Review on Radical by David Platt

Now that you have read some of DeYoung's critiques and Platt's responses to those critiques, what are your thoughts and expectations for the book/sermon series?

Well I can't really answer this because I've already been reading the book. It was interesting reading this critique though because I had never thought of some of the things that DeYoung wrote about. I still really like this book even though there was a lot of negative stuff in his critique and I'm still very excited to continue reading it!

American Dream

To start off I absolutely have LOVED reading the book Radical!! It has given me a rude awakening to what my life IS like and what my life SHOULD be like. In my blog "Living Missionaly" I talked about this book for the first paragraph. This book is bringing my attention that I AM LIVING SO WRONG. And its so so crazy that its taken me so long to see this and I feel so blessed that I was recommended this book and am reading it. Why is it that I am okay with eating three meals a day, when I have 10,000 neighbors in my own city who don't get one meal a day. My personal dream for the rest of my life is soo opposite and honestly hypocritical. I have dreams of being a missionary in Africa or being a teacher who brings my co-workers to Christ or the stay at home mom that devotes my life to raising my children to be strong men and women of Christ. But at the same time my materialistic self wants to live in a big home and drive a nice car. I was reading this article the other day about whether or not you should get a tattoo.. And I created my view that I think you should not get a tattoo if it is to make yourself look better but you only should if it is to bring the glory to God. To start a conversation with someone that could bring them to Christ. One that could open the door to sharing the good news to the people around you. But if someone got one that was representing Christ it acts the same as the whole car with a christian bumper sticker thing. You would ALWAYS be representing Christ. And I started thinking about it and could I do that? I dont think I could. I honestly think that I would be a bad representation of Christ most of the time - just by doing things I don't even think about!! And it makes me upset that I wouldn't be a good representative of Christ. I want to be radical, I can't wait to read the challenge at the end of this book. Every chapter I read makes me want to just sell all of this worldly popular crap that I have and give my money away. Why can't I just do that?? The other night I read a chapter and was laying in my bed just imagining how strong my faith would be if I just sold everything I had (when im not relying on my parents) and just kept the bare essentials and gave it to the poor. To not worry about the stuff I don't need but to trust that God would provide what I need! In class a couple months ago someone said that they think the Bible doesn't actually mean sell all of your possessions and give it all to the poor. I rebutted it quickly and only a few people in my whole Bible class agreed with that. How messed up is that??? We are totally TWISTING the Bible and like re-writing it to fit the stupid idea of what we want and how we want things to be. and it makes me soo sad because I'm sure in someways I'm doing the exacttt same thing..... haha this blog is turning into like a major vent for me. But anyways my dream for the rest of  my life is I want to give my life away. Can I? With God totally!! Will I? I'm not sure but I want to sooo bad and I need to start now. I want to have a total of five beautiful children, two of them being adopted from Africa. I want to marry a man who loves Jesus infinite times more than he loves me. I want to raise my kids in Christ and I want to be a full time missionary regardless of my location or occupation. I just refuse to be the ordinary luke warm Christian. I have way to much desire and God loves me wayy to much for me to just settle with this lifestyle of the normal American. I want to be radical. If that means not getting married and not having my five sweet kids - okay. If that means adopting an orphanage of 20 kids - okay! If it means moving half way around the world to a not so pretty place with a not so good reputation - I'm all for it!! I want to live my life for Jesus and I need to start now.

Stewardship Blog

All of us, no matter what your personality or gifting, are a part of the body of Christ. A year or two ago (and it is still a daily battle!) I really wrestle through the verse 1 Corinthians 12:12
"The body is a unit, though it is made up of many parts; and though all its parts are many, they form one body. So it is with Christ." I allowed my head to become a "bobble head." You know, those bobble head dolls with the heads that shake all around. My head was swinging from left to right as I sized up my life, my personality, my gifting, everything with girls in my life. I looked at my friend Lauren and she is this beautiful, loving, smart, amazing and fun to be around friend. I would bobble over to my friend Rachel who has strong, oh-so-wise, and so knowledgeable of God's Word. Then it would bobble to Kristy who is the sweetest girl you will ever meet, always has seasoned words of more sugary sweetness and encouragement, and is always there for you. My heart just took a beating, granted it was my own fists and thoughts that were giving the beating, but still my heart was left questioning my personality, my gifting, and my role in this whole Jesus' body thing. I wonder if you can relate. I finally hit this point at the beginning of this year (yes, it took me 2 years to process this with the Lord, I am somewhat stubborn) where I simply rested in the Lord and who HE has created me to be. If I dont do my role in the body, be it that my role might be being a complete goober in front of my friends or acting crazy in public, then I am telling the Lord that he messed up. What if I am the pinky toe of Christ's body of believer... chellooo, I gotta do the job of the pinky toe! And I want to be the best pinky toe ever so that the body works perfectly throughout! Today in Bible we talked about what our spiritual gifts are and told our friends what we think theres are. I also took a test on it one year at Kanakuk but the gifts my friends told me I had today were leadership, evangalism, pastoring/shepherding, teaching, faithm wisdom, exhortation, giving, and mercy. If these are my gifts I pray that I can use them to the fullest! 

Class Discussion

Today in class we talked about God's view of money and the worlds view of money. After school that day my sweet friend Leigh called me and just poured out her heart to me about what was going on in her life. It led into this awesome conversation about our world and how we need to be in this world and not of this world. We talked about how we don't want to fit in anymore and we shouldn't want to. How we want to be WHOLLY His and be willing to say, "God I trust you and I want nothing more than you. You ALONE are sufficient for me." and not stop at just saying it! To go on and ACT on our beliefs and sell all of our possessions. I started talking to her about the article we read in missions and our talk in missions and she said that that was exactly what she needed to hear. How cool is that?? God works in the most awesome ways!! Once we started talking about the article we challenged each other to wake up in the morning and instead of thinking "I hope this day gets over" or being at school and saying "I cant wait for today to just be done" to instead wake up and say, "God how can you use me today?" and be willing and ready for God to use us even in the smallest ways!! God wants us to give ourselves fully to Him and He wants to help us!! We just need to call on Him and ask for His help, because I don't know about you, but I'm already so materialistic that I NEED God's help in order to put my focus only on Him. But I long for that soo much. I want to just give my life away and when I die I want to be able to say that I have nothing left in me and that I did EVERYTHING I could and gave everything I had up for Him. And again I don't know about you but this makes me so so tired. It is so hard to do this and it wears me out. 1 Timothy 6:12 says "Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called when you made your good confession in the presence of many witnesses." Do you grow weary at times from this whole "fight" analogy we have in scripture? I know there are days when my heart is weary of the fight. I want to give in to my pride, my selfishness, and my thoughts and not fight. If you haven't, I share this not to worry you but to simply share with you the days of weariness will come. But just as I type my weary whimpering, my heart in the depth of it knows that in my weakness He is strong and His burden is light!! Fighting the good fight will make you weary. but weariness should never make you stop fighting. It means that I keep fighting in the morning as the Lord awakens my heart to His world, instead of snoozing for 20 more minutes. It means that we keep fighting when the world says it;s not a big deal to dress the trendy way, but instead we stay trendily-modest with our fashion to directly link us to our security in the Lord. It means that we fight for souls, not grades or esteem or titles. We fight to bring glory to the Lord that has granted us access to eternity with Him. Oh my sweet friends, have you had a weary year this year? Is your fight knocked out of you from the messages the world has written on your heart? The Ultimate Trainer wants to train you each day, each moment in this fight! Get in the ring! He wants you to be His. He wants us to only focus on Him!!

Here's another song.. I know two in a row! but this song is an awesome song about "clearing the stage" and getting rid of our idols and the extremes that we may have to go through in order to 'clear our stages'