Book Review: Radical

This past weekend I read Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream by David Platt.  I have heard a ton of people talking about this book and even listed to David talk about it on the Catalyst Podcast a few weeks ago.  A great friend of mine mentioned Radical last week as a book that he and some other leaders were getting ready to go through.  I realized at that point that God really meant for me to read this book!

I started the book on Saturday afternoon and finished it on Sunday afternoon.  Five days later I am still reeling from some of the things that Radical challenged me to consider.  God’s timing as always is so amazing because on Monday I began a 30 day journey of reading through all four gospels with the rest of the crew at Cedarcrest Church.  This book and the rereading of the gospels has really caused me to consider the question…Am I living biblically or am I more focused on the American Dream?

I will definitely be writing more about the impact of this book and a renewed look at the gospels over the days, weeks, and months ahead.  For today I’ll leave you with what I highlighted as I read Radical.  Pick up a copy today for yourself and buy a few to give away.  You’ll be glad you did!

• You and I can choose to continue with business as usual in the Christian life and in the church as a whole, enjoying success based on the standards defined by the culture around us. 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.
• I 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.
• We are giving in to the dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with.
• And the danger now is that when we gather in our church buildings to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead we may be worshiping ourselves.
• Based on what we have heard from Jesus in the Gospels, we would have to agree that the cost of discipleship is great. But I wonder if the cost of nondiscipleship is even greater.
• The cost of nondiscipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship. For when we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him.
• We desperately need to explore how much of our understanding of the gospel is American and how much is biblical. And in the process we need to examine whether we have misconstrued a proper response to the gospel and maybe even missed the primary reward of the gospel, which is God himself.
• 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.
• As long as you and I understand salvation as checking off a box to get to God, we will find ourselves in the meaningless sea of world religions that actually condemn the human race by exalting our supposed ability to get to God. On the other hand, when you and I realize that we are morally evil, dead in sin, and deserving of God’s wrath with no way out on our own, we begin to discover our desperate need for Christ.
• We have taken the infinitely glorious Son of God, who endured the infinitely terrible wrath of God and who now reigns as the infinitely worthy Lord of all, and we have reduced him to a poor, puny Savior who is just begging for us to accept him.
• The question for us, then, is whether we trust in his power. And the problem for us is that in our culture we are tempted at every turn to trust in our own power instead. So the challenge for us is to live in such a way that we are radically dependent on and desperate for the power that only God can provide.
• While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God.
• This is how God works. He puts his people in positions where they are desperate for his power, and then he shows his provision in ways that display his greatness.
• We can so easily deceive ourselves, mistaking the presence of physical bodies in a crowd for the existence of spiritual life in a community.
• God delights in using ordinary Christians who come to the end of themselves and choose to trust in his extraordinary provision. He stands ready to allocate his power to all who are radically dependent on him and radically devoted to making much of him.
• We live in a church culture that has a dangerous tendency to disconnect the grace of God from the glory of God.
• The message of biblical Christianity is “God loves me so that I might make him-his ways, his salvation, his glory, and his greatness-known among all nations.” Now God is the object of our faith, and Christianity centers around him. We are not the end of the gospel; God is.
• Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.
• One of the unintended consequences of contemporary church strategies that revolve around performances, places, programs, and professionals is that somewhere along the way people get left out of the picture.
• When we take responsibility for helping others grow in Christ, it automatically takes our own relationship with Christ to a new level.
• Christ will change our desires, and we will long to sacrifice our resources for the glory of his name among them.
• Why not begin operating under the idea that God has given us excess, not so we could have more, but so we could give more?
• TRUTH 1 : ALL PEOPLE HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD
• TRUTH 2 : ALL PEOPLE REJECT GOD
• TRUTH 3: ALL PEOPLE ARE GUILTY BEFORE GOD
• TRUTH 4: ALL PEOPLE ARE CONDEMNED FOR REJECTING GOD
• TRUTH 5: GOD HAS MADE A WAY OF SALVATION FOR THE LOST
• TRUTH 6: PEOPLE CANNOT COME TO GOD APART FROM FAITH IN CHRIST
• TRUTH 7: CHRIST COMMANDS THE CHURCH TO MAKE THE GOSPEL KNOWN TO ALL PEOPLES
• We are the plan of God, and there is no plan B.
• The reward of the American dream is safety, security, and success found in more comfort, better stuff, and greater prosperity. But the reward of Christ trumps all these things and beckons us to live for an eternal safety, security, and satisfaction that far outweigh everything this world has to offer us.
• Indeed, God knows every detail of our lives, and when we step out in faith to follow him, he will show us that our greatest security is not found in the comforts we can manufacture in this world but in the faithful provision of the only one who knows our needs and the only one who is able to meet our needs in every way.
• John Paton, Jim Elliot, and C. T. Studd all illustrate one fundamental truth: your life is free to be radical when you see death as reward. This is the essence of what Jesus taught in Matthew 10, and I believe it is the key to taking back your faith from the American dream.