So this David Platt guy...

I've recently been following and listening a lot to David Platt, and I have to say, he's both very encouraging and challenging in what he has to say. I'm definitely going to keep watching out for his sermons as I try to digest and apply what I've already been learning. Platt, 33, is the pastor of The Church of Brook Hills and the author of Radical and Radical Together. He also does lots of missions work overseas in the persecuted church. The reason why I think he's someone worth listening to is that he tries to exegete what's in the Bible and then apply that to whatever issue. In other words, he doesn't come in with any preconceived notions about what we should believe, but just goes from the scriptures. Here's his church's website: The Church at Brook Hills. Also here are some great resources that he has for free online: http://www.radical.net/media/

Last year, I got a good first dose of his preaching style and energy with Secret Church. Secret Church is an intense Friday night seminar where he delves into one topic and tries to put together what the Bible and many Christian leaders in the past have to say about it. Platt simulcasts it online from The Church at Brook Hills, so that people around the country and the world can watch at the same time. (kind of interesting how the church used new technology as it develops, isn't it?) It's very thorough, very intense, and thus really long - but totally worth it. These events apparently have been going on about every six months for a couple of years, though my first one was last November. The theme: Family, Church, Sex, and the Gospel. Kind of a touchy subject, especially in this day and age, but I really needed it and I feel like our culture needs it. These are some of the issues he touched on: marriage, sexual purity, homosexuality, caring for orphans and widows, and gender roles.

On Good Friday(April  6th), he tackled another tough subject: The Cross and Suffering. From the website:

"...whether walking through sickness, sorrow, pain, or persecution, the questions abound: Why am I suffering? Where is God when I suffer? How can I suffer well? When will my suffering end? How can God be good and allow such evil in the world? How can God be gracious and ordain such suffering in my life?"

The last question is very interesting to me. Basically, what Platt ends up saying is that God does ordain suffering - he doesn't just allow it, but ordains it. And it's for our betterment many times. Without suffering, we would not be saved from our sins. Without suffering, many times we do not see how awesome God is and how dependent we are on him for every breath. There's a lot more to it. I feel like I need to go back and read more, because we had to go through every blank so quickly to finish (and we finished at like 1:45 even at this breakneck speed!). Platt went from Genesis to Revelation, in just about every book in the Bible to weave a picture of why there is suffering and a Sovereign God. Because this is more than an academic issue, but a very personal issue, I really respect him for making this one of his focus points for Secret Church

A paragraph can't cover all he went through, but in the end these were his four conclusions:

1. A high view of God —His sovereignty, His wisdom, His goodness, and His glory—is essential for understanding suffering in your life and in this world.
2. A humble view of man —his sinful depravity and small perspective—is essential for understanding suffering in your life and in this world.
3. The ultimate reason suffering exists is to exalt the glory of God’s grace through the suffering of God’s Son for the salvation of undeserving sinners.
4. God ordains suffering for the Christian in a variety of ways for a variety of purposes.

I'm also in the process of reading Radical. I read Radical Together already. Both are about taking back our lives from the American dream and culture and seeing how they should really look in light of the scriptures. And also - who is Jesus, really? What happens when we take out our images of him and look at who he says he is? Radical is more individualistic, Radical Together is about the church as a whole. I'll probably write more about them later - and more importantly - what I'm going to do in response to them. I do too much thinking and not enough doing when it comes to my faith.

Anyway, just processing some of the things I've been thinking about recently.  I've also been reading Francis Chan's book Erasing Hell: What God said about eternity, and the things we've made up. Maybe soon I'll do more in-depth reviews of them.