Radical ...

David Platt

Tomorrow David Platt is speaking at chapel service at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. David Platt Pastor of The Church at Brook Hills, is known for his heart for missions, his "Secret Church" meetings, but primarily for the book he published a few years ago entitled, simply, "Radical." This book calls for the Church in America to abandon its materialistic ways and get back to the heart of discipleship through a radical devotion to Christ and his mission for the Church to reach the nations with the Gospel. Platt challenges us to think hard about all of the material blessings we have and to think if they might be used better to advance the Kingdom of God rather than for us to indulge ourselves in them. Our Men's group went through the book and the response was varied. Some were humbled and changed by the study. Others seemed to think that David Platt had gone to far and that luxuries were perfectly ok. I only know that for me the book and David Platt's sermon (which I watched) given at SBTS even before I started attending here were life changing. In fact, the book and the sermon were two of the reasons for me to start attending Seminary at SBTS. It's not as though I didn't know that Jesus says, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me," that verse was one of the first I learned as a Christian. It's not like I forgot that Jesus says, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple," but it is so easy to think we are being obedient when we are not in fact being obedient. I had been holding back and was comfortable. Not living by faith. David Platt asked at the end of the book to do 5 simple things the next coming year. This one-year challenge had the following five components: pray for the entire world, read through the entire Word, sacrifice your money for a specific purpose, spend your time in another context, and commit your life to a multiplying community. Two years ago, my Sunday School class met to consider what our resolutions would be for the upcoming year and mine were to take David Platt and Christ up on this challenge. The result is that my life has changed and now tomorrow I will hear God speak to me once again through the preaching of David Platt at Southern Seminary.

Peter began to say to him, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.

You can watch David Platt live on Thursday, 10 pm (Eastern Time) at www.sbts.edu.

You can watch David Platt's "The Cost of Following Jesus" sermon.