The price is certainly high for people who don’t know Christ and who live in a world where Christians shrink back from self-denying faith and settle into self-indulging faith. While Christians choose to spend their lives fulfilling the American dream instead of giving their lives to proclaiming the kingdom of God, literally billions in need of the Gospel remain in the dark
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the cost of neglecting true faith in Christ in favor of worldly desires, highlighting the spiritual need in the world.
David Platt's quote addresses the significant spiritual consequences faced by individuals who do not know Christ, particularly emphasizing that many Christians may choose a life of comfort and self-indulgence rather than fully dedicating themselves to their faith and sharing the Gospel. This shrinkage of faith and commitment leads to billions of people living in spiritual darkness, underscoring the urgent call for Christian action and the proclamation of God's kingdom to those in need.
In practice
During a church sermon to encourage believers to reevaluate their priorities in life.
So what is the difference between someone who willfully indulges in sexual pleasures while ignoring the Bible on moral purity and someone who willfully indulges in the selfish pursuit of more and more material possessions while ignoring the Bible on caring for the poor? The difference is that one involves a social taboo in the church and the other involves the social norm in the church.
What if the very reason we have breath is because we have been saved for a global mission? And what if anything less than passionate involvement in global mission is actually selling God short by frustrating the very purpose for which he created us?
A high view of God’s sovereignty fuels death-defying devotion to global missions. Maybe another way to put it, people, and more specifically pastors, who believe that God’s sovereign over all things will lead Christians to die for the sake of all peoples.
[...]there is no injustice in God. The injustice lies in Christians who possess the gospel and refuse to give their lives to making it known among those who haven't heard.
God involves us in his missions not because He needs us, but because He loves us. And in His mercy He has invited us to be involved in His sovereign design for the spread of the gospel to the ends of the earth.
Somewhere along the way we have subtly and tragically taken the costly command of Christ to go, baptize, and teach all nations and mutated it into a comfortable call for Christians to come, be baptized, and listen in one location.
Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know so extraordinary a God.
I am grateful that early in my life I was blessed with a simple faith that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God, that he saw God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, in a vision. He translated the Book of Mormon by the gift and power of God. That testimony has been confirmed to me over and over again.
'Faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God' (Rom. 10:17). That is whence faith comes. It is not for me to sit down and wait for faith to come stealing over me with a strong sensation, but is for me to take God at His Word.
Living for Christ is a day-to-day going on with Him. It is a continuous dependence upon the Spirit of God. It is believing in His faithfulness.
Faith is not an instinct. It certainly is not a feeling - feelings don't help much when you're in the lions' den or hanging on a wooden Cross. Faith is not inferred from the happy way things work. It is an act of will, a choice, based on the unbreakable Word of a God who cannot lie, and who showed us what love and obedience and sacrifice mean, in the person of Jesus Christ
It is for us to do those things which the Lord requires at our hands, and leave the result with him.
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