Faith Matters Podcast

#414 - Radical Rewards; Day 5 of 5

“Radical Risk and Radical Reward”Jesus said to his followers, “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” In this, Jesus clearly acknowledged that following him involves risking the safety, security, and satisfaction we look for in this world. But in the end, Jesus said, following him leads to a radical reward that the world can never offer.This challenge for the disciples to lose their lives came at the end of a startling speech he made to them, as told in Matthew 10. Sending the disciples into the world, Jesus outlined the risks they would have to undertake in following him.Go to need. Jesus told his disciples that they would be surrounded by great need. His instructions? “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.”Just imagine the people that the disciples were going to encounter—the diseased, the dying, the despised, and the dangerous. Not exactly the most appealing groups to be around. And yet people like these are the very ones Jesus is sending us to as well.Go to danger. I can imagine the looks on the disciples’ faces when the next words came out of Jesus’ mouth: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” Jesus was saying to his disciples then—and, by implication, to you and me now—“I am sending you to dangerous places, where you will find yourself in the middle of evil, vicious people. And you will be there by my design.”We don’t like to think this. We say such things as, “The safest place to be is in the center of God’s will.” But what if the center of God’s will is in reality the most unsafe place for us to be?Jesus followed his humbling call for his disciples to go to great need and great danger with overwhelming promises of his love and care for them. Three times he told them, “Do not be afraid.”Radical obedience to Christ does not lead to comfort, nor to health, nor to prosperity in this world. Radical obedience to Christ, in fact, risks losing all these things. But we need not fear. In obeying him, we can look ahead with hope and confidence. For in the end, the risks we take will find their reward in Christ. And he is more than enough for us.Do you believe the reward found in Jesus is worth the risk of following him? How will you live out that conviction?If you enjoyed the Radical YouVersion Reading Plan, check out the book Radical: Taking Back Your Faith From the American Dream by David Platt. For an opportunity to receive a complimentary book, please click here.

#412 - Radical Compassion; Radical Day 4 of 5

“Compassion for Those God Has Compassion Upon”Jesus told a story about a rich man who lived in luxury while he ignored a poor man, Lazarus, who sat outside his gate, covered with sores and surrounded by dogs, eating the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table. Both men died. The rich man went to hell, and the poor man went to heaven. The rich man could see into heaven, and he cried out for relief from the agony of hell. The reply from heaven came, “Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.”This story illustrates God’s response to the needs of the poor. Sick, crippled, and impoverished, Lazarus received compassion from God. Of course, just because someone is poor does not make him righteous before God and therefore fit for heaven. At the same time, though, a quick perusal through Scripture shows that God hears, satisfies, and secures justice for the poor who trust in him.But this story also illustrates God’s response to those who neglect the poor. He responds to them with condemnation. Again, the Bible does not teach that wealth alone implies unrighteousness or warrants condemnation. The rich man in this story is not in hell because he had money. Instead, he is in hell because he lacked faith in God, leading him to indulge in luxuries while ignoring the poor outside his gate.Now I have to ask: With whom do you and I identify more—Lazarus or the rich man?God has made it clear to me that I look a lot like the rich man in this story. I don’t always think of myself as rich, and I’m guessing you may not either. But the reality is, if you and I have running water, shelter over our heads, clothes to wear, food to eat, and some means of transportation, then we are in the top 15 percent of the world’s people for wealth.You and I both have a choice.We can stand with the starving or with the overfed.We can identify with poor Lazarus on his way to heaven or with the rich man on his way to hell.We can embrace Jesus while we give away our wealth, or we can walk away from Jesus while we hoard our wealth.Would it be fair to say that your plans for today involve indulging in pleasures while throwing scraps to the poor outside your gate? If so, what would a radically generous alternative look like?

#411 - Christ’s Plan For Us; Radical Day 3 of 5

“Christ’s Plan for Us”Loving Jesus enough to radically follow and obey him leads to radical new priorities in our lives, including making disciples (Devotional Day 3) and giving sacrificially to the poor (Devotional Day 4).First, picture Jesus in the upper room as he prepares to go to the cross. Praying to the Father, he begins, “I have brought you glory on earth by completing the work you gave me to do” (John 17:4).What is shocking is that when Jesus summarizes his work on earth, he doesn’t start reliving all the great sermons he preached and all the people who came to listen to him. He doesn’t talk about the amazing miracles he performed—giving sight to the blind, enabling the lame to walk, feeding thousands of people with minimal food, bringing the dead back to life. Instead he talks repeatedly about the small group of men God had given him out of the world.At the end of the Son of God’s time on earth, he was staking everything on his relationships with twelve men. In the middle of his prayer, he even mentioned that one of them (Judas) was lost. So now we are down to eleven. Those eleven guys were the small group responsible for carrying on everything Jesus had begun.One of his final moments with them is captured in Matthew 28. The eleven gathered around him, and Jesus said, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”That was Jesus’ plan for them.And for us.If we were left to ourselves with the task of taking the gospel to the world, we would probably begin planning innovative strategies and plotting elaborate schemes. We would organize conventions, develop programs, and create foundations. We would get the biggest names to draw the biggest crowds to the biggest events.The plan of Christ, in contrast, is not dependent on having the right programs or hiring the right professionals but on being the right people—a community of people who realize that we are all enabled and equipped to carry out the purpose of God for our lives: making disciples.Whose life can you build into, nudging him or her nearer to Jesus, this very day?

#410 - Infinite Treasure; Radical Day 2 of 5

“Infinite Treasure”As we saw in yesterday’s devotional, Jesus’ claim on our lives is exclusive and demanding. And so, if we are not careful, we can misconstrue Jesus’ radical statements in the Gospels and begin to think that he does not want the best for us. But he does. He is not trying to strip us of all pleasure. Instead he is offering us the satisfaction of eternal treasure.We see this in Matthew 13. There Jesus tells his disciples, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”I love this picture. Imagine walking in a field and stumbling upon a treasure that is more valuable than anything else you could work for or find in this life. It is more valuable than all you have now or will ever have in the future.You look around and notice that no one else realizes the treasure is here, so you cover it up quickly and walk away, pretending you haven’t seen anything. You go into town and begin to sell off all your possessions to have enough money to buy that field. The world thinks you’re crazy. “What are you thinking?” your friends and family ask you.You tell them, “I’m buying that field over there.”They look at you in disbelief. “That’s a ridiculous investment,” they say. “Why are you giving away everything you have?”You respond, “I have a hunch,” and you smile to yourself as you walk away.You smile because you know. You know that in the end you are not really giving away anything at all. Instead you are gaining. Yes, you are abandoning everything you have, but you are also gaining more than you could have in any other way. So with joy—with joy!—you sell it all, you abandon it all. Why? Because you have found something worth losing everything else for.This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is something—someone—worth losing everything for. If we walk away from the Jesus of the gospel, we walk away from eternal riches. But if we abandon the trinkets of this world and respond to the radical invitation of Jesus, we discover the infinite treasure of knowing and experiencing him.How does knowing Jesus satisfy the deep needs in your soul?

#409 - The Shocking Truth; Radical - Day 1 of 5

It's day 1 of 5 in our daily devotional called Radical by David Platt on youversion read by Andi and Brian Hale“The Shocking Truth About Following Jesus”At the end of Luke 9, we find a story about three men who approached Jesus, eager to follow him. In surprising fashion, though, Jesus seems to have tried to talk them out of doing so.The first guy said, “I will follow you wherever you go.”Jesus responded, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” In other words, Jesus told this man that he could expect homelessness on the journey ahead. Followers of Christ are not guaranteed that even their basic need of shelter will be met.The second man told Jesus that his father had just died. The man wanted to go back, bury his father, and then follow Jesus.Jesus replied, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” I remember distinctly when my own dad died, and I cannot imagine hearing these words from Jesus.A third man approached Jesus and told him that he wanted to follow him, but before he did, he wanted to say good-bye to his family.Jesus wouldn’t let him. He told the man, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Plainly put, a relationship with Jesus requires total, superior, and exclusive devotion.Let’s put ourselves in the shoes of these would-be followers of Jesus in the first century. What if I were the potential disciple being told to become homeless? What if you were the one who was supposed to let someone else bury your dad? What if we were told that we couldn’t even say good-bye to our families?This is where we come face to face with a dangerous reality. We do have to give up everything we have to follow Jesus. We do have to love him in a way that supersedes our closest relationships in this world. For that’s what it means to live out the biblical gospel rather than our cultural assumptions of what it means to follow Jesus.Let us determine not to spend our lives on anything but radical abandonment to our Savior.What should you cut out of your life, starting today, if Jesus is your overriding priority?

#415 - Faith Matters; True Colors Life Matters

Pastor Bob McCartney gave a sermon series on current social issues this fall highlighting the truth found in the Bible. Here are my notes from this third sermon in his series, True Colors. WHY LIFE MATTERS