Is there anything more important to talk about than these things? Weather, food, and sports daily dominate our conversations, even with people who don’t know Jesus. Surely there is a need for us to talk with these same people about things that matter forever. What could we do in our lives that would be more valuable than this? What else might we do today that would be more significant than telling others that the God of the universe loves them and desires for them to know him and be saved from their sins forever? And what could be more exhilarating than seeing a person’s life altered for all of eternity right before your eyes as he or she turns from sin and trusts in Christ as Savior? For the next ten billion years and beyond, that person’s life—and the lives of scores of other people he or she encounters in the future—will be completely different as a result of what your or I have the opportunity to say today.
We e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and text with people who are going to spend eternity either in heaven or hell. Our lives are too short to waste on mere temporal conversations when massive eternal realities hang in the balance. Just as you and I have no guarantee that we will love through the day, the people around us are not guaranteed tomorrow either. So let’s be intentional about sewing the threads of the gospel into the fabric of our conversations every day, knowing that it will not always be easy, yet believing that eternity will always be worth it.
This excerpt is taken from Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live by David Platt. Copyright © 2013 by David Platt. Follow Me is published by Tyndale House Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Order from Amazon.com: Follow Me: A Call to Die. A Call to Live.
Read more from David Platt from his conversation with Francis Chan about discipleship in the March/April 2013 issue of Outreach magazine and online.
