I'm taking some serious notes from John Piper's book, "Don't Waste Your Life", for a sermon series I will be beginning on Mother's Day (more on the series later). I love Piper's passion and emphasis on risk being a natural part of our Christian walk. Here are a few nuggets that I thought I'd share with you. All of these quotes will be paraphrased and not direct quotes...
Chapter 5
In first century A.D. to become a Christian was to risk your life. (Hebrews 11:37-38) It was also during the first three centuries that set the pattern for the growth of the Christian church. Christians under the Roman Empire had no legal right to existence. “Maybe we will be killed for being Christians. Maybe we won’t. It’s a risk.” That was normal.
Chapter 7
The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure He is.
Let’s come to the end and be able to say to a family, a church, a city, and the unreached peoples of the earth, “For your tomorrow, I gave my today. Not just for your tomorrow on earth, but for the countless tomorrows of your ever-increasing gladness in God.”
Can I get anyone else to speak with urgency along with me? Who will confront with passion and tears? Who pleads with people to not waste their lives? Who will love them enough to show them a life so radical and so real and so costly and Christ-saturated that they feel the emptiness and insignificance of protecting a life they will eventually lose anyway?
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