Completely Awesome

It's been quite some time since my last blog. I think mostly the reason for that is because I am finding it harder and harder to justify the importance of some of the stuff I think about saying. But every now and then I think of something that is worth blogging about, and then I'm just not near a computer to put it "out there" in cyberspace. However, this time I have something worth sharing and I am near a computer. Which creates the perfect equation to write yet another blog. Yes.

Ok, so I've recently begun reading a book called Radical by David Platt. The "slogan" for the book, or the catchy phrase on the front cover to summarize the book, is "Taking back your faith from the American Dream." This is right up my alley because I have a serious problem with the current "system" of American Christians caught in the American Dream. The back of the book says, "What is Jesus worth to you? It's easy for American Christians to forget how Jesus said his followers would actually live, what their new lifestyle would actually look like. They would, he said, leave behind security, money, convenience, even family for him. They would abandon everything for the gospel. They would take up their crosses daily...but who do you know who lives like that?"

Now that you know basically what the book is about, I'll get to the real reason for this blog posting. David Platt tells a story in this book about a young man he met in Indonesia named Raden. He recounts the time when Raden shared his testimony with him. And this story is why I posted this blog, and I'm just going to quote it directly from the book word for word.

"One brother, Raden, shared his testimony. With a fiery look in his eye and an intense tone in his voice, he said, 'Before I became a Christian, I was a fighter. I learned ninja, jujitsu, and a variety of other techniques for taking people down.' I (David Platt) nodded. I was making a mental note: Don't mess with Raden. He continued, 'One day I was sharing the gospel in an unreached village with people who had never heard of Jesus. I was in one house sharing Christ with a family, and the witch doctor from the village came to the house.' Witch doctors and magic men are common in villages like these. They hold sway over entire communities with their curses and incantations. 'The witch doctor called me out," Raden said. "He wanted me to fight him.' Raden smiled as he confessed, 'My first thought was to walk out there and take the witch doctor down. But when I turned to go outside, the Lord told me that I no longer need to do the fighting. God would do the fighting for me.' So Raden walked outside, pulled up a chair, and sat down in front of the witch doctor. He told his challenger, 'I don't do the fighting. My God does the fighting for me.' Raden recounted what happened next. 'As the witch doctor attempted to speak, he began to gasp for air. He was choking and couldn't breathe. People came running to see what was wrong, and within a few minutes the witch doctor had fallen over dead.' By now the entire village had crowded around the scene. Raden said, 'I had never seen anything like this, and I didn't know what to do. But then I thought, I guess now is a good time to preach the gospel.' Raden smiled and said, 'So that's what I did, and many people in that village trusted in Christ for the first time that day.'

Talk about power. That is the God we American Christians serve. So why do we not see these types of things happening in America? I personally believe a lot of the problem is because of the American Dream. Another quote from the book is, "While the goal of the American Dream is to make much of us, the goal of the gospel is to make much of God." I think that about sums up the problem quite simply right there.

I say all this, not to advertise a book, or be anti-American, but to show that we, including myself, could be missing a whole lot in our walk with Christ. Maybe one problem, besides our sin, is simply the Westernized version of Christianity that we live in. I'm not saying that everything we do is wrong, I'm saying that not everything we do is right.