A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need

By David Platt

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We talk a lot about the need to know what we believe in our heads, yet I wonder if we have forgotten to feel what we believe in our hearts. How else are we to explain our ability to sit in services where we sing songs and hear sermons celebrating how Jesus is the hope of the world, yet rarely (if ever) fall on our faces weeping for those who don’t have this hope and then take action to make this hope known to them? Why today do we seem to be so far from the way of Jesus? Jesus wept over those in need. He was moved with compassion for the crowds. He lived and loved to bring healing and comfort to the broken. He died for the sins of the world. So why are those of us who carry his Spirit not moved and compelled in the same way? Surely God didn’t design the gospel of Jesus to be confined to our minds and mouths in the church, yet disconnected from our emotions and actions in the world. Surely something needs to change.

(Platt 2019, 2-3)

Clearly, the change we need won’t happen simply by our seeing more facts or listening to more sermons (or even preaching them, for that matter). What we need is not an explanation of the Word and the world that puts more information in our heads; we need an experience with the Word in the world that penetrates the recesses of our hearts. We need to dare to come face to face with desperate need in the world around us and ask God to do a work deep within us that we could never manufacture, manipulate, or make happen on our own.

(Platt 2019, 3-4)

Charles was not thrilled to find out I was a follower of Jesus. He told me how his people had been hurt and harmed by some missionaries from Europe who, according to him, in the name of Christ had done disastrous things in his country. As a result, Charles’s view of Jesus was significantly—and sadly—distorted. 

It humbled me to hear that his experience with the “good news,” as he had heard it, was not good at all. Apparently, it’s possible for various misrepresentations of the gospel to actually drive people further away from God.

(Platt 2019, 11)

“… The region we are in right now includes about nine million people. Out of that nine million, there are probably less than one hundred followers of Jesus. The reality is, most people here have never even heard of Jesus. This area is the birthplace of both Hinduism and Buddhism, and Christianity is hardly found anywhere.”

(Platt 2019, 27)

In the process of exploring various belief systems, I began to see the absurdity of universalism. I would hear people say that all religions or belief systems are fundamentally the same, with merely superficial differences. But the more I studied, the more I saw that this was nowhere close to reality. It’s not just illogical but also ludicrous to say that an atheist who believes there is no god and a Christian who believes in God have the same fundamental belief. While it’s completely valid for people to have different beliefs about God, both of their beliefs can’t be completely true. God either exists or he doesn’t, which makes one person’s beliefs true and the other’s false, regardless of how passionately one holds that belief. 

Followers of Jesus believe that he is God in the flesh and died on the cross. In contrast, followers of Mohammad believe that a man cannot be God and that Jesus (though a “good man,” according to Muslim belief) did not die on a cross. 

These beliefs are essential to both of these faiths, yet they are extremely different. Either Jesus is God or his not, and either he died on the cross or he did not. Again, it is entirely valid for over a billion people to believe one way and another billion to believe another way, yet the reality is that more than a billion people in this picture are believing a lie. 

(Platt 2019, 62-63)

Hell, a place that Jesus himself describes as conscious torment. Outer darkness. And fiery agony. The Bible repeatedly describes hell as a lake of fire that people will never, ever leave. 

Some people object, proposing that these biblical descriptions of hell are just symbolic. Maybe, some believe, the language isn’t literal. But even if that’s the case, we would need to ask the obvious follow-up question: What do we think these symbols of hell represent? A wintry retreat? A summer vacation? Clearly, these are not descriptions for a nice place. These are symbols for a terrifying place! The purpose of a symbol is to express a reality greater than what can be expressed in words, so it should bring no solace to think that the Bible’s descriptions of hell might be symbolic. 

(Platt 2019, 70-71)

Would you and I be content with belonging to a community that is simply committed to seeking God, loving each other, and sharing the good news of God’s love with the world around us no matter what it costs us? Isn’t this the essence of the church according to God’s design?

As I sit in the middle of this family of brothers and sisters on this remote mountainside, I can’t help but think of how easy it is to get caught up in so much extra stuff in the church that we miss the essence of who God has called us to be and what he has called us to do. I think about what I read in Luke 11 earlier before dinner. There, Jesus confronts the leaders of God’s  people because they were missing God’s design for their community. One verse in particular sticks out: 

Woe to you Pharisees! You give a tenth of mint, rue, and every kind of herb, and you bypass justice and love for God. These things you should have done without neglecting the others. (verse 42)

Jesus indicts the religious leaders because they were so focused on small things, including their traditions (which weren’t all bad), that they missed the most important things in God’s Word – namely, the spread of God’s love and justice. And I wonder if the same indictment could be made against church leaders like me, and the church culture you and I are a part of. Isn’t it so easy for us to focus on small things in the church, including our traditions (which aren’t all bad), that we miss the most important things – namely, working for justice among the oppressed and loving people in need as we love ourselves?

(Platt 2019, 104-105)

I think about friends who moved to North Africa, where they now have a booming rug business. They travel into villages and buy antique North African rugs and then pay to have them repaired and cleaned. In this way they help provide financial support for people in these villages while also opening opportunities to share the gospel with them. 

I put all this together and can’t help but wonder if God has designed the globalization of today’s marketplace to open up avenues for the spread of the gospel around the world. And I can’t help but believe that God has given all kinds of people unique education, experiences, gifts, and passions that can be used in ways we’ve never imagined. 

(Platt 2019, 125)

…I point out how Jesus is not telling his disciples ultimately to sacrifice treasure in their lives. Instead, he’s encouraging them to seek ultimate treasure in their lives – the kind that will last forever. He’s exhorting them to live for longterm treasure they can never lose, not short-term treasure they can never keep. 

This is the exact opposite of the way the world thinks and works. We want gratification, and we want it now. We want to make the most of this life now (we even market Christianity as the key to our best life now). But it sure seems as though Jesus’s message sounds more like our best lives later. And forever. Jesus is actually telling his disciples to give away their possessions in the world now and give to those in need in a way that will lead to eternal pleasure in a heavenly kingdom. 

(Platt 2019, 128)

Maybe we can call ourselves Christians, but we’ll be doing so as we indulge in a world of comfort while ignoring a world of urgent spiritual and physical need. Or maybe giving relative minutes of our time and pennies of our money toward those in need while continuing on with a life that’s essentially focused on ourselves. 

(Platt 2019, 148)

As I’m teaching and we’re all discussing what we see in God’s Word, I am struck with two fresh realizations. 

First, looking at the Bible to see how God has designed the church is exactly what needs to be done. As I had reflected a couple of days ago, these villages need the church in them, but they don’t need an American version of church; they need a biblical version of church. 

As I walk through the Word with these leaders, it hits me that so many of my conversations about the church in America are often focused on cultural traditions that are extrabiblical at best and unbiblical at worst. 

… It makes me wonder, Why are Bible-believing, Bible-preaching churches in America so focused on what is not in the Bible?…

…This leads to a second realization, which takes me back to Luke 114. If being a Christian means counting the cost and laying down your life, ou possessions, you plans, and your dreams to follow Jesus wherever and however he leads you, then being a church means gathering together with people who have counted that cost and who are laying down their lives in this way. 

(Platt 2019, 157-158)

(Luke 16:19-31)

… The contrast in the passage is clear: On one hand, God responds to the needs of the poor with compassion. This is the only parable Jesus tells where someone is named, so why “Lazarus”? The answer is because his name means “one whom God helps.” Lazarus is obviously poor – sick, crippled, laid at the gates of the rich, where he eats scraps while dogs feed on his sores. Yet God is committed to helping him. 

In all of Scripture, not just this parable, God hears the cries of the poor and needy (Job 34:28). He satisfies them (Psalm 22:26), rescues them (35:10), provides for tem (68:10), defends their rights (82:3), raises them up (113:7), and upholds their cause with justice (140:12). Clearly, God is the helper of the poor, the One who responds to their needs with compassion. 

On the other hand, God responds with condemnation to those who neglect the poor. This rich man is not in hell because he had wealth; instead, he is in hell because he is a sinner whose heart indulged in his own luxuries while he ignored the poor. Actually, he threw scraps to them. He knew they existed, but he did little to help them. 

And the consequences could not be any higher. This parable may be the most horrifying picture of hell in all of Scripture. And it comes straight from the mouth of Jesus. The details are graphic – a man in the anguish of flames. A place of torment separated by a fixed chasm that can never be crossed for all eternity. 

Now, the Bible is clear that our eternal state depends on faith in Jesus, not on any works we might do in his name. However, the Bible is also clear that those who have true faith in Jesus will show it with their works, particularly on behalf of those in need (Matthew 25:31-46; James 2:14-26). So rich people who neglect the poor inevitably reveal the hidden reality that they are ultimately not people of God. 

(Platt 2019, 183-184)

The purpose of a local church is to be a display of the love of Christ in a local community and to send members out for the spread of hope beyond that community. The picture really is pretty simple when you think about it.

…we can easily complicate the church. We can fill our churches with all kinds of things that are not in the Bible. We can focus our churches on buildings that cater to our comforts and budgets with programs that prioritize our preferences. But this is not who God has called the church to be or what God has called the church to do. 

(Platt 2019, 201)

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References

Platt, David. 2019. Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need. N.p.: Random House Publishing Group.

ISBN 978-0-7352-9141-6