Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From The American Dream

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3 Sentence Summary

Christians don’t have time to settle for the watered-down version of Jesus that makes them comfortable. The real Jesus of the Bible taught a radical message of self-sacrifice, love for one’s enemies, and unconditional dependence on God. With billions of people who don’t yet know Jesus as their savior, David Platt reminds Christians of their urgent mission to spread the gospel to all nations and invites them to live with eternal purpose and meaning.

5 Key Takeaways

1. Jesus’ teachings were radical. True discipleship requires giving up the comforts and temporary treasures of this world.
2. You can do nothing apart from God. Live in such a way that you are radically dependent on and desperate for the power that only God can provide.
3. Faith, without works, is dead. Caring for the poor does not earn us salvation, but it is evidence of our salvation.
4. Sharing the gospel is urgent, not optional. All men are guilty before God and will only be saved through faith in Jesus. We don’t have time to waste our lives on an American dream.
5. Ultimate satisfaction is found not in making much of ourselves but in making much of God.

Radical Summary

1. Someone Worth Losing Everything For: What Radical Abandonment to Jesus Really Means

• Jesus wasn’t interested in marketing himself to the masses.
• Jesus’ personal invitations to the disciples were more costly than the crowds were willing to accept, and he seemed to be okay with that.

• We’ve missed what is radical about faith and replaced it with what is comfortable.
• We are settling for a Christianity that revolves around catering to ourselves instead of abandoning ourselves.
• In a world that prizes promoting oneself, Jesus teaches us to crucify ourselves.
• We are giving in to a dangerous temptation to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with.
• When we gather in church buildings to sing and lift our hands in worship, are we worshiping the Jesus of the Bible? Or are we worshiping ourselves?
• The cost of nondiscipleship is profoundly greater for us than the cost of discipleship.

2. Too Hungry for Words: Discovering the Truth and Beauty of the Gospel

• What is it about God’s Word that creates a hunger to hear more? What causes followers of Christ around the world literally to risk their lives in order to know it?
• Fundamentally, the gospel is the revelation of who God is, who we are, and how we can be reconciled to him.

Who God Really Is

• Sovereign creator of all things.
• God knows all things, sustains all things, and owns all things.
• Righteous in all his ways.
• Loving Father and wrathful Judge.
• The gospel reveals eternal realities about God that we would sometimes rather not face. We prefer to sit back, enjoy our clichés, and picture God as a Father who might help us, all the while ignoring God as a Judge who might damn us.

Who We Really Are

• All are born with an evil, God-hating heart.
• Everything in creation responds in obedience to the Creator… until we get to you and me. We have the audacity to look God in the face and say, “No.”
• We are spiritually dead and eternally separated from God. What’s worse is that we can do nothing to change our status before God.
• The modern-day gospel says, “God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life. Therefore, follow these steps, and you can be saved.” Meanwhile, the biblical gospel says, “You are an enemy of God, dead in your sin, and in your present state of rebellion, you are not even able to see that you need life, much less to cause yourself to come to life. Therefore you are radically dependent on God to do something in your life that you could never do.”

What (Or Whom) We Really Need

• God came down to earth as Jesus Christ to help his people reconcile with him.
• Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross was not just a demonstration of God’s love for us, but also to pay the divine wrath for our sin.

Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane

• Picture Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. As he kneels before his Father, drops of sweat and blood fall from his head. Why is he in such agony and pain? The answer is not because he is afraid of crucifixion. He was anticipating the diving wrath that we was about to bear.
• Listen to his words: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.” The “cup” is not a reference to a wooden cross; it is a reference to divine judgement. It is the cup of God’s wrath.
• All God’s holy wrath and hatred toward sin and sinners, stored up since the beginning of the world, is about to be poured out on him, and he is sweating blood at the thought of it.
• Some say, “God looked down and could not bear to see the suffering that the soldiers were inflicting on Jesus, so he turned away.” But this is not true. God turned away because he could not bear to see your sin and my sin on his Son.

Radical Revelation to Be Radically Received

• The only proper response to this gospel is unconditional surrender of all that we are and all that we have to all that he is.
• Jesus does not need our acceptance. We need him.
• Narrow is the road that leads to heaven, and broad the path that leads to hell.
• The danger of spiritual deception is real.
• We are saved from our sins by a free gift of grace, something that only God can do in us and that we cannot manufacture ourselves. But that gift of grace involves the gift of a new heart. New desires. New longings. For the first time, we want God.
• We are saved to know God.

3. Beginning At The End of Ourselves: The Importance of Relying on God’s Power

• Two thousand years ago when believers proclaimed the name of Jesus, it caused the blind to see, the lame to walk, and the dead to rise. The name of Jesus had the power to cause evil spirits to flee and to bring the most hardened hearts to God. And the reality is, two thousand year later the power of Jesus’ name is still great.
• Live in such a way that we are radically dependent on and desperate for the power that only God can provide.

Subtle Dangers

• The American dream tells us we can do anything we set our minds to accomplish. There is no limit to what we can accomplish when we combine ingenuity, imagination, and innovation with skill and hard work.
• The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability.
• The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. It confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him.
• 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 am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.

John 15:5

Exalting Our Inability

• God delights in exalting our inability. He intentionally puts his people in situations where they come face to face with their need for him.

Ordinary Christians, Extraordinary God

• God’s power is so superior to ours. Why do we not desperately seek it?
• What if God in all his might is simply waiting to show his power in a people who turn their backs on a philosophy of life that exalts their supposed ability to do anything they want and who instead confess their desperate need for him?
• God delights in using ordinary Christians who come to the end of themselves and choose to trust in his extraordinary provision.
• Is my life marked right now by a desperation for the Spirit of God?

4. The Great Why of God: God’s Global Purpose From The Beginning Till Today

• Jesus commands us to go. He has created each of us to take the gospel to the ends of the earth.
• We are made in God’s image with the purpose of enjoying his grace and extending his glory
• God blesses Abraham, not for Abraham’s sake, but so that Abraham might be the conduit of God’s blessing to all the people of the earth.
• If we only pay attention to God’s grace and forget about its connected purpose, the sad result is a self-centered Christianity that bypasses the heart 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.
• Jesus calls all of his followers to foreign missions. Not just a select few missionaries.
• We don’t get to pick and choose which of Jesus’ commands apply to me. Otherwise we fall into the unbiblical trap of assigning the obligations of Christianity to a few while keeping the privileges of Christianity for us all.
• What if we don’t need to sit back and wait for a call to foreign missions? What if the very reason we have breath is because we have been saved for a global mission? And what if anything less than passionate involvement in global mission is actually selling God short by frustrating the very purpose for which he created us?
• God has designed a radical, global purpose for your life that is far greater than your pursuit of the next and bigger thing.
• God has blessed you for his glory. Not so that you will have a comfortable life with a big house and nice car. Not so you can spend lots of money on vacations, education, or clothing. Those aren’t bad things, but God has blessed you so that nations will know him and see his glory.

5. The Multiplying Community: How All of Us Join Together to Fulfill God’s Purpose

• Regardless of what country we live in, what skills we possess, what kind of education we have, or what kind of salary we make, Jesus has commanded each of us to make disciples, and this is the means by which we will impact the world.

How do we make God’s glory known to all nations?

• Follow Jesus’ example: Make disciples.
• Jesus staked his entire mission on his relationship with twelve men.
• Disciples are not mass-produced. They are not made overnight.
• Disciple making is not about a program or an event but about a relationship. It can often be a slow, tedious, even painful process.
• First, you must go. Disciple making requires that you intentionally take the gospel to people where they live, work, and play.
• Next, you baptize. Baptism is a clear, public, symbolic picture of the new life we have in Christ. It unites us as brothers and sisters in the church community.
• Finally, you teach. We are to be continually teaching one another the Word of Christ.

We’re all teachers

• We can acknowledge that the Holy Spirit gives some individuals a unique gift for teaching and leadership within the church. But Jesus’ command to go and make disciples still implies a teaching role for all of us.
• This raises the bar in our own Christianity. In order to teach someone else how to pray, we need to know how to pray. In order to help someone else learn how to study the Bible, we need to be active in studying the Bible. But this is the beauty of making disciples. When we take responsibility for helping others grow in Christ, it automatically takes our own relationship with Christ to a new level.

6. How Much Is Enough? American Wealth And A World Of Poverty

• Good intentions, regular worship, and even study of the Bible do not prevent blindness in us.
• Part of our sinful nature instinctively chooses to see what we want to see and to ignore what we want to ignore.
• While caring for the poor is not the basis of our salvation, this does not mean that our use of wealth is totally disconnected from our salvation. Indeed, caring for the poor (among other things) is evidence of our salvation.
• The faith in Christ that saves us from our sins involves an internal transformation that has external implications.
• Wealth is not inherently evil. Scripture does not condemn riches or possessions in and of themselves.

Sell Everything You Have?

• Jesus has a conversation with a rich young man in Mark 10. The man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus eventually says to him, “One thing you lack. Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” Jesus is exposing the man’s allegiance to his possessions.
• An error in reading this passage is to try to universalize Jesus’ words, saying that he always commands his followers to sell everything they have and give it to the poor.
• Another error is to assume that Jesus never calls his followers to abandon all their possessions to follow him.

That Jesus did not command all his followers to sell all their possessions gives comfort only to the kind of people to whom he would issue that command.

Truth In Love

• Our sense of security and stability is immediately threatened when we think about truly letting Jesus reign over our possessions.
• Jesus loves rich people enough to tell them the truth.
• Do I trust Jesus to know what is best for my life, my family, and my financial future?

It’s Hard For A Rich Man

• Jesus said it’s hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Wealth can be a major barrier to dependance on God alone.
• The American church culture is find with thinking of affluence, comfort, and material possessions as blessings. But we ignore the possibility that they’ve become barriers.

Godliness with contentment is great gain.

1 Timothy 6:6

• Am I willing to live a life that is content with food and clothing, having the basic necessities of my life provided for? Or do I want more? Do I want a bigger house or a nicer car or better clothes? Do I want to indulge in more and more luxuries in my life?
• We don’t sell or give away our possessions and wealth because they are inherently sinful. We do so because Christ in us compels us to care for the needy around us.

• Were the pictures that Wesley had hanging in his room wrong in and of themselves? Absolutely not. But it was wrong—very wrong—to buy unnecessary decoration for himself when a woman was freezing outside without a coat.
• The point we can learn from this event in Wesley’s life is that our perspective on our possessions radically changes when we open our eyes to the needs of the world around us.
• Why not simply begin a process of limiting and eliminating some of our luxuries? Why not begin selling and giving them away for the sake of the poor outside our gates? 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?
• What if we set a cap on our lifestyles and give away everything we have above that line of income for the glory of Christ in the neediest parts of the world?
• Scripture clearly teaches that God intends our plenty to supply others’ needs.

“What Can We Spare?” Or “What Will It Take?”

• What would happen if together we stopped giving our scraps to the poor and started giving surplus?
• Give generously, abundantly, and sacrificially. Give not because your stuff is bad. Give because Christ is in you.

The Rich Man In Me

• There is a war against materialism in our hearts. It is a constant battle to resist the temptation to have more luxuries, to acquire more stuff, and to live more comfortably.
• We can embrace Jesus while we give away our wealth, or we can walk away from Jesus while we hoard our wealth.

7. There Is No Plan B: Why Going Is Urgent, Not Optional

• “All men are created equal” from our Declaration of Independence is grounded in the biblical teaching that every person has been formed in the image of God and therefore has intrinsic worth.
• All ideas are not created equal. Religion and faith are matters of truth, not taste.
• 4.5 billion people in the world today do not know Christ as their Lord and savior. So what happens to them when they die? This is one of the most important questions facing Christians in America today.
• What does the Bible say about people who never hear about Jesus?

Truth #1: All People Have Knowledge of God

Since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

Romans 1:19-20

• God reveals himself continually and clearly to all people.
• Every person on the face of the earth and every person throughout history–without exception—has knowledge of God the Father.

Truth #2: All People Reject God

For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

Romans 1:21

• All people, including you, me, and the man in the African bush, have rejected true knowledge of God.
• We have an inherently sinful nature that rebels agains the knowledge and glory of God.
• Worshiping the sun god, moon goddess, or other gods of prosperity is not good enough. This is not a specific indictment of certain native tribes or any other culture around the world. It is an indictment of all of us. We are all idolaters.

Truth #3: All People Are Guilty Before God

As it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.

Romans 3:10-12

• All people, regardless of religious, cultural, or ethnic background, stand guilty before God.

The Hypothetical innocent man

• But what about the innocent guy in the middle of Africa who dies without ever hearing the gospel? What happens to him when he dies?
• The problem with this question is that the innocent man doesn’t exist. It’s impossible to be innocent before God.
• There are no innocent people in the world just waiting to hear the gospel. Instead, there are people all over the world standing guilty before a holy God, and that is the very reason they need the gospel.
• The default is not heaven but hell.

Truth #4: All People Are Condemned For Rejecting God

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.

Romans 3:20

• Not only is every person guilty before God, but there is nothing we can do to change this. The more we try to do good, the more we expose our evil.

A Fundamental Misunderstanding

• Many professing Christians have come to the conclusion that if certain people around the world don’t have the opportunity to hear about Jesus, then this automatically excuses them from God’s condemnation.
• Consider the practical implications of this idea. If people will go to heaven precisely because they never had the opportunity to hear about Jesus, then the worst thing we could do for their eternal state would be to go to them and tell them about Jesus. That would only increase their chances of going to hell!

Levels of Accountability

• Does God condemn people for not believing in Jesus when they never had the chance to hear about Jesus?
• God does not condemn people for not believing in Jesus. They are ultimately condemned for rejecting God. This is a fundamental truth that applies to all people.
• There is no question that the billion people who have never heard about Jesus have a different kind of accountability before God than do people who have had the opportunity to receive or reject the gospel.

Truth #5: God Has Made A Way Of Salvation For The Lost

But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.

Romans 3:21-22

• Pluralism dominates the global religious landscape, and the prevailing idea is that if there is a God, he has provided many ways of salvation for the lost. But this is not true.

Truth #6: People Cannot Come To God Apart From Faith In Christ

Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 5:1

• Faith in Christ is the only means by which we can be saved.

Faith Before Jesus

• Some may wonder how people in the Old Testament were saved. Paul argues in Romans 4-11 that Abraham and others were saved by grace through faith in the coming Christ. Though they did not know all the details, they were trusting in the redemption God would bring through Christ.
• Based on this example, some people have concluded that people today can also be saved through a general trust in God even though they have never heard of Christ. But Scripture gives no evidence of this once Christ has come.

Truth #7: Christ Commands The Church To Make The Gospel Known To All Peoples

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

Romans 10:13-15

• God’s redemptive plan involves sending his servants to preach the gospel.
• We are the plan of God, and there is no plan B.
• There is not one verse in the book of Acts where the gospel advances to the lost apart from a human agent.

No Time To Waste

• We don’t have time to waste our lives on an American dream.
• We have been commanded to preach the gospel to those who have not yet heard.
• A soft-drink company in Atlanta has done a better job getting brown sugar water into the hands of people around the world than the church of Jesus Christ has done in bringing them the gospel.
• Some wonder if it is unfair for God to allow so many to have no knowledge of the gospel. But there is no injustice in God. The injustice lies in Christians who possess the gospel and refuse to give their lives to making it known among those who haven’t heard.
• The will of God is for you and me to give our lives urgently and recklessly to making the gospel and the glory of God known among all peoples, particularly those who have never even heard of Jesus.

8. Living When Dying Is Gain: The Risk And Reward Of The Radical Life

• Jesus clearly acknowledged that following him involves risking the safety, security, and satisfaction we have found in this world. But in the end, Jesus said, following him leads to a radical reward that this world can never offer.
• Do we believe the reward found in Jesus is worth the risk of following him?
• We think, If it’s dangerous, God must not be in it. If it’s risky, if it’s unsafe, if it’s costly, it must not be God’s will. But what if these factors are actually the criteria by which we determine something is God’s will?
• We tell ourselves, If we would all just become like Jesus, the world would love us. But the reality is just the opposite. If we really become like Jesus, the world will hate us. Why? Because the world hated him.
• Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.
• We can rest confident in the fact that nothing will happen to us in this world apart from the gracious will of a sovereign God.
• Satan not only acts within the sovereign permission of God but also ends up accomplishing the sovereign purposes of God. Indeed, this is what the Cross is all about. Satan’s strategy to defeat the Son of God only served to provide salvation for sinners.
• Your life is free to be radical when you see death as reward.
• This world is not your home.
• If your life is going to count on earth, you must start by concentrating on heaven.

He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

Jim Elliot

9. The Radical Experiment: One Year To A Life Turned Upside Down

• Real success is found in radical sacrifice.
• Ultimate satisfaction is found not in making much of ourselves but in making much of God.
• Meaning is found in community, not individualism; joy is found in generosity, not materialism; and truth is found in Christ, not universalism.

1 Year Challenge

1. Pray for the entire world
2. Read through the entire Bible
3. Sacrifice your money for a specific purpose
4. Spend your time in another context
5. Commit your life to a multiplying community

Pray For The Entire World

The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

1 Matthew 9:37-38

• Before he told the disciples to do anything else, Jesus told them to pray for the church.
• When Jesus looked at the harassed and helpless multitudes, apparently his concern was not that the lost would not come to the Father. Instead his concern was that his followers would not go to the lost.
• https://operationworld.org/
• Pray intentionally, specifically, and audaciously for God’s purpose to be accomplished around the world.

Read Through The Entire Word

• Our brothers and sisters around the world often gather at the risk of their lives to hear and know God’s Word. If you and I are going to join them in radical obedience to Christ, we need to start with our Bibles open and our minds engaged.
• The spiritual battle we face is intense. It cannot be fought with little thoughts in a daily devotional or petty ideas from a preacher on Sunday.
• If you and I are going to penetrate our culture and the cultures of the world with the gospel, we desperately need minds saturated with God’s Word.
• The Bible is the very words of God—words that have supernatural power to redeem, renew, refresh, and restore our lives to what he created them to be.
• A radical lifestyle actually begins with an extraordinary commitment to ordinary practices that have marked Christians who have affected the world throughout history.

Sacrifice Your Money For A Specific Purpose

• Our hearts follow our money.
• If you make $10,000 a year, we are wealthier than 84% of the world. $50,000 a year puts you in the top 99%.
• Commit to a one year cap on your lifestyle. Minimize luxuries and sacrifice resources you already have.
• One year is the commitment because there may be some expenses that you could postpone for 12 months, but not for a decade.
• The key word is sacrifice. It should hurt. Sacrifice is not giving according to your ability; it’s giving beyond your ability.
• For one year, sacrifice your money—every possible dollar—in order to spend your life radically on specific, urgent spiritual and physical ned in the world.

How to Spend your money

1. Spend your money on something that is gospel centered.
2. Give in a way that is church focused.
3. Give to a specific, tangible need. Give to someone or something you can personally serve alongside. Connect your giving to your going.
4. Give to someone or something you can trust.

Spend Your Time In Another Context

• A true brother comes to be with you in your time of need.
• When God chose to bring salvation to you and me, he did not send gold or silver, cash or check. He sent himself–the Son.
• If we are going to accomplish the global purpose of God, it will not be primarily through giving our money, as important as that is. It will happen primarily through giving ourselves. This is what the gospel represents, and it’s what the gospel requires.
• Our homes, communities, and cities are the primary places and contain the primary people with whom we will impact nations for the glory of Christ.
• Consider what happens when all of us begin to look at our professions and areas of expertise not merely as means to an income or to career paths in our own context but as platforms for proclaiming the gospel in contexts around the world.
• Going starts where we live, but it doesn’t stop there.
• If there are a billion people who have never heard the gospel and billions of others who still have not received the gospel, then we have an obligation to go to them. This is not an option. This is a command, not a calling.
• Spend at least one week over the next year to making the gospel known in a context outside your own city.

Commit Your Life To A Multiplying Community

• God has created us to be in community with one another. We need this community to support us in following Christ in a radical way.
• Be a committed, active, devoted member of a local church.
• If the radical simple living we see Jesus talking about was more common in the church, it would be much easier for us to live simply as well.
• The global purpose of Christ was never intended to be accomplished by individuals. We are a global people whose family spans the nations. So first and foremost, I encourage you to be done with church hopping and shopping in a me-centered milieu and to commit your life to a people who need you and whom you need.
• Once you commit your life to a local church, look for the best avenue within that community of faith to be about making disciples (e.g. small groups).

A Dream

• You have a choice. You can cling to short-term treasures that you cannot keep, or you can live for eternal treasures that you cannot lose.

We will soon stand before God to give account for our stewardship of the time, the resources, the gifts, and ultimately the gospel he has entrusted to us. When that day comes, I am convinced we will not wish we had given more of ourselves to living the American dream. We will not wish we had made more money, acquired more stuff, lived more comfortably, taken more vacations, watched more television, pursued greater retirement, or been more successful in the eyes of this world. Instead we will wish we had given more of ourselves to living for the day when every nation, tribe, people, and language will bow around the throne and sing the praises of the Savior who delights in radical obedience and the God who deserves eternal worship.

David Platt

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