[Bryan]

So I have been reading John Piper's new book Don't Waste Your Life. It is quite good and has given me a new outlook on life. The whole purpose of the book is to help us learn how to live a life that counts and how to live a life that is a waste. He opens the book by quoting from Reader's Digest what he considers to be a tragedy.

I will tell you what a tragedy is. I will show you how to waste your life. Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader's Digest, which tells about a couple who "took early retirement from their jobs in the Northwest five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30' trawler, play softball and collect shells." At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn't. Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life - your one and only precious, God-given life - and let the last great work of our life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgement: "Look, Lord. See my shells." That is a tragedy.

It's sad but it is true. So many poeple think that when they turn 60 they can just stop. Why? Because they can't do anything else because they are old. No! A few weeks ago in my parents church, a old man, grandfather of a friend, announced to the church that he was going to England to minister to college aged adults. At first I thought, he's too old. But later I scolded myself for thinking such a thing. I hope that when I am 70 I am still going like he is. 76 years old and he was uprooting himself and his wife, going to a different country, starting fresh, all to minister to people my age.

So many Christians think of the Christian life as having a nice car, a nice well paying job, a nice house, a nice church, and no hell. The aim in their life is to increase their comfort and increase their ease. The thought of risking everything for the cause of Christ is foreign to them.

Oh I pray that we would be a generation of risk takers. People who risk everything to see Christ glorified among the nations. Knowing that we will be paid back 100-fold for the things we have given up for the sake of Christ (Mark 10:30) in the age to come. O, that we would be like Paul who counted everything as loss for the sake of Christ (Phil 3:7). Who will risk everything, indeed even their life, for kingdom priorities. Christ tells us that if we want to save our life, we have to lose it for His sake. Are you willing to risk everything? Your possessions, your reputation, your health and even life. Will you risk all these things for the cause of Christ? Will you put the great commission first in your life and the accumulation of wordly things last? Will you take up your cross and follow Christ?

My prayer is that we will be this kind of generation, a generation of risk takers for Christ.

[Becky]

That's awesome Bryan

Now if I can just get myself to do it