Radical

Lately, I have been reading a lot of fiction and, though it serves a purpose to get my mind off of the craziness of my life at this moment, I decided to jump into a book that my mom brought for me when she came to visit me out here that I just haven't started yet.

Little did I know that it would rock me and bring me to tears in the first chapter.

The author, David Platt, talks about different experiences within the American church and the church abroad. He challenges us to leave it all and follow Christ. This part really got to me:

"But I want to know him. I want to experience him. I want to be a part of a people who delight in him, like the brothers and sisters in underground Asia who have nothing but him. And I want to be a part of a people who are risking it all for him.
For the sake of more than a billion people today who have yet to even hear the gospel, I want to risk it all. For the sake of twenty-six thousand children who will die today of starvation or a preventable disease, I want to risk it all. For the sake of an increasingly marginalized and relatively ineffective church in our culture, I want to risk it all. For the sake of my life, my family, and the people who surround me, I want to risk it all."

In so many ways, I feel like I have risked it all...but yet, have I? I still have a storage unit of stuff back in the States and I make trips back and forth to visit family and tell people about the work that is being done here. Am I really risking it all? I want to be...I want to be willing to lay it all down for the sake of the thousands of children that are dying world-wide. I want to be willing to lay it all down for the 120 children who I see everyday--the ones who go home to single mothers, the orphaned, the abandoned, the trafficked, and needy. Oh God, help me lay it all down. I want to risk it all for your kids, your kingdom, your love...