David Platt wrote a book called Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream. It’s an amazing book about giving your life whole-heartedly to Jesus.
Not long after Platt’s book came out, another author wrote a book called Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World. Basically, this book said that all this radical stuff isn’t really meant for ‘normal’ people. The message was “Yeah, David Platt, you can be radical because you get paid to be radical. You don’t have to work at I.B.M.; you don’t have to be a plumber, so quit putting us under guilt and condemnation and shame by calling us forth to be radical.”
My father used to talk about “pillow-prophets,” leaders in the church who loved comfort and ease and also promised people a prosperous, easy life following God. The prophet Ezekiel spoke out against these types of leaders and believers.
“Ah, shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep. The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them” (Ezekiel 34:2-4, ESV).
May God help us not to have leisurely lives that cost others. May he help us not to live only for comfort at the expense of those in need around us. I think we want that because we are convicted when we are around somebody who is set apart for God. We think things like “Man, I get paid well and have spare time, but that person has five kids and two jobs, and yet they seem to have more of Jesus than I do.”
There’s a way to change that and submit to the conviction that the Spirit may be laying on your heart. I tell you, when a man or woman of God gets ahold of the Lord or the Lord gets ahold of them, comfort goes out the door. A passionate life is no longer a comfortable life.
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