For What It's Worth

I read this book on the planes over my trip.  It is similar to Radical, thought it brought different perspectives, and I think in some ways it challenged me more, or at least in different ways.  Simon has lived in Burundi, Africa for over a decade and is living with his family in Mt. Pleasant for about a year.  I've been blessed to hear him preach at my church several times and have gotten to know his wife a bit.  He challenges us to live a life of no holds barred discipleship.  I got this book for a penny and paid for shipping -- grand total of $4.  The cover also spurred my conversation with Alister the Brit (Houston to DC flight).

We are all just ordinary people, with the potential to do extraordinary things because we have an extraordinary God (13).

We like to have our ducks lined up, and our natural inclination is to play safe.  However, it's those very uncertainties which define life as an adventure to be lived, and scream out to us to live lives of faith rather than tightly reigned risk-minimization enterprises (107).

In offering ourselves up as living sacrifices, we die to ourselves - to our right to ourselves.  It will undoubtedly be painful, and that pain will be multiplied by being misunderstood by our more respectable brothers and sisters.  But we need to remember that the cross was never respectable.  It was foolishness, an insult, a shame, a disgrace. ... The Lord will demand everything of you.  And when you give it all up to him, he may bless it and hand it back, but on the other hand he may not...(199).