The Radical Experiment Part 4

Do you include sharing the gospel where you live or taking it to another part of the world in your life? To be honest, I don't share the gospel enough in my day to day life and I've never taken it to another part of the world. But God commands us to go and make disciples. If we are followers of Jesus, then this is not an option. We are required to step out of our comfort zones and share the Gift that God has given us. This is what it means to be a follower of Jesus and to live in radical obedience to him.

Part four of a five part series based on the book Radical by David Platt.

THE RADICAL EXPERIMENT 
A one year challenge to radical obedience

The five components 
1.  pray for the entire world
2.  read through the entire Word
3.  sacrifice your money for a specific purpose
4.  spend your time in another context
5.  commit your life to a multiplying community

Spend Your Time In Another Context
As important as it is for us to be radical in our giving, it is even more important for us to be radical in our going. Here's where your heart is going to be touched, possibly in a way that it never has before. After contemplating on whether to go to Sudan or to just send the money that it would cost him to go, Dr. Platt decided to go and found the answer after he got there. A man was telling him all about his life in Sudan. He explained to him all of the war, suffering and persecution his people had been through. He told of all the various groups, most of them secular or government organizations, who had brought supplies and how he was thankful for their help. Then he said, "Even in light of all these things that people have given us, do you want to know how you can tell who a true brother is?" He then responded, "A true brother comes to be with you in your time of need." When God chose to bring salvation to you and to me, he did not send gold or silver, cash or check. He sent himself- the Son.

If we are going to accomplish the global purpose of God, it will not be primarily through giving our money. It will happen primarily through giving ourselves. This is what the gospel represents, and it's what the gospel requires.

"Going" starts where we live
Like Jesus, our primary impact on the nations will occur in the disciple making we do right around us. Jesus didn't travel to every place in the world and he didn't go to all the multitudes. He poured his life into a few men for the sake of the multitudes in places he would never go.

"Going" does not stop where we live
If there are a billion people who have never heard the gospel and billion of others who still have not received the gospel, then we have an obligation to go to them. This is a command not a calling. Where we go and how long we stay is a calling, but it is clearly God's will for us to take the gospel to the nations.
So, the fourth challenge is to give some of your time in the next year to making the gospel known in a context outside your own city. Dr. Platt suggests dedicating at least two percent of your time to this task. That works out to about one week in the next year that you will travel and take the gospel to another context in the world, either domestically or internationally. We have no idea how giving two percent of our time will radically transform the other 98% of our lives. If we are not careful, this two percent commitment may even lead us one day to give 98% of our time in another context so that we come back to our American context for a two percent visit each year. The point is not where we go, how we get there or even how long we stay. The point is simply that we go.

So where will you go and how will you let God stretch you in the next year?

Used from the book Radical by David Platt