David Platt
David Platt
David Joseph Plattis an American pastor. He is currently the president of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, and he is also the author of the New York Times Best Seller Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. Platt released a follow-up book, Radical Together: Unleashing the People of God for the Purpose of God in April 2011. And in February 2013, he released Follow Me: A Call to Die. a Call to Live, which included an...
ProfessionReligious Leader
Date of Birth11 July 1979
CityAtlanta, GA
God in His providence hasn't called us to watch history, but to shape history by praying in His Name.
God has made a way of salvation for the lost. Not a way, but the way. And this is the good news - the gospel.
The mega-strategy of Jesus: make disciples.
Consider what it takes for successful businessmen and businesswomen, effective entrepreneurs and hardworking associates, shrewd retirees and idealistic students to combine forces with a creative pastor to grow a "successful church" today. Clearly, it doesn't require the power of God to draw a crowd in our culture. A few key elements that we can manufacture will suffice.
So the challenge for us is to live in such a way that we are radically dependent on and desperate for the power that only God can provide.
This is the reality about humanity. We are each born with an evil, God-hating heart. Genesis 8: 21 says that every inclination of man's heart is evil from childhood, and Jesus' words in Luke 11: 13 assume that we know we are evil.
Ultimate satisfaction is found not in making much of ourselves but in making much of God
This extremely shocking and utterly revolutionary call is the essence of what it means to be a disciple of Jesus: we are not called to simply believe certain points or observe certain practices, but ultimately to cling to the person of Christ as life itself.
In direct contradiciton to the American dream, God actually delights in exalting our inability.
Surely the gospel evokes unconditional surrender of all that we are and all that we have to all that He is.
God really is in the business of blessing his people in unusual ways so his goodness and his greatness will be declared among all peoples.
I was immersed in comfortable Christianity. Years ago, I found myself living what seemed like the American church dream - pastoring a large church, living in a large house, and surrounded by all the comforts this world has to offer. But inside I had a sinking feeling that I was missing the point.
We need to know what the Bible says about abortion and marriage, poverty and slavery, and we need to see how all of these issues fundamentally relate to the gospel.
Believing in the Jesus of the Bible makes life risky on a lot of levels because it is absolute surrender of every decision we make, every dollar we spend, our lives belong to another.