Don't Waste Your Life

Al Mohler’s March 27 radio program addressed the issue of retirement, its historical novelty, today’s financial pressures, and how we as Christians should think about it. If you’d like to listen to this program, the relevant section begins 11.5 minutes in.

Related resources from John Piper:

• Rethinking Retirement (booklet)
• Getting Old for the Glory of God (conference message)

That’s right. We want you to tear it apart cause that’s what we had in mind when we put it together.

Here’s how it works. On the back of every page is an original work of art inspired by the resources on the next page. The art is by friends of Desiring God from around the country and they’re meant to inspire you, and help you spread the message that God is the most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

So contact us to get a free catalog and use it to pass on the good news to others. Watch what a couple guys from our church did on a Friday afternoon. Be creative with your spreading and send us a photo or upload a video.

The full text of Don’t Waste Your Life is now available online for free in a format optimized for the iPhone.

For the rest of us (who perhaps aren’t so hip or technologically savvy) the ordinary online version of Don’t Waste Your Life can be downloaded free along with about 50 other titles.

27 million people worldwide are victims of modern-day slavery. They are forced into the sex trade or back-breaking labor. Most of the victims lured into this criminal world are innocent children.

A new documentary in theaters this week, Call + Response, explores the injustices that are taking place in this underground society.

These atrocities are not only happening in other parts of the world, but also in the United States.

My good friend, Ben Patterson, who helped produce this documentary, encourages me by his example to move toward need and not comfort.

See this movie if you want to learn more and help support modern-day abolitionists. It is only in theaters for a limited time, so I would encourage you to attend one of the showings around the country this week. Check to see if it is in your city.

In some recent reading I have found C.S. Lewis and John Piper especially illuminating on the necessity of risk and courage.

C.S. Lewis wrote on courage in The Screwtape Letters:

Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality.

A chastity or honesty or mercy which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions.

Pilate was merciful till it became risky. (137-8)

And John Piper wrote on risk in Don’t Waste Your Life:

Risk is right. And the reason is not because God promises success to all our ventures in his cause. There is no promise that every effort for the cause of God will succeed, at least not in the short run. John the Baptist risked calling King Herod an adulterer when he divorced his own wife in order to take his brother’s wife. For this John got his head chopped off. And he had done right to risk his life for the cause of God and truth. Jesus had no criticism for him, only the highest praise (Matthew 11:11).

Paul risked going up to Jerusalem to complete his ministry to the poor. He was beaten and thrown in prison for two years and then shipped off to Rome and executed there two years later. And he did right to risk his life for the cause of Christ. How many graves are there in Africa and Asia because thousands of young missionaries were freed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the enchantment of security and then risked their lives to make much of Christ among the unreached peoples of the world!

And now what about you? Are you caught in the enchantment of security, paralyzed from taking any risks for the cause of God? Or have you been freed by the power of the Holy Spirit from the mirage of Egyptian safety and comfort? Do you men ever say with Joab, “For the sake of the name, I’ll try it! And may the Lord do what seems good to him”? Do you women ever say with Esther, “For the sake of Christ, I’ll try it! And if I perish, I perish”? (89-90)

We also do not have to go far to know the mind of God on risk and courage. One example of many is Hebrews 11:35-39:

Therefore do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised. For,

Yet a little while,
and the coming one will come and will not delay;
but my righteous one shall live by faith,
and if he shrinks back,
my soul has no pleasure in him.

But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who have faith and preserve their souls.

Would you join me in praying for those in your family, friends, church, and brothers and sisters around the world who have need of courage today in the face of much risk?

For 12 months, the Resource Strategies department at DG has been testing whether our Don’t Waste Your Life T-shirts (charcoal, blue, pink) can be used as effective gospel-spreading tools. After receiving numerous unsolicited testimonies from people around the world about the T-shirt opening doors for gospel conversations at airports, coffee shops, etc., we’ve decided to begin offering them online.

They’re specifically designed to be a tool for spreading. When I went for a walk through downtown Minneapolis a couple weeks ago wearing a DWYL T-shirt, I was approached by three very different people about it.

An African American man in his 30s asked where I bought the shirt. Later a white lady in her 50s walked up and said she loved it. And then a transient man in a park suggested we trade shirts right on the spot. (I really wanted to, but he had a sweaty Harley Davidson shirt so I passed on the offer.)

The shirt design is an effective tool to provoke conversations because it taps into a universal desire within us all. But be warned! If you wear the shirt be ready to speak the truth in love. For those of you who decide to take the challenge, we have a special message for you inside the shirt.

Our friends at Covenant Life Church are preaching a series of “Don’t Waste Your…Life” sermons this summer. The whole series looks great!

Joshua Harris, Gregg Harris, Dave Harvey, C. J. Mahaney, Robin Boisvert, Mark Mitchell, Jeff Purswell, and Jon Smith will all contribute.

If you know anything about C. J., you won’t be surprised that his sermon assignments are “Don’t Waste Your Humor” (which he preached yesterday) and “Don’t Waste Your Sports.”

Seth Godin, one of today’s best marketing minds, wrote a blog post last week entitled “Is it worthy?”

Godin reflects on whether any of his efforts are worth the investments and sacrifices of others, or whether someone else could have done better with the resources that he has been given.

Godin concludes his reflection:

The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.

There is much to affirm here. Yes, we fail and fail often. Yes, we should participate in something unimaginably big. And, no, the fear of failure should not keep us from continuing in this pursuit.

Godin’s remarks also raise two questions for me:

1. Is searching for “something bigger than we can imagine” enough, or do we need to find something, too?

The seeking is essential, but only because what we find is so wonderful. The asking is important and valuable because of the answers.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed….
The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. (Psalm 34:4-6, 10)

2. Can we be set free from the fear of failure by telling ourselves that it is in our nature to fail?

In part, yes, but for the Christian there is far more. The fear of failure is ultimately conquered through Christ. We need to…

• …own up to our sin—the real failure. We fall short of and belittle the glory of God by pursuing our own greatness. (Romans 1:18-23;3:23)
• …change our goal. In faith, we should pursue the glory of Christ, the perfect one, rather than our own perfection. (Galatians 5:1-5)
• …trust in Christ for our perfection, because we are judged according to his righteousness as he intercedes on our behalf continually before God, the Father. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

Recently Desiring God has been working with ReachLife Ministries. I’ve asked Trip Lee of Reach Records to tell us some of what God is doing through their work and our partnership.

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Too many youth today are wasting their lives. Our culture promotes it: “Buy this, wear that, drive this.” Some cultures pride themselves on that very message. This is particularly true in the hip hop culture.

Unfortunately, many today believe the hip hop culture is unredeemable, better left to itself. Hip-hop is rarely thought of as a culture that ought to be invaded with the truth of Jesus Christ. Truth is, there’s a desperate need of Christians who are willing to spend their lives in order to reach it and say with Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (Romans 1:16).

Reach Records and ReachLife Ministries are devoted to doing just that; reaching the hip-hop culture for the glory of God. We embrace the truth that all cultures are wicked and sinful—that is, until people within that culture are confronted with the truth of Jesus Christ. Our goal is to be used by God for this very purpose.

Reach Records creates music that is relevant to the culture and is packed full of biblical truth. This platform has proven to be an incredible tool, both to introduce people to Jesus Christ, as well as help others go deeper in their faith. Through our music, we have the opportunity to reach a culture that otherwise would have no interest in what we have to say.

As a result of the music, it became apparent that many in this culture lacked solid biblical tools and resources to disciple them in the Christian life. Therefore, we created ReachLife ministries, a non-profit organization which produces Christ-centered tools and resources for urban churches and ministries to provide what music is not designed to do, disciple.

This summer, we are very excited about the opportunity to travel the country for our first official concert tour. The “Unashamed Tour” will hit around 25 cities in the US and the UK. It will be an incredible opportunity to encourage young believers all over the globe to not waste their lives and to be unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Each of us at ReachLife has been deeply impacted by the ministry of Desiring God and we are excited about the recent partnership with them. They have agreed to donate 10,000 copies of the book Don’t Waste Your Life, which will be distributed free at our concerts this summer.

These books will be placed in the hands of urban youth across the country who have never been exposed to Desiring God or the teachings of John Piper. I cannot express the excitement I feel when I see young hip-hoppers not only hearing about the glory of Christ through our concert, but also leaving with resources that will help them to continue in that excitement.

Please join us in praying that the Lord will use both the tour and the books to glorify himself as he calls this generation to live unashamed.

Thanks to Jim for bringing this applicable clipping into work:

Last week my wife found our mini-van window shattered and our stereo missing. Honestly, my first reaction was not biblically informed. My thoughts ran to Murphy’s Law and the irony that I had just replaced our broken stereo with a new one two weeks earlier.

As with all shallow adages, Murphy’s Law did not really help me make sense of my world.

Then my mind fled to Jesus’ words,

…lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,… where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-20)

Now, a week later, I am thankful that God conspires against my sin to keep me from loving things, and I’m contemplating not shelling out more money to replace the stereo.

I think I want to leave that big hole in the middle of my dashboard. What better way to remind myself and my family that our treasure is in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy and thieves cannot break in and steal?

In 1797, William Wilberforce wrote A Practical View of Christianity in which he addressed the defective nature of the Christianity many middle and upper class people in England professed. Here is an excerpt that sounds as if it could have been written about today. It makes plain that affluence has a consistent effect on Christians in every age.

Yet thus life rolls away with too many of us in a course of shapeless idleness. Its recreations constitute its chief business…amusements are multiplied, and combined, and varied, to fill up the void of a listless and languid life; and by the judicious use of these different resources, there is often a kind of sober settled plan of domestic dissipation, in which with all imaginable decency year after year wears away in unprofitable vacancy. Even old age often finds us pacing in the same round of amusements which our early youth had tracked out. (99)

Individually, let’s pray, plan, and live in such a way that no one could use his words to describe our lives:

• “shapeless idleness”
• “listless and languid”
• “domestic dissipation”
• “unprofitable vacancy”

Collectively, let’s pray, plan, and live so that affluent American Christianity does not devolve into

a system of decent selfishness…a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness. (99)