Skye Jethani: Rethinking Radical - Torrey Memorial Bible Conference 2013

it's good to be back one more time with you guys one of the things I really enjoy about college students and I work with them informally from time to time where I live is that you guys haven't had your lives completely crushed yet by reality for the most part you still have thoughts about how great your life is gonna be and how you're gonna change the world and all the plans that you have ahead of you and by the time you get to my age for most of you you're gonna realize how completely not even

ridiculous you were not to completely crush your spirits prematurely you know life will do that on its own a couple years ago a friend of mine got on my case saying sky you have to be on Twitter you got to do this Twitter thing and I said well explain it to me and he says you just you just tell people what you're doing it's 140 characters what you're doing it I said well why and he said well people want to know what you're doing I said no one wants to know what I'm doing it's my life is complete

ly mundane and boring and he said just trust me and as I start looking at Twitter I realized I I don't want people to see the reality of my life because I like hiding behind this veil of mystery right the imagination is so much more interesting than reality eventually got on Twitter and I realized I can't tweet about what my real life actually is because it's so uninteresting so boring so I always tweet about other things that people are doing and stuff but what it made me do was take a sort of

assessment of where my life is at when I was in college I was still under the impression that I was gonna have some kind of amazing radically unusual life my mother always said that I suffered from what she calls terminal uniqueness she she calls me and she named me sky it's her fault right I'm different terminal uniqueness is that whenever I get a new a group of people long enough I have to somehow differentiate myself from them I have to do something different and it's terminal because this is

usually deadly it usually leads to some kind of fatality but as a constant if you go I'm not gonna live an ordinary life I'm gonna be different and part of the reason I thought that way was my upbringing so I mentioned my father came from India and he traveled halfway around the world to restart his life in another country and many of my relatives have scattered all over the world by the time I went to college I had already traveled to 30 foreign countries I had travelled a lot as a kid and see

n a lot of the world and give me this big vision and now and then became a Christian and you know add the whole God component into that I go to seminary got married and by the time I was graduating seminary I was like okay that was the time I'm gonna God's gonna call me to some crazy place some radical ministry something fantastic well nobody would hire me I was completely useless I couldn't get a job anywhere and a friend of mine says as I'm working for my father-in-law in his warehouse you kno

w you grew up in Wheaton there's lots of churches in Wheaton why don't you apply to a church in Wheaton you guys may not know anything about Wheaton you know Eaton there were no Wheatley Wheaton there's like five churches on every corner even though a corner only has four spots right because there's like multiple congregations meeting in every just churches everywhere I'm like that it's a suburban it's fairly affluent it's even the topography is boring it's just flat right it's just Illinois fla

t nothing at all radical or exciting about Whedon so I told this friend I would not take a ministry role in Wheaton unless God audibly called me never say never listen to Justin Bieber right never say never so I end up taking this Church in Wheaton and I'm like oh right where I grew up in suburbia nothing worse than suburbia but I told my wife we are not going to live a typical Wheaton suburban life we're gonna be different we may have to get the house and all that but we're not gonna buy into t

hem the minivan the soccer practice with the kids and we're not gonna do all that sort of stuff well we have the minivan we had it we had the kids yes they play soccer but like I was holding on to this I've got to be different so a couple years ago I decide I'm not gonna be the typical so urban car driving coffee drinking NPR listening suburbanite so I went out and I bought a scooter yeah right now in Southern California that may fly but in Chicago people don't ride scooters it's bad weather it'

s just not cool but I found this little used scooter from a college student I bought it beat-up little thing got a hundred miles a gallon I'm like a ram eco-friendly I'm different no one else got a scooter I look like an idiot but I'm different and then the first week I have this scooter I'm driving down Main Street and Wheaton just minding my own business and this other scooter is coming down the street now that's not that's not the end of it you know how like when you have a doing you guys dri

ve motorcycles or the big kind of hog Harley motorcycles like yeah this section worries me a little bit and they pass each other the guys would just kind of do one of those little flicks of the finger like yeah you know we're kind of in the same community so I'm riding on my scooter and the other scooters coming toward me first of all it's a pink scooter not mine the other one it's pink and the woman riding it has a pink helmet and she rides past me and gives you a little Wyatt I thought what if

I joined what what what community that I'm trying to be different I don't want that kind of different so okay I've got the suburban house I've got the minivan I'm a part of some pink riding scooter gang of women at least I will be a different kind of parent my children are gonna be untainted from suburbia and the world around us they're gonna be you know on fire young little Christian kids that live differently and I pull my scooter up into the driveway that day and my three-year-old is zipping

down the sidewalk on her bike going I've got the moves like Jagger I've got the moves like she's three years old where did she learn this so I have essentially failed in every attempt at being different my kids are conforming to suburban lifestyles got the house the car the entire thing not at all the life I thought I was going to have when I was 20 years old in some of the work I've done with college students over the last few years I hear them communicate regularly to me questions about what

am I supposed to do with my life one conversation stands out there was a student who was a junior at the time he was beginning to think about his senior year he was in the pre-med program and he came to me because he had questions about what he should do with his life and he wanted to meet with me and talk talk it through for a few weeks and he said all of his life he wanted to be a doctor but now he was questioning that desire and thought maybe he should be a pastor or perhaps a missionary inst

ead this guy's last name was booty and I ty said look with that last name you've only got two options you are either a doctor or a pirate one or the other but that's it but he's like I said why don't you want to be a doctor and he said well I always wanted to be a cardiologist but you know does the world really need another cardiologist maybe I should be in missions instead maybe I should be a missionary because that's a more radical lifestyle that would be more exciting that'd be more meaningfu

l that would make me more significant over the last few years there's been a lot of conversation in the church and particularly a young among young people about living more radically being sold out for Christ and his mission in the world what I want to do in this session is rethink what we mean by a radical Christian life because I think the way we tend to define radical is very culturally bound rather than biblically and I want to begin by looking at how we came to this place of valuing radical

ness so much to do that we're gonna look at another story from scripture one that I'm sure you are all familiar with but hopefully I can illuminate some things about this story that you hadn't seen before it's the story of the prodigal son which is in Luke chapter 15 go ahead and turn there in your Bibles Luke chapter 15 I'll begin in verse 11 Jesus is sharing this story with a group of guests at a dinner he said there was a man who had two sons and the younger of them said to his father father

give me the share of property that is coming to me and he divided his property between them not many days later the younger son gathered all he had and took a journey into a far country and there he squandered his property in reckless living let's pause there for a moment it's hard to grasp from our cultural and historical timeframe just how offensive this story is the idea of a son telling his dad essentially dropped dead I want my inheritance now it would have been shocking to Jesus listeners

outrageously offensive but that's what this son does this son for me in the story represents one way of understanding the Christian life for a great many of us and especially the Western North American Christian context we understand Christianity through the lens of consumerism this younger son represents Christian consumerism let me give you some kind of working definition of that consumerism it's not just materialism it's not just buying stuff or accumulating wealth or putting all your signifi

cance in what you drive or what you own consumerism is fundamentally worldview it's a way of seeing your place in the world and what consumerism says is that the essence of life is fulfilling your desires and everything and everyone's value is determined by how well they satisfy your desires so consumers inputs you the consumer in the center of the universe and everything and everyone orbits around you let me take it completely outside the realm of your life or faith to illustrate what I mean le

t's go to economics imagine you're a rice farmer in Southeast Asia somewhere and you're just a subsistence farmer you grow enough rice to feed you and your family the reason you value that rice is because it's rice the actual nutritional content of the rice sustains your body now if you grow more rice than you need to survive that extra rice becomes a commodity meaning it's no longer valued because it's rice it's valued because it can be traded for something else so you go to town you trade that

rice to get clothing or tools or a television set I don't know something else that you want that's commodification what it means is that the rice is not valued for what it inherently is but what it can be traded for now in a consumer society we have taken this idea of commodification and applied it to everything and everyone nothing has inherent value anymore everything's value is determined by its usefulness so how is it that we can tolerate the fact that there are 44 million children aborted

every year it's because an unborn child has no inherent value the only value it has is the value given to it by its mother why are there more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history 27 million slaves according to international justice mission because people are not valued for their own arrant worth there only valued for what they can do for us for their labor sociologists economists say that the united states transitioned into a predominantly consumer culture in the 195

0s it's also in that season that we see a massive escalation in divorce rates there are many reasons for it but one of them is that marriage cease to be inherently valuable my marriage or my spouse is now seen as valuable as long as they satisfy my desires and when my desires are no longer satisfied I am justified in ending that marriage or trading in my spouse for a new model because everything is determined its values determined by its usefulness to me that's what consumerism teaches us the sa

me thing applies to our faith when we have had our whole life and formation in a consumer society it makes sense then that we'd approach God the very same way God carries in our culture no inherent value the only thing that gives him value is his usefulness to me what does he give me what do I get from him how can he help me through my life the reason why I believe this younger son represents Christian consumerism as you see them that mindset that posture in his behavior toward his father notice

that the younger son is not interested in a relationship with his father he just wants his father's stuff give me my part of the inheritance now so that I can use it to go satisfy my desires in a distant country some of us approach God the exact same way we're not actually interested in Jesus we're interested in what he can do for us what we can get from him what he can provide for us a couple years ago there was a sociologist named Christian Smith who did a very comprehensive study on the fait

h of American teenagers and he concluded that the faith of most teenagers in America including those who go to church regularly is not Christianity instead he said that the faith of most teen is what he calls em T D moralistic therapeutic deism let me read a quote from Smith that defines it he said my moralistic I mean being good and nice by therapeutic I mean being primarily concerned with one's own happiness in contrast to focusing on glorifying God learning obedience or serving others finally

by deism I mean a view of God as normally distant and not involved in one's life except if one has a problem that one needs God to solve in other words God functions as a combination divine Butler and cosmic therapist that is Christian consumerism God has no inherent value he exists to serve me he exists to help me through my problems he exists to give me what I want now the hard part in this is there's a slight grain of truth to it we are told that God is the father of the lights from whom com

es every good and perfect gift everything that draws its breath draws its breath from God he gives us life and sustains us and Jesus tells us that whatever we need we are to ask God our Father who loves us and will provide for us so we are to see God is the one who provides who blesses who gives good gifts but if this is the only dimension to our Christian life then we are Christian consumers using God to satisfy and achieve our own desires you can see that very clearly in this young man's behav

ior he squanders his wealth in this distant country in reckless living and then in verse 14 it says when he had spent everything a severe famine rose in the land and he began to be in need so he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country who sent him into his fields to feed pigs and he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate and no one gave him anything but when he came to himself he said how many of my father's hired servants have more than enough bread but

I sit here and perish with hunger I will arise and go to my father and I will say to him father I have sinned against heaven and before you I'm no longer worthy to be called your son treat me as one of your hired servants and he arose and came to his father now whenever I was taught this parable it was always presented to me as a story of repentance the son selfishly takes his father's wealth squander zidane wild living losses at all a famine arises so he has no opportunity to get anything bette

r out of life himself so he he does a 180 he comes to his senses and he goes back to his father and bakes for forgiveness but the more I've spent time with this passage and looked more carefully at it the more I'm convinced this is not a story of repentance because why does the Sun go home what is he looking for is he looking for a reunited relationship with his father no he's just looking for one more handout and this time it's not money it's not his half of the inheritance it's a job wouldn't

it be better to go home and be a servant in my father's house rather than sit here and feed these pigs once again he's just looking for something from his father he doesn't actually value his father he just wants another handout sometimes we make a distinction between desiring godly things righteous things healthy things and desiring sinful selfish things but notice whether we want a BMW or fame and fortune or we want a healthy marriage and good kids a healthy body or to overcome an addiction on

e set of desires we might say is more honorable than another one set of desires is more godly than another but if ultimately our posture is just simply wanting to get something from God then we're not actually valuing God we're just trying to use him to get something for ourselves some of you are probably thinking about your futures and possibly going into ministry or a pastoral calling some of you may dream about starting a church or launching a ministry let me get your note books out because I

'm going to give you the formula for how to grow a mega church it's very simple okay now before I say this one caveat I am NOT arguing that all mega churches were built this way I'm just saying if you want to do it really quick here's how to do it number one survey a community and find out what people want step two tell them that Jesus is how to get it that's how you grow a big church in a consumer context you make Jesus into a device rather than what people actually desire friend of mine and mi

nistry likes to say in America we've made Jesus into the duct tape wd-40 combo pack he's all you need to fix just about anything you have a problem in life come to Jesus he can help you fix it that's consumer Christianity it has been prevalent in the United States for at least that last half century it has been very effective very successful it has grown some very large ministries it made some very famous pastors since about the nineteen nineteen 90s or so there's been a growing reaction against

consumer Christianity a sense that well maybe we've gotten off track here maybe we've put people's desire sometimes we call them felt needs ahead of the gospel itself and so the reaction to consumer Christianity has been this what's now being called the radical Christian movement or what I prefer to call Christian activism that maybe instead of just living my life from God to satisfy my desires may be the essence of the Christian life is I'm supposed to live my life for God to satisfy his desir

es to be on mission for God rather than for myself well this other view of the Christian life is really represented by the other son in the story in verse 20 we read that the younger son got up and came to his father and while he was still a long way off the father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him the sudden said to him father I've sinned against heaven and before you I'm no longer worthy to be called your son but the father said to his servants bring quickly t

he best robe and put it on him put a ring on his hand and shoes on his feet and bring the fattened calf and kill it and let us eat and celebrate for this son of mine was dead and is alive again he was lost and is found and so they began to celebrate now his older son was in the field and as he came and drew near to the house he heard music and dancing and he called to one of the servants and asked what these things meant and he said to him your brother has come and your father has killed the fat

tened calf because he has received him back safe and sound but the older son was angry and refused to go in so his father came out and entreated him but the son answered his father look these many years I have served you and I've never disobeyed your command yet you never gave me a young goat that I might celebrate with my friends but when the son of yours comes home who has devoured your property with prostitutes you kill the fattened calf for him this older brother was the good son the obedien

t son he never disobeyed his father's commands he did everything the father wanted him to do but notice where he gets his significance his identity he says all these years I have served you I've never disobeyed one of your commands look at all I've done look at how I've been on mission for you look how I've been obedient for you look how I've done everything you've wanted to have done he's an activist he looks really good on the outside but the more important point I want you to see here is that

just like the younger son the older son was not interested in a relationship with his father he also just wants his father's stuff where's my party where's my fattened calf where's my half of the inheritance the younger son an older son are really no different they both desire the father's stuff they just go about getting it in different ways one goes about it through rebellion the other goes about it through obedience one of them does it in a very socially unacceptable way the other does it in

a very socially applauded way but neither one actually wants the father there but they're both equally choch balls for lack of a better word they just are jerks they don't want their father they're just looking for their stuff access to the wealth access to the accolades access to their desires here's what concerns me Christian consumerism is a plague on the Western Church it is a significant problem but what concerns me is that the solution I hear being prescribed to Christian consumerism is a

ctually worse than the problem what we are doing is telling people you shouldn't be seeking a life to fulfill your desires you should be seeking a life to fulfil the mission of God we're taking people from Christian consumers and making them into Christian activists but in the process all we're effectively doing is taking younger sons and making them into their sons we're telling people that the center of the Christian life is not their desires but it's achieving some great mission some great wo

rk of God in the world that will give them a sense of significance self righteousness and accomplishment and all the while they continue to miss the heart of the gospel a couple years ago I had a group of Wheaton College students that met with me regularly on Sunday nights when we gathered it wasn't a typical Bible study kind of thing I figured they got enough of that on campus we met just to discuss whatever issues they wanted to talk about so one night as we gathered prob about 10 of us they s

aid they wanted to talk about habitual sin so well this is a juicy topic this should be good and I said fine let's talk about it and I wasn't there to preach to them or do a Bible study but just kind of facilitate the conversation so we talked for a little bit and eventually I thought this is kind of disorganized and I asked some I said let's go around the table and I want you guys to answer this question for me I want to know what your particular sin is this is a mixed gender group I know enoug

h for you individually you know what's going on I want to hear the gross details I don't want to know your sin what I want to know is this in the midst of your sin how does God view you so the first student started talking she said that she was a missionary kid that grew up overseas her parents had also been students at Wheaton some 20-some years earlier and she said when her parents were there a revival broke out on campus and all kinds of people committed their lives to ministry and to mission

s and her parents were among them and she's phenomenal parents and she grew up in this fantastic Christian community overseas and has seen amazing Christian work and now she's struggling with whatever her struggle is with sin and she's in tears telling us that God is disappointed with her because how was he ever going to use her to accomplish things in this world if she's still struggling with what she's struggling with then the next student went and he shared something similar gods disappointed

with me eventually somebody quoted scripture to whom much is given much is expected and I've been given this great Christian upbringing in this great Christian home and this great Christian community of Wheaton and I'm you know at the evangelical Harvard or whatever that means that Wheaton now and God's disappointed because how can he ever use me if I'm still struggling with sin and goes around the table and in one form or another every student answered the same way God's upset he's disappointe

d he's frustrated he's angry because I haven't got my act together so he can use me it finally got back around to me after about an hour and I asked the students I said how many of you grew up in Christian homes they all raised their hand how many of you grew up in Bible centered churches they all raised their hand I said this this is really disappointing and scary because not one of you gave the right answer not one of you said that in the midst of my sin God loves me it never even occurred to

them they've been singing jesus loves me since they were in diapers and yet the thought never occurred to them why because what had been drilled into these young Christians and maybe into some of you from the time they were young whether explicitly or implicitly was that the most important thing about them was mission what are you doing to contribute to the mission of the gospel and everything about their lives everything about their significance everything about their identity was measured base

d on that even the absence or presence of sin in their life was all about would it help me or hinder me from accomplishing something for God in this world when I was looking at around that table we're ten young people who had been inoculated to the gospel because they had come to believe that Christian activism was what they were called to first and foremost that scares me because here's the truth God does not need you to accomplish his mission if he did he would not be God there's another thing

that scares me about it I think the scariest passage in the whole New Testament is toward the end of the Sermon on the Mount Matthew chapter 7 when Jesus says that day many will come to me and say Lord Lord did we not do many mighty works in your name and cast out demons in your name and prophesy in your name and Jesus says I will turn to them and say to them plainly away from me you evildoers I never knew you these are people who were activists who accomplished great things in the name of Jesu

s to cast out demons perform miracles prophesy meaning to proclaim truth in the name of Jesus how are they able to do those things I don't know but they did and they were utterly convinced that they belong to Jesus spent their life on mission for God and yet Jesus says I never knew you is it possible to devote your life to the mission of Christ and actually miss Christ in the process the scariest word in that scariest passage is the word many many will say to him in that day Lord Lord did we not

one of the great strengths of our tradition of the church is our commitment to the mission of the gospel to see the Lost brought back into the fold of God to proclaim the mercy of God through his son on the cross that is the great strength of the evangelical tradition but our great strengths often become our greatest weaknesses I care too much about the mission of God to care too much about the mission of God Tim Keller has said that an idol is a good thing that we have made into an ultimate th

ing I'm very concerned that we have made the mission of the gospel into an idol in the church today and we have told young people you don't want to be a consumer Christian you need to be an activist Christian and so this younger generation you guys are energized about changing the world you all think you're gonna graduate from college and go to Africa and dig wells with orphans strapped to your back and solve poverty in like 30 days or something if God calls you to do that by all means do it but

don't fall into the lie that doing that kind of work is the center of the Christian life because it's not it's good work it's important work it needs to be done but it is not the center of the Christian life very often we fall into the belief that if I just do enough if my life is radical enough if the circumstances are different enough then I'll experience the fullness of the Christian life I'll never disobey God I'm gonna strike out and do something amazing in this world for him I'm gonna gro

w a huge Church I'm gonna change the world we become activists but in the process what we're actually looking for is not God we're looking to inflate ourselves to give ourselves a sense of significance and power and importance so if the answer then to Christian consumerism is not Christian activism what is it we got to go back to the parable the parable only begins to make sense at the very end the younger son squandered his wealth comes home tries to apologies to manipulate his father into anot

her handout the older son is angry goes to his father has that pity party for himself out in the field says I've never disobeyed you I've always done everything right where's my reward where's my party where's my significance and in verse 31 the father finally speaks and in his response to the older son it all begins to make sense the father says son you are always with me and all that is mine is yours it was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this brother of yours was dead and is alive he was

lost and is found notice the father never even acknowledges the older sons obedience never says yeah you know you've done a ton for me thanks so much never says it never mentions it not even on the radar what does the father say you have always been with me and in that little phrase the whole parable begins to make sense why did the father celebrate the return of the younger son this jerk younger son who basically told his dad to drop dead and blew all of his hard-earned wealth on some wild liv

ing and prostitutes why does he stop everything embrace his son won't even listen to his apology and throw a party for him he did that because what the father cared about most was not the younger sons disobedience what he cared about most was his child's presence he wanted his son with him that's what mattered most that's why he throws his arms around him and when he goes out to the field to talk to his older son why does he not mention his obedience his service all of his hard work over the yea

rs because what mattered most of the father was not the older sons obedience what mattered most of the father was his sons presence you have always been with me that is what I have been so joyful about and so Jesus is communicating what is at the heart of our Heavenly Father what God cares most about is not your disobedience neither is it your obedience what God cares most about is your presence that is why he sent his son to dwell among us to die for our sins to rise again and ascend to the hea

vens so that he might reconcile us to himself and make us sons and daughters of God he did not die so that he could use you to accomplish his mission he doesn't need you he wants you the most important thing about you to God is your presence out of that yes obedience comes and yes we repent and confesses our disobedience but those are down the line too many of us have internalized the lie that what God cares about is how effective you are for him rather than how present you are with him if we ge

t this straight if we understand that the heart of the gospel is unity with Christ then everything looks different John Piper has this rather stirring poignant quote that I want you to hear I'll say it twice because you got to dwell on this for a moment he says the gospel is not how people get to heaven the gospel is how people get to God and if you would be happy in heaven if Jesus were not there you will not be there think about that the gospel is not how people get to heaven the gospel is how

people get to God and if you would be happy in heaven if Jesus were not there you will not be there many of us approach Jesus as a device he's how I get out of hell or he's how I get into heaven what Piper's point out there and it's a deep profound biblical truth is that Jesus is not merely the how he's not just the way he is also the truth and the life he is the goal of the Christian life we don't just use him to accomplish a mission neither do we use him to fulfill our desires he is our desir

e do you actually want God or are you seeking merely to use him if you actually want God if you want unity with God it will transform your understanding of the Christian life and it will transform your understanding of prayer you will come to see that prayer is not merely a discipline but it is the breath the very means by which we commune with God through the presence of his spirit one of my favorite stories about prayer is about mother Teresa again years ago back in the 80s she was being inter

viewed by Dan Rather for CBS News and Dan Rather asked her when you pray to God what do you say and she said I don't say anything I just listen and rather was kind of flustered by that and he figured out another question and said okay well then when you're listening to God what does he say and Mother Teresa said he doesn't say anything he just listens and she could tell that Dan Rather was really weirded out by this and so then she said and and if you don't understand what that is and I can't ex

plain it to you what she was communicating there is that prayer is more than communication it's more than talking to God or God talking to you prayer is communion it is the intermingling of your spirit with the Spirit of God so that you are ever aware of his presence with you and your presence with him it is a reality that you can dwell with your deepest desired treasure right now because he has made himself available to us and that transforms all of life there was a story back from 1982 Billy G

raham was being interviewed on The Today Show he arrived at the studio and one of the producers pulled Graham's assistant over to the side and told him hey we've set aside this room for dr. Graham to pray before the interview if he would like to and the producer said that's very thoughtful thank you but dr. Graham doesn't need that it won't be necessary and the NBC producer was kind of like weirded out by this thinking you know this is the most significant of angelical leader in the world and yo

u're telling me he doesn't pray before he goes on live national television and the producer said no you don't understand mr. Graham started praying when he got up this morning he prayed while eating breakfast he prayed on the way over in the car and he'll probably be praying all the way through the interview what he was articulating there is that Graham had developed a communion with God that allowed him to live on two levels at once the act of engagement with his daily life but then a constant

awareness of the presence of God that transcended mere communication I started by asking you what does the radical life really look like the secular culture says radical means wealth it means indulgence it means celebrity it means a consumer lifestyle where you get to fulfill every one of your desires the evangelical Christian subculture says no no no no radical is Christian activism it's making a difference in the world it's living differently it's being on mission it's sacrificing your life to

go save poor people or evangelize the loss or doing something really really significant that's the radical life Jesus tells us radical life is neither the word radical comes from the Latin word rata Calais meaning rooted the truly radical life is the life that is deeply rooted in communion with God on the outside that life might look very normal it might look like a minivan driving suburban dad with a scooter and a pink helmet with a kid who knows too many top 40 hits it can look incredibly bor

ing but it is deeply deeply rooted in communion with God finding satisfaction and meaning in hearing our dear Lords love whispered over us every moment of every day and out of that communion bearing good fruit wherever he has called us what I want you guys to know what I want you to walk away with is an understanding that first and foremost as radical Christians we are not called to someplace and we are not called to some radical activity but first and foremost we are called to someone that is o

ur heavenly father who calls us his dear beloved child let's pray Biola University offers a variety of biblically-centered degree programs ranging from business to ministry to the Arts and Sciences visit biola.edu to find out how Biola could make a difference in your life