Radical

Disclaimer:  This post may offend you (note the title).  That is not the intent.  We are merely sharing the issues we have been working through this summer, and what God has laid on our hearts.  Keep in mind, we just got back from spending time in 2 different 3rd world countries. We have seen what it looks like to live on less than $1 a day.   It's been hard coming back to the United States of Abundance and seeing the unused power of the American dollar to save lives in the countries we now love. So please be patient with us as we are still processing. 

Every summer our church has a book that we read together and this year it is "Radical" by David Platt (definitely a must-read!)  It is about turning the American dream upside down.  It is written for Christians living in America, how we have bought into the mainstream lies that success, security and comfort will bring us satisfaction and joy.  Somehow we have come to view those things as rights and entitlements instead of blessings and bonuses.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say as a Christian we are entitled to wealth or prosperity.  On the contrary, Christ himself calls us to give up everything to follow him...even to the point of death.  Instead of our security being in Christ, we build up our security in our white picket fence and our car alarms, our careers and our paychecks, our health insurance , our 401Ks and retirement funds.  
This is a very touchy subject, I realize.  But like David Platt says, we can’t choose which parts of the Bible we are comfortable obeying and which parts we’d rather ignore.  Week after week, we sing songs in church that we don’t mean.  A little 8 year old boy from our church died of an inoperable brain tumor 2 weeks ago, and at his funeral we sang the old famous hymn “Be
Thou My Vision” but did we really mean the line “Thou my inheritance, now and always….”??? We are so concerned about providing for our families and making sure our children are “taken care of” financially after we are gone, but that doesn’t leave God much room to provide for us. Are saying we don’t trust Him to take care of our children after we’re gone?  We sing about God being enough, about our God being able….but yet our lifestyle directly contradicts the words we sing.  If God is enough, why do we keep acquiring more stuff?   We sing “Our God is bigger, our God is stronger” while we build bigger houses and bigger cars.  Nowhere in the Bible does it mention about Christ’s followers living a life of comfort or pleasure (again it is the polar opposite), so how did we come to believe that this is one of our rights?  It's because we have sold our souls over to the American dream and believed all it's lies.  If we live in the right neighborhood, drive the right car, send our kids to the right school, have a good job, the flat screen TV, 2 car garage,  the list goes on and on of things that will make us happy. And then after a long life of acquiring stuff and surrounding ourselves with comforts and pleasure, it's time to sit back and relax and now we can really start enjoying life.  "Well, we earned it after a long career and a life of working hard!”  People in 3^rd world countries work hard from the moment they are born until the moment they die (which for 30% of the world that is only until the age of 15!) We all know the scriptures telling us to store up our treasure in heaven, but yet we continue to store up closets, attics, garages, and even rented storage space with more and more earthly treasures!  (Which by the way, the $$ for that monthly rental storage could sponsor a child every month! ;) 
Dave Ramsey (a famous Christian financial advisor) would have a fit if I was implying to not have an emergency fund (which I'm not saying that's what I'm recommending). Yes, it is wise from an earthly perspective to always have a little set aside. But again, we are limiting God’s power to be poured out in our time of need; we are not allowing Him to supernaturally provide for us in miraculous ways!  For me to propose the concept of not having a retirement or emergency fund is definitely radical if not ridiculous, from a worldly perspective.  But the fact of the matter is, any of us could die in a car accident today….we may never reach retirement!  We are saving up for an emergency that may or may not ever happen, while meanwhile across the globe there are families having emergencies every single minute of every single day!  There emergency is NOW! And their emergencies are real….they involve death!  Our American “emergency” funds could save millions of lives across the globe.

*We can have treasures for 60-80 years (more/less) or we can have treasures forever!
*We can give our kids a monetary inheritance that will eventually run out, or we can give them a spiritual inheritance that will last FOREVER!
*We can save up for our own emergency that may never come, or we can give to someone else who is having an emergency right now.
*We can retire in Heaven for ETERNITY!

I know the concept of eternity is hard to wrap our human minds around.  We have been programmed to seek out instant gratification; whatever makes us feel good right NOW.  Every advertisement convinces us that we deserve their product.  Being raised in America gives us a sense of entitlement. And I'm not talking about the rights our forefathers laid out for us of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, all men created equal.  I'm talking about the "I have a right to treat myself to one soda/latte/candy bar (whatever "it" is for you); I'm entitled to at least one guilty pleasure each day." I just got back from spending 5 weeks with kids that should be entitled to the basic life-saving necessities of food, clean water, shelter and should have the right to an education.

Most of us spend the majority of our energy pouring into our mere 50, 60, 70, years that God grants us here on earth.  Our main focus is how can we live comfortably and securely during these few short years that we're trapped in this flesh, rather than, what can  we do to live comfortably and securely for eternity?  In our finite minds we are so temporal and focused on the here and now that it’s hard for us to think about our eternal security, our eternal reward….we come by it honestly as we are stuck in this flesh, right?  That is why we HAVE to live in the Spirit and not the flesh.  Because the Spirit focuses on things NOT of this world.  The Spirit aligns our heart with Gods so that the things that break his heart break ours.  The Spirit opens our eyes to the needs of others and gives up power to live beyond ourselves.  We met with our pastor this week for a debriefing session (coming back from Africa), and he encouraged us with this passage from Romans 12:1-2 “I appeal to you, therefore brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God...Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind….”

There is a retirement aged couple that has 10 children (6 of them adopted) and has not been conformed to the patterns of this world.  They are living a very counter-cultural lifestyle, all in the name of bringing Christ glory & fulfilling Biblical mandates.  Here's an excerpt from their blog:    aplacecalledsimplicity.blogspot.com
We didn't get the memo! The one that has been circulating for quite a few years now, throughout Christianity in the western world: that our lives are our own and our "reward" for accepting Christ is a life of pleasure. The one that says that we can pretty much do what we want as long as we “do” the Christian thing on Sundays and maybe attend a small group during the week. The one that says we can ignore the needs all around us. The one that says it really is all about making ourselves and the Christians around us very comfortable.
I really encourage you to check out their blog and read more of how one family is being "radical" for Jesus!