God's Great Commission

WOW!! I am blown away by the message I heard tonight from David Platt. Let me say this--if you have never heard or read anything by him, do it NOW! He is phenomenal! He preached about being totally missions minded in every single aspect of a church and of your life, and about spending every moment of our life attempting to fulfill the Great Commission by trying to reach the 6,000+ unreached people groups in the world. His main scripture passage was from Romans 1:14-25. Here are the 3 points he made:

(talking about unreached people groups)
1. Their knowledge of God is only enough to damn them to hell.
-There is no "innocent guy in Africa" that will burn if he has never heard the gospel. He doesn't EXIST! We are all guilty!!!

2. The grace of God is powerful enough to save them forever.
3. The plan of God warrants the sacrifices of His people.
-Romans 10:12-15; Revelation 7:9-10
4. The Son of God DESERVES the praise of all peoples.
-Romans 16:25-27

He said we should be willing to give up our lives to fulfill the Great Commission. And he's so right!! The problem is this: we are lazy, selfish people who don't want to change the way things work & have worked for years. He told a story of an elderly couple in his church who were going on trips to spread the gospel instead of taking cruises or playing golf, or even eating at church luncheons. Not to put those down, but how are any of those furthering the kingdom? His point was that if we are not doing it for the ultimate means of reaching people for Christ, then why are we doing it?? So now the challenge: what am I, what are you, willing to sacrifice, give up, lose, in order to do that? It's not going to be easy, but He never promised an easy road did He? Last story: at the church where he is the pastor, The Church at Brook Hills, he cut lots of things from the budget in order to focus on missions. One of those was a snack "choice" for the preschoolers (i.e. they didn't get to choose which one they wanted-they got whatever was there). On the way home from church one Sunday after that, he asked his 4 year old son how church was that day. His response was, "We didn't have goldfish today..." to which his wife said, you know that's your Daddy's fault. Haha! His child didn't understand, just like many people in the church don't and won't, but we still have to do what we know is right. And when we do that, God will be pleased.

Hope this made you think & want to reorganize your priorities as much as it did us. David Platt has a book that basically talks about all of this and more entitled "Radical."
Have a great week!
~Laurie & Kyle