I have heard Dr. Platt speak before at Collegiate Evangelism Conference in 2006, I was with the Calhoun BCM. He spoke about being a missionary in a country in Asia that he could not disclose the location for safety reasons. It is unfathomable to me that Christians in other countries are being persecuted for their faith. We live a very comfortable Christianity here in America, and I wander if some persecution would help the American church. What is amazing to me is to read about Christians around the world and they don't want it any other way, they worship the Lord in joy even in the midst of pain and suffering.
I was hit hard by his statement about abandoning everything to follow Christ. We read passages like Luke 9 and as he says "we don't believe it. We are afraid of what it might mean for our lives. So we rationalize these passages away". He again says that "we are giving in to the dangerous temptations to take the Jesus of the Bible and twist him into a version of Jesus we are more comfortable with". That statement hits me hard. I am about to give up everything I have known for 23 years and move to New Orleans in radical abandon to follow Jesus. But I don't want to just go to seminary, get my degree and then work at a church in a comfortable 40 hour a week job. I feel called to seminary because it is the next step to preparing me for what God is doing through me. People need Jesus, and not the comfortable Jesus that we make him out to be. They need the real Jesus that left the throne of heaven, lived the life we could not live, died the death we should have died and is calling us to do the same. He is calling us to give up our everything for him.
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