and the world around us."

Wow, I don't know about you, but that was a lot for me to swallow in the first chapter. What I have shared with you is only a small sampling of chapter 1. It is jammed full of amazing things. I have to say I am already thinking alot about what he has said so far. I would encourage you to buy a copy of Radical and read along with me!

Definitely something to think about...