Piper - Risk is right: better to lose your life than to waste it

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

248.4dc23

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

David Platt

Retreat or risk? Throughout redemptive history, that question has confronted Gods 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.

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 Christiansareas 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.

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 ambitionsall 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.

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 havent 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 youre crazy.

What are you thinking? your friends and family ask you.

You tell them, Im buying that field over there.

They look at you in disbelief. Thats foolish, they say. Why are you giving away everything you have to buy that field?

You respond, I have a hunch, and you smile to yourself as you walk away. You smile because you know that in the end any risk that others perceive is nothing compared to the reward you will receive. So with joywith joy!you sell it all. Why? Because you have found something worth losing everything else for.

This is the picture of Jesus in the gospel. He is somethingsomeoneworth losing everything for. When we really believe this, then risking everything we are and everything we have, to know and obey Christ is no longer a matter of sacrifice. Its just common sense. To let go of the pursuits, possessions, pleasures, safety, and security of this world in order to follow Jesus wherever he leads, no matter what it costs, is not sacrificial as much as it is smart. In the words of Jim Elliot, He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

I praise God for John Piper and the way he has shown me and countless others the supremacy of Christ. I was in college when I heard my first Piper sermon, entitled Christ Died for God. I was compelled by a captivating, biblical vision of a God-centered God, and I began to realize in a fresh way that the ultimate reason for my existence is Gods exaltation. Moreover, I began to recognize that my greatest joy is indeed found in Gods greatest glory, and Christ is clearly a treasure worth losing and letting go of everything for. This is a central theme (maybe the central theme) of Scripture and is the predominant truth that pervades John Pipers ministry, which is why this book by him on risk makes so much sense.