The subtitle of this book explains a lot. "Radical: Taking back your Faith from the American Dream". I know that God had been preparing both mine and Greg's heart for reading this message. Lately both of us had been feeling uneasy in our spirit about the direction that we witnessed contemporary worship was moving. There were times when we walked out of church feeling like something was missing; it was disturbing. Then we both read "Radical"; in many ways it summarized what we had been feeling. I think a few chosen quotes from the book will explain it well:
1. "..somewhere along the way we had missed what is radical about our faith and replaced it with something comfortable. We were settling for Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves when the central message of Christianity is actually about abandoning ourselves."
2."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. A nice, middle class Jesus who doesn't mind materialism and who would never call us to give away everything we have."
3."The danger now is that when we gather in our church buildings to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible, instead we are worshiping ourselves." "We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in his Word, we might discover that he evokes a greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him. But this is just the point."
4. "While the goal of the American dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God." Later, "God loves me is not the essence of biblical Christianity. Because if (it is) the message then who is the object of Christianity? God loves me. Me. Therefore when I look for a church, my life, career, etc I will choose according to what is best for me. This is the version of Christianity that largely prevails in our culture." The message of biblical Christianity is "God loves me so that I might make him known to 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."
5."We can so easily deceive ourselves, mistaking the presence of physical bodies in a crowd for the existence of spiritual life in a community." (i.e. just because your church is full on Sunday does not mean a community is actually living for Christ)
6. "We have unnecessarily drawn a line of distinction, assigning the obligations of Christianity to a few while keeping the privileges for us all." He makes the point when we listen to the Word, we are supposed to be listening to reproduce, not receive. God is not just the God of Niceville, He is the God of the world and this will be the context in which He holds us accountable.
Greg and I both felt very convicted after reading this book primarily because we know how much God has blessed us. Feeling guilty is not the point; when God shows something that needs changing He is doing it purely out of love. I can say that now especially after last year. However, when God opens your eyes to sin the only appropriate response is humility and repentance. The next several days after finishing it I prayed and asked God to "reveal to me and open my eyes" how he would have me to respond to what I read. I don't believe God is calling all of us to sell everything we own and move to the African bush. But he is calling us to submission of the heart and a willingness to move in the direction he calls us to. The author of the book issues a challenge to participate in an experiment, a radical experiment, for one year. It has 5 components which I will outline here and now publicly commit to my response.
1. Pray for entire world. I have signed up to receive a daily e-mail from Operation World online which will give me a country and the specific prayer needs of that country. My goal is to take two minutes each morning when I go through my emails to pray for a particular country.
2. Read the entire bible in a year. Both Greg and I have bookmarked "One Year Bible Online"; each morning while drinking my coffee I will read the daily selection. It automatically puts up a selection from Old Test/New Test/Psalms and Proverbs. It takes 10 minutes literally but has already sparked interesting conversation between Greg and I. I know this will have a big impact for us. "For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; It judges the thoughts and actions of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)
3. Commit our lives to multiplying community. This involves commitment to be part of a small group. This has always been very important for me. I am part of a Beth Moore bible study on Wednesday nights at my church and I am active at promoting small group studies for women. I have an accountability partner who I meet with regularly and will continue to do so. I have also committed as part of a blog community to memorize two scriptures per month and post them on our scheduled days.
4.Sacrifice our money for a specific purpose. This is where the rubber meets the road. The book's author really challenged the reader to take a good look at the luxuries in our life. Our holiness is not supposed to be defined by what we don't do, but rather by what we do. "Part of our sinful nature instinctively chooses to see what we want and ignore what we want to ignore. I can live my Christian life and even lead the church while unknowingly overlooking evil." Take slavery for example. Southern slave-owners felt they were being good Christians by giving an extra chicken to their slaves at Christmas all the while overlooking the biblical view of slavery. By ignoring the needy and poor, "we are at most throwing our scraps to them while we indulge in our pleasures here. Kinda like an extra chicken for the slaves at Christmas." OUCH!
At first I wasn't sure where God wanted me to cut. I'm embarrassed to even use the word "sacrifice" as it pertains to the luxurious life I live as an American. But then my friend was telling me a story about how many gifts her nieces received at Christmas and she made a statement that pierced right through my heart; she said, "They can't even be thankful for what they have, because with so much, they don't even know what they've got." I knew where God was pointing me....to my CLOSET. So for one year, I will not buy one new article of clothing. Period. I have also identified other well defined areas to trim back with the goal of living well below our means. I believe God will reveal to me ways this 'sacrifice' will be for my good and the good of others. In the meantime, I have decided to financially support two specific causes this year:
1. I am sponsoring two children through Holt International. The first is a little girl in Haiti, named Franceska Cenatus . She is two years old and her family relies heavily on the program for support. The second child is Bayarjargal Jargalsaikhan (Baya) in Mongolia. He is a five year old orphan who lives in a government run orphanage; his father brought him there and left him. He seldom comes to visit. I will keep you posted on their plight.
2. I will be giving monthly support to Rescuebabiesnow.org. This is a child survival program of Compassion International. The program provides skilled birth attendants to mothers who deliver in huts or at home and provides them will life saving items to improve the survival of their babies; I am supporting programs in Ecuador and Peru. In some areas they provide prenatal care to women who would otherwise not receive it. In America, where are focus is solely on the comforts of childbirth, we forget that world wide many women and babies die during the experience. God led me to this cause.
5. Devote 2% of our time (or one week/year) to a project outside our hometown. In other words, take a mission trip this year. Greg and I are praying God will lead us to a particular project that he wants us to go on as a family. I have been to Guatemala and Mexico in the past and can say without a doubt that mission trips significantly impact your faith.
This book has already had a huge impact on my family's thinking and I am confident that if we are obedient to the experiment God will bless us this year in ways we could not even imagine. I'll keep you posted regarding our progress as we strive to take back our faith from the American dream.
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