Risk Is Right E-Book

John Piper

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Seitenzahl: 49

Beschreibung

A choice lies before you: Either waste your life or live with risk. Either sit on the sidelines or get in the game. After all, life was no cakewalk for Jesus, and he didn't promise it would be any easier for his followers. We shouldn't be surprised by resistance and persecution. Yet most of us play it safe.  We pursue comfort. We spend ourselves to get more stuff. And we prefer to be entertained. We are all tempted by the idea of security, the possibility of a cozy Christianity with no hell at the end. But what kind of life is that really? It's a far cry from adventurous and abundant, from truly rich and really full, and it's certainly not the heights and the depths Jesus calls us to.  Discover in these pages a foundation for fearlessness. Hear God's promise to go with you into the unknown. And let Risk Is Right help you see the joys of a faith-filled and seriously rewarding life of Jesus-dependent abandon! Risk Is Right is a significantly expanded version of a chapter previously published in the book Don't Waste Your Life (chapter 5).

Leseprobe

Thank you for downloading this Crossway book. 

Sign-up for the Crossway Newsletter for updates on special offers, new resources, and exciting global ministry initiatives:

Crossway Newsletter

Or, if you prefer, we would love to connect with you online:

FacebookTwitterGoogle +

RISK

IS RIGHT

Risk Is Right: Better to Lose Your Life Than to Waste It

Copyright © 2012 by Desiring God Foundation

Published by Crossway

1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law.

First published as “Risk Is Right: Better to Lose Your Life Than to Waste It,” chapter 5 in Don’t Waste Your Life (Crossway), copyright 2003 by Desiring God Foundation, pp. 79–98.

Cover design: Dual Identity, inc.

First printing 2013

Printed in the United States of America

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway. 2011 Text Edition. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-3534-5 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-3535-2 Mobipocket ISBN: 978-1-4335-3536-9 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-3537-6

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Piper, John, 1946-

Risk is right : better to lose your life than to waste it / John Piper ; foreword by David Platt.

   pages cm

Includes bibliographical references. 

ISBN 978-1-4335-3534-5 (tp)

1. Christian life. 2. Risk perception. 3. Opportunity. I. Title.

BV4509.5.P567 2013

2012043962

248.4—dc23

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

BP           22   21   20   19   18   17   16   15   14   13 15   14   13   12   11   10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

CONTENTS

Foreword by David Platt

1  

The Ultimate Meaning of Life

2  

What Is Risk?

3  

Stories of Risk in the Old Testament

4  

The Great Risk Taker in the New Testament

5  

When the People of God Risk and When They Don’t

6  

Right and Wrong Reasons to Risk

7  

The Great Eight and the Foundation of Risk

8  

On the Far Side of Every Faith-Filled Risk: Triumphant Love

Desiring God: Note on Resources

FOREWORD

David Platt

Retreat or risk? Throughout redemptive history, that question has confronted God’s people. As John Piper references in the pages ahead, it was the decision facing the Israelites on a crucial day at Kadesh Barnea. Standing on the brink of the Promised Land, with the guarantee of God within their grasp, they ran from risk and chose to retreat. Instead of staking their lives on the faithfulness of God, they recoiled in fear. The cost was great, and the Lord left an entire generation to waste away in a wilderness until they died.

THE COMMISSION IS CLEAR

Fast-forward a few thousand years, and you come to the people of God standing in a similar moment. We live in a world where half the population is living on less than two dollars a day, and over a billion people dwell in desperate poverty. Such physical need is only surpassed by spiritual poverty. Billions of people are engrossed in the worship of false gods, and approximately two billion of those people are still unreached with the gospel, meaning that they have little chance of even hearing about the sacrifice of Christ for their sins before they die. Most of the unreached live in hard-to-reach areas of the world that are hostile to Christians—areas of the world where our brothers and sisters are presently being persecuted, imprisoned, and killed.

Though the challenges facing the church are great, the commission Christ has given is clear: make disciples of all the nations. Spend your lives spreading the gospel of God for the glory of God to the ends of the earth. As you go, trust in his sovereign authority, depend on his indwelling presence, and experience his incomparable joy.

JESUS IS WORTH IT

As we stand at our Kadesh Barnea, we have a choice. We, too, can retreat into a wilderness of wasted opportunity. We can rest content in casual, convenient, cozy, comfortable Christian lives as we cling to the safety and security this world offers. We can coast through a cultural landscape marked by materialism, characterized by consumerism, and engulfed in individualism. We can assent to the spirit of this age and choose to spend our lives seeking worldly pleasures, acquiring worldly possessions, and pursuing worldly ambitions—all under the banner of cultural Christianity.

Or we can decide that Jesus is worth more than this. We can recognize that he has created us, saved us, and called us for a much greater purpose than anything this world could ever offer us. We can die to ourselves, our hopes, our dreams, our ambitions, our priorities, and our plans. We can do all of this because we believe that the person and the plan of Christ bring reward that makes any risk more than worth it.

POWERED BY GOSPEL JOY

In Matthew 13:44 Jesus tells his disciples, “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys 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.