Our Radical Experiment

One of the books that we read some time ago was "Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream" by David Platt.  At the end of the book he extends a challenge for the next year.

My husband, myself, and our oldest son all read this book.  When we got to the end, we had a family meeting and decided that we would take this challenge.  We committed to the one year experiment.

Little did we know that God would use this to begin a stir in our hearts that would be life changing...

I do not share the following to give the impression of "wow, look at us."  Instead, I offer it as an example of how it might look for a normal family taking it on.  I also hope it might encourage and inspire others to take the challenge as well. 

We're just an average American family convinced there is more to life than living what we call this American dream.
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*  Our trip to Guatemala was part of that commitment: To give our time in another context. (By the way, there are many more stories of Guatemala still to come!)

*  We began using the book "Operation World:  The Definitive Prayer Guide to Every Nation" to meet the challenge of praying for the entire world. 

This book gives information on countries alphabetically and covers the entire populated world.  It also gives us a side of geography with our prayers as we have our globe right with the book.  As we are reading about each nation, we locate it on the globe to give an even greater perspective on that country and their needs.

*  Another of the challenges is to sacrifice your money for a specific purpose.  Over a week's time we sat down as a family and re-worked our budget.  We cut out many items we considered "essential", agreeing that for a year we would do without those items and that money would all be given away to others.  We then agreed as a family what those needs would be. 
 
*  To read through the entire Word is another one of the challenges.  Although we have done this before, we have committed to do it again. I have never read through chronologically, so I am using the "NIV Once a Day Bible Chronological Edition" to go through this time.

*  To commit our lives to multiplying community:  Our church body is in the process of making some radical decisions and changes for the sake of reaching others for Jesus.  We have renewed our own personal commitment to this body and this vision in the days and months ahead.

"If we are going to live in radical obedience to Christ, we will need the church to do it.  We will need to show one another how to give liberally, go urgently, and live dangerously." ~ David Platt

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And in the process of this one year radical experiment... there has grown a pull on our own hearts.  A draw to an area.  A draw to a people.  But a process will be required to land us in that place with those people.

This week the actions to begin the process of answering that radical pull on our own hearts have been put into place.  Logically, it doesn't make complete sense.  It won't make sense to a lot of onlookers.

It will cost us.

But it is right.

"Christ's command to make disciples is an invitation to give our lives for the sake of others." ~ David Platt