Brace Yourself for What David Platt is Serving Up
Friends! Ever find yourself a tad uncomfortable while reading a book? Such was the experience for me while reading David Platt’s newest book, Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need. (This is a GOOD THING tho’, hang with me...The book releases September 17th.)
David does an outstanding job of taking us readers with him on a hair-raising week in the Himalayan mountains. We join him and his team of four others, complete with wild helicopter rides, bus rides, hiking on trails where a misstep could be your last, sleeping in a sleeping bag in places with no electricity, freezing temps, and plenty of jumping spiders. I kept thinking, “They are way braver than I’d ever be...”
David tells us from the get go:
He tells us that that is his prayer for this book. (And you’d best tuck your toes under the table as they’re about to get crushed. Again, this is a good thing.)
One favorite aspect of the book is David’s journal entries. He works his way thru’ the book of Luke during his week in the Himalayans. His insight and life application ideas are worthy of copying into our own journals.
Each chapter is a day of their week’s travel, usually to a different village each time. We learn frightening stats, such as, “half the children were dying before their eighth birthdays. Many weren’t making it to their first.” Another awful discovery was the death of sixty people from cholera because a village had poor sanitation and unclean water. Yet another huge problem is the amount of trafficking of young girls “often starting when they’re about seven but even up to fifteen years old.”
They learn the traffickers are smart, knowing how poor most of the villagers are. They pretend they’re trying to help these families and they lie by promising they’ll help these girls get jobs, giving them money up front to entice them. Sadly most of them never return.
David poses many questions we, ourselves, would also consider. The big “why?” pops up multiple times accompanied by pleading with God in David’s journal entries. Many villagers David and his team meet have never heard of Jesus. The mystery the team all agrees on is this question:
Aaron answers David with why we need “to believe the Bible and to show that belief by spending your life sharing His truth and love in a world of urgent spiritual need. Not merely physical need, as important as physical need is. But to live like people’s spiritual need is their most urgent need.”
They discuss the village that was so adversely affected by the cholera. They were able to get water filters and medical kits and a sanitation system to them...”but, as helpful as those water filters are, the fact is, they won’t get anybody in that village to heaven...What that village needs more than anything else is the truth of God’s love, which will give them life forever.” Let that soak in for a minute...
Halfway thru’ their week, David and his team get to attend a church service in another village. They arrive after a grueling, two-hour hike. They notice “tiny lights in the distance slowly making their way up the trail.” David recalls the stress some of his congregants experience in a mere fifteen minute trip to attend church in the States. The villagers that night made a “two-hour hike up a narrow mountainside in the freezing cold, followed by a two-hour hike back down the same mountainside in the pitch-black darkness after the service.” Yes, well, that will make you never take our freedom and flexibility of attending church services for granted again, right?
Likewise the prayers David concludes each chapter with not only make you think, they move you to action. One morning David prayed,
Later that day he met a gal named Maya who chose to come up the mountain and work in a medical clinic after going to nursing school. Maya repeated almost verbatim David’s prayer when asked why she was there.
Don’t miss the science lessons revealing the creativity of God in Day 5. Who knew trout poop would lead to food for villagers in the Himalayan mountains? And how a tree in northern Alabama is uniquely designed by God to soak up horse urine for the spread of the gospel in the Middle East. Huh?
Spiritual warfare is another challenge not only David’s team encounters, but one the villagers live with daily. Some don’t know enough about it to recognize it. The stories the team learn will make your hair stand on end.
David admits their seven days in the mountains felt like weeks. We readers would agree considering all they accomplished each day. I believe the Lord stretched their time to show them multiple needs to be addressed, opening all of our eyes.
The entire point of this book is found in its’ title: Something Needs to Change. David’s questions at the end of each chapter give us readers ideas, causing us to realize the sense of urgency with which we should all be living.
Don’t miss the opportunity to read and savor this book. It will kick your brain into high gear plus David’s vulnerability on every page will do two things: First, it’ll make you feel better that such a man of huge faith and trust can waiver and question God just like we do. Second, it’ll make you just as uncomfortable with these challenging scenarios as David is and will cause you to become more aware of ways we can help those around us.
Run, don’t walk, to your nearest bookstore and grab Something Needs to Change.
‘Til next time!
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