Let me give you something a bit different. Rather than give you an update on what I am doing, let me give you an excerpt from the book Radical by Dave Platt. I will warn you not to go out and purchase this book because it may upset your status quo and it may detour your way of thinking and it just might refocus the way you see Jesus. Or it might strike a cord that resonates deeply with what you have longed for…more of Jesus.
“… do you and I realize what we are doing at this point? We are molding Jesus into our image. He is beginning to look a lot like us because, after all, that is whom we are most comfortable with. And the danger now is that when we gather in our church buildings to sing and lift up our hands in worship, we may not actually be worshiping the Jesus of the Bible. Instead we may be worshiping ourselves.”
“The gospel reveals eternal realities about God that we would sometimes rather not face. We are afraid that if we stop and really look at God in his Word, we might discover that He evokes greater awe and demands deeper worship than we are ready to give him.”
There is a longing that God has placed within each of us to worship. Our life long struggle will always be whom we worship. In our western world we have allowed so many things to compete for our affection. In the end, do they really matter?
Here are some thoughts from being with a Palestinian/Muslim friend just outside of Jerusalem in August:
There is something fragrant about the Gospel when you are with the poor and the oppressed. There is something that presses against your heart and your soul. It is not so much guilt for what you haven’t done, but an acute awareness that all I have will never eradicate this despair, but Jesus comes alive and our need for Him becomes desperate.
Our friend needed us that day, but I wonder if we needed him more? As is often the case, we walk away more the better and more the blessed. As is usual when one is with Brother Andrew, we speak the way of Jesus and the beauty of the Gospel. Andrew always prays that our friends will have a vision of Jesus (this is how many are coming to faith in the Muslim world). It is our hope that our friends will, somehow, experience a grace-filled gospel in our presence.
“Saving faith is an exchange of all that we are for all that Christ is.”
JOHN MACARTHUR, JR.
