| Title | : | Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0735291411 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780735291416 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 224 |
| Publication | : | First published September 17, 2019 |
Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need Reviews
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“This book will change your life.” We see it on the cover of personal development books so often, we’re numb to it... but of this book it may very well be true. This wasn’t a book I couldn’t put down—it was a book I HAD to put down so I could pray, reflect and ponder what’s truly important in my life and my ministry.
“Because you and I need to remember that our homes and our health and our bank accounts and our vehicles guarantee us nothing... one day (and it could be today), they’re all going to be gone, so we need to remind ourselves to live today for what lasts forever.” Dear God, I hope to represent the gospel better, to work hardest to keep people from eternal suffering and to work hard to help well amidst earthly suffering and poverty. And to remain grateful for the unmerited grace that sustains my life.
Thank you, Pastor, for doing the work and encouraging us to “go therefore.” -
Whew. What a creative concept and important book.
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I am still dazed and in shock at what I just read in the past 2 hours. I was on the verge of tears from this raw, authentic, and challenging book. My heart broke for every person mentioned. My heart raced when I could see God's hand moving throughout this story.
I believe that every Christian should read this book. Yes, it will be challenging. Yes, it will make you feel uncomfortable BUT I believe that we, Christians, in America need to read books like this. We NEED to have our eyes open to see the need for Christ around the world and around us. We NEED to allow Christ to do a work in our hearts and live for the growth of the His Kingdom. We NEED to allow ourselves to be open to do WHATEVER God calls us to do.
We tend to forget in the business of life that there is a Hell. Sure, we know it but we never think about it. We never see those around us as souls that are doomed for eternal suffering and separation from God. We hear statistics about people dying overseas from preventable diseases yet we never stop and think about how those are souls heading straight to Hell.
God calls ordinary people to do extraordinary things. God has given us everything we need to do the work that He has called us to do. We have gifts that He gave us when we became believers. The only thing is, is will you listen to God's call when He calls you? Will you surrender your whole life to Him? Will you allow yourself to be one of those ordinary people doing extraordinary things through the One who saved us?
I honestly am not sorry if this makes anyone feel uncomfortable or upset that I am talking this way but I will have you know that everything I am saying is backed up by scripture and I will not be silent on it. I will not be silent anymore. I am going to speak up and I want to see a change in America and around the world. I want the church of America to wake up and get out of their selfish desires. I want the church to have a heart for missions and orphans like God calls us to have. I want us to be a people that is so on fire for God that everyone around us can see it.
Y'all, something really does need to change. And guess what that change starts with you and me.
*FTC: I received this book from Multnomah and Netgalley in exchange for my honest opinion. I was not required to write a positive review. All thoughts are my own.* -
[Note: This book was provided free of charge by Multnomah/Waterbrook Press. All thoughts and opinions are my own.]
There is no doubt that much is wrong with this world. That said, what is to be done about it is by no means an obvious question. This book has the feel of someone who went to Nepal and Tibet for a couple of weeks and saw the deep spiritual oppression there and felt woke and that he needed to write a book to encourage people to change the world and make it socially just. The author seems to be under the belief that it is within our power to change the world, and that the world is supposed to be made fair and just through the efforts of human beings. There are a great many assumptions at the base of this book and the author's approach that amount to his selective quotation of various verses and those are assumptions that I don't happen to personally share. And thus while I may share the author's horror at child trafficking and the persecution and martyrdom of Christians as well as the terrible state of health for ordinary people in many parts of the world, I don't happen to agree that it is our job to fix the world here and now.
This book is about two hundred pages long and consists of the author's travels in the remote areas of the Himalayan mountains to evangelize to people in the area and provide some encouragement to Christians in an area of the world that is rather unfriendly to Christianity over the course of eight days or so. The author's experiences, where he tends to paint himself as a naif (it is hard to imagine that he could possibly be as clueless as he frames himself to be) are interlaced with quotes from the author's diary, questions for the reader, as well as quotations from scripture. The quotations from the diary are written in a font that makes them harder to read in an attempt at providing some sort of verisimilitude, and the whole book as a whole appears to amount to virtue signalling that makes it appear as if a great many more authors with social justice leanings are going to write books based on their mini-missionary trips, which is admittedly not something I am wholeheartedly enthusiastic about.
If you want to be inspired to help make the world a better place and believe that engaging in social justice right now is something that matches with your post-millennial optimism about the effects of such activism in the contemporary world, this book will likely be up your alley. There are likely a great many people (myself among them) who have or will spend two or three weeks or so engaging in efforts at helping people around the world, be it teaching useful skills or helping to construct wells or serving at camps or clinics or whatever the case may be. The author's tone and approach are likely not to appeal to pietists or others who take a much less radical view about the relationship between Christianity and social change as well as politics, and who have much stricter limits on the sort of expectations they have of the sort of change that can be effected in this world, but this author isn't writing for such people. He is writing for (other) radicals who are far more optimistic about the power of believers to effect justice in this world, and that audience is likely to find much appealing here. -
I'm crying. My heart hurts even more for those who have never heard the gospel. Something needs to change in my life, in everyone's life, and in the church as a whole. I highly recommend this book to anyone. I think it answers very nicely the question, "What is God's will for my life?" No matter what degree you have, no matter where you live, His will for your life is always to bring the gospel to those who haven't heard it yet, to share of His glory and grace in your neighborhood and around the world.
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Something Needs to Change is a clarion call to move from apathy to action. Social justice is all the rage currently, but there is more involved than simply demanding equality or writing checks to our favorite causes.
The message David Platt shouts through his latest book is clear – get out of your comfort zone and spend some serious time seeking God about what you personally can do to alleviate suffering in your world.
We are surrounded by the destruction caused through the ravishes of sin and God expects His people to be the hands and hearts on the ground in the battle to overcome this mess we call life.
This message or call is couched in a trip to the remote Himalayan trails. From medical issues to sex trafficking heartbreak, the author calls to anyone and everyone to shake off their indifference and get involved.
We can’t do everything but as the Body of Christ, we must do something. Being a Christian is so much more than simply sitting in our air-conditioned pews. We are called to get out, get involved and share the love of Christ.
Christianity is an active faith and it begins where we live. We may not go the ends of the earth, but everyone knows someone that is hurting. We can make a difference. We must.
Some quotes to ponder from this challenging work:
• It makes me wonder if we’ve lost our capacity to weep.
• Surely God didn’t design the gospel of Jesus to be confined to our minds and mouths in the
church, yet disconnected from your emotions and actions in the world.
• It’s a pretty empty feeling to pray for someone when deep down inside you’re not actually
believing it’s going to matter.
• The church as God has designed it to be. A people fearlessly holding on to God’s Word while selflessly sacrificing to share and show God’s love amid the needs of their world. (this quote was written while viewing people spending two hours walking up a mountain, and back down again in the dark later, to attend a service, while many of us complain about a fifteen-minute drive!)
• He and I have totally different education, experiences, gifts, and passions, but we each have a unique part to play in using what God has given us for spreading His love and meeting the world’s urgent needs.
We all are not called to leave and go to some distant village on the other side of the globe, but we are all called to use our gifts, talents, money and time to invest in someone, somewhere. We must.
David Platt is unique in his gifting and calling, but not in his service. If you read this book, you will discover that you are needed in God’s plan and in His service. You are gifted in just the right way to accomplish what God has planned for you.
Something does indeed need to change and that is usually our heart and mind.
This book was provided by Multnomah in exchange for an honest review.
Dr. Jeffrey A. Klick -
"I got tired of talking" went a little too hard Aaron... randomly walked into Indigo, saw this book and got hooked by the first two pages. Solid book — God spoke through Platt to me and made me think a lot about the question he wants readers to engage in.
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It took me quite a while to sit down and write a review for this book. The book itself only took me about two days to finish, but the amount of time that I have spent chewing on the information and stories I read has lasted much longer. I am very sad to admit that I was unaware of just how bad the situations were in certain areas. You hear these statistics and numbers of how many people don't have clean drinking water, healthcare, or food. But you rarely turn these numbers into people. David Platt did just that with this book.
He takes you along his journey through many villages up in the Himalayan mountains. Each story is a fresh revelation of just how dire the need is in the world, both physical and spiritual. There were many health concerns and absence of safety for these people living up in the mountains, but maybe even worse than the physical is the spiritual need. Many of the people that David spoke with, didn't even know the name of Jesus. What has the church been doing, if our main mission is to make Jesus' name famous, and still much of the world is unaware of His name?
This book broke my heart. Every time I read it, tears would stream down my face. I couldn't talk about it with my wife without getting choked up and crying all over again. And I think this is important and necessary. I think a better representation of a book is to tell how it affected you in your real life, not just while you were reading it. And this book has changed my view of God's mission for me. I have decided, because of the stories that were shared in this book, to devote my life to spreading Jesus' name in worlds much different from our safe culture where most people know Jesus. I have decided to spend my life helping spread His name and taking care of His people, and, like David Platt, spreading the news that something needs to change and that Christ's people need to get up and do something because that is our sacred duty; to push back the darkness and reclaim Jesus' people from satan.
I received an advance reader copy of this book through the publisher as part of the book launch team. -
I admit I don't read enough non-fiction, but David Platt is one of the few non-fiction authors I read and keep up with. Getting the chance to review his newest book was a no-brainer.
There are books which can be life-changing, and this is one such book. The book is an interesting and fascinating read. Platt does a great job of relating his experiences on his trek though the Himalayas. He is honest, very bluntly so, about what emotions he experienced and the questions he faced as he saw and experienced things we never have to deal with here in America.
As interesting as the book is, it isn't an easy read. Not only does it show how easy we have it here in America, it shows how shallow and selfish American Christianity is. It causes you to take a mirror to your own Christianity and question just what you are truly willing to do for God and to spread the Gospel.
Throughout the book in addition to relating what they encountered, Platt shares portions of Scripture he read each day, along with his journal entries about what he read and about what he saw and experienced on his trek. At the end of each chapter are a couple of questions for the reader to think about and answer.
If you are the kind of Christian who doesn't want to get out of your comfort zone, or put yourself out much to spread the Gospel, this book is not for you. But I definitely recommend reading it. It does have the possibility of being life-changing.
I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher. All opinions in this review are my own -
I received an Advanced Reader Copy from Multnomah. I had taken about a two month break from reading books, when I was about halfway through this book (though my break from reading was not because of the book) or I would have finished this much sooner. It’s a hard book to read, not literally hard because of the wording or anything, but because the content is heavy. David Platt does his best to cast vision for the church to be the loving community it was designed to be and to meet the needs of a suffering world, by retelling his experience hiking in the Himalayan mountains of Nepal. The book is filled with personal stories, of people he met on his trip. Stories about the brokenness of sex trafficking, poverty, people dying of treatable sickness because they lack access to healthcare, and how God is at work in the midst of it. Platt also weaves in some of his personal prayers and journaling from the trip, and his meditations on the Gospel of Luke that he had been reading during the trip. In short, Something Needs to Change, is a book written to convince Christians that complacency can not be, and something needs to change in our lives, our families, our communities, and our churches.
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Enthralling... Humbling... Challenging... David Platt beautifully challenges Christians to rethink the simplicity of what it means to follow Christ. Love God and love people. It really is that simple. I HIGHLY recommend this to all people, but especially recommend to the Christian wrestling with understanding how to care for their neighbor’s physical but also spiritual needs.
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Some books provoke deep thinking, and others are a call to action. This is both.
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Compelling memoir of Platt’s trip through the Himalayas - didn’t expect the book to be this style, but I thought his honesty (in his prayers and questions for God about poverty/suffering) was so refreshing in a world where many Christian leaders feel like they have to have it all together and appear to have no personal doubt. Definitely challenged me in how I respond to poverty and suffering around me.
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just finished this on a study break and it was SO good! you cannot walk away from it without feeling convicted (but I mean it is david platt so who is really surprised). Eye-opening on physical and spiritual needs throughout the world. 5/5, 10/10, would recommend
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In an age where it has become in vogue for pastors to question the Christian faith, compromise the faith, or even abandon the faith - David Platt is a breath of fresh air. The fiery Washington D.C. pastor and author of Radical is back with another thought-provoking book, Something Needs to Change.
Pastor Platt invites readers on a life-changing journey to the rugged Himalayan trails where he encounters poverty, human trafficking, and a host of problems that lead to a personal crisis and life change.
Platt is not content to hoard his life-changing journey; he wants to share it with others. He wants to challenge others and inspire them to something greater. According to Platt, then, something needs to change. A few highlights help summarize the general flow of the book. The author intends:To integrate what we know in our minds with our hearts and feel genuine compassion for lost people (my words).
Challenge readers to engage their hearts with a broken world.
Motivate readers: “What we need is not an explanation of the Word and the world that puts more information in our heads; we need an experience with the Word in the world that penetrate the recesses of our hearts.”
Spur reader to take action: “We need to dare to come face to face with desperate need in the world around us and ask God to do a work deep within us that we could never manufacture, manipulate, or make happen on our own.”
The real beauty in this book is found in Platt’s insistence to steer clear from the social gospel. To be sure, the author never minimizes the massive human need for food, shelter, medicine, or education. He never skits the difficult subjects of poverty, human trafficking, or disease. These are all areas that followers of Christ must address when the opportunity arises. Yet, these physical needs are penultimate. The greatest need of every image-bearer is the gospel. The greatest need of human beings is being in a reconciled relationship with a holy God. The greatest need of creatures is redemption.
The response to social justice alone makes this book a worthy read. Too many churches are neglecting the purpose of the church by drawing lines that maximize social justice and minimize the gospel. Something Needs to Change is the biblical antidote to the misplaced emphasis of the so-called social justice movement.
David Platt is to be commended for his heart and passion for the truth. But strong dogma never discourages maximum impact. Rather, strong dogma demands maximum impact - so that God might be glorified among the nations!
I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. -
A invitation to travel along side David Platt in the mountains of the Himalayan. To witness what he witnessed when he realized that something needs to change.
David Platt is a well known pastor and author of many Christian books. I remember reading the book Radical and I believe this text is a balance that I needed to hear and experience. From his encounter with his friend Aaron who ministers to the Himalayan people and who invited David to see for himself the great need of the people but also see the greatest need of his own heart which I believe is the greatest need of our hearts as well. Aaron's own testimony of coming to the mountains is one of that changed his life forever. Going with friends on a hike when they encountered Sex Traffickers coming down with girls ranging from 8 to 14. Seeing the girls with empty eyes and with nothing to live for. How these men used girls as young as 8 for their own pleasure and how their families let their daughters go believing a better way.
The stories of the people that David meant are tragic however, they also show the conditions of our own heart and how change is needed. I appreciated the balance of the gospel and meeting the needs of the people was dealt with. How the gospel changes community as believers come together to make change and how we can part of that in big or small ways. It is easy to make our world small and not see or want to see the evil that millions endure but also more importantly do not have the gospel to put their hope in. The Gospel is hope because death will come. David's own journey encouraged him to look at the Parables of Jesus again and see the scriptures in a different light. We need to look at the scriptures in the light of poverty, oppression, and evil because we will never see the beauty of the Gospel if we do not.
A Special Thank you to Waterbrook and Multnomah and Netgalley for the ARC and the opportunity to post an honest review. -
Listening to David Platt read his own book was quite the treat! He read it with the passion and conviction that he meant the reader to understand and I loved that. I was deeply impacted by the book and so appreciated the honesty and vulnerability with which he shared. I could relate to so many of the thoughts that he had - like thoughts that I never felt okay sharing on mission trips. I enjoyed that this was written as a story that David was sharing and was super touched by all of his experiences. I HIGHLY recommend and want my friends to read it so we can talk about it!!
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Through telling his story of a trek through the Himalayas encountering unimaginable physical & spiritual need, David naturally leads readers praying the prayer he ends the book with. “God, we will do whatever you want us to do with all you’ve given us.”
I really enjoyed the journal entries fitted between stories of what he experienced & getting to walk through the emotions & questions he was left to ask himself reading scripture amidst the circumstances he found himself in. -
A 24hr read.
Essentially a 200pg journal entry as Platt journey's through the Himalayas.
Once again, I was reminded of the urgent physical and spiritual needs in the world. The unanswerable questions of "why does suffering/evil exist" and "what do we do in light of this evil" are dead center.
Impossible to not be challenged by this book. Am I building a life of selfish comfort or living a life of selfless service??
Big rocks:
- TALK IS CHEAP. ("I got tired of talking") We talk about how much we care about "justice" and "loving people" but how often does that just equate a social media post and being nice?
- LOVE NEIGHBOR AS SELF. (actually play this scenario out)
- A life of the CROSS or a life of COMFORT ? -
“The gospel is the greatest news in all the world, it meets the greatest need in all the world, and, as such, we must work hardest at making it known” 🔥 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 i appreciate Platt’s raw emotions/journal entries, alongside his acknowledgment of the real difficulty in reaching such places and things to beware of in alleviating poverty (I.e. when helping hurts.) praise God for the clarity and conviction of this book!!
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Loved this book. Loved how David takes you on the journey with him and you experience it all. Makes you think.
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Challenging read! Felt like I was along for the journey with David. Really brought the urgency of the gospel into prospective.
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“O God, please helps me do whatever you want
me to do with all you've given me.”
“I don't want to shape my Christianity to suit my convenience!” -
This book was really different from some of Platt’s other books. Wasn’t heavy on theological content but rather just a journal and stories from a trek through the Himalayan mountains among some of the most unreached of the world. Platt poses a lot of questions, many of which I’ve asked myself, about how the Bible and missions really plays out amongst the most unreached. Was encouraged, convicted, challenged, and broken. A must read for any Christian.
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Wow! Such a powerful book! Full of emotion and truth! May our hearts desire be to serve the Lord wherever and in whatever way He wills!!
“It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."”
Matthew 20:26-28 ESV
“And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
Philippians 2:8 -
What do I need to change in my life to effect change with the hope of Jesus in a world of urgent spiritual and physical need?
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Over five years ago, Platt spent a week trekking in the Himalayas. He saw and experienced things that caused him to ask himself many questions about God, the church, and faith. He takes us along on his journey, sharing his observations, journal entries, and his thoughts on what he saw, relating his own spiritual awakening.
This is a good book for American Christians who have never visited areas of extreme poverty and need. He visited villages where girls had been sold into sex trafficking and children died of diseases easily cured in the US. He questioned why God allowed such suffering. He met scores of people who would never enter heaven and he wondered at the reality of hell. He met Christians who walked for hours to attend a church meeting and questioned his own commitment to the body of Christ.
Platt realized we often do not let the Word penetrate our hearts. He realized we don't need more teaching, more preaching, another book. We need an experience like he had in the remote mountains.
Platt doesn't presume to tell us what to do with our lives. He just wants us to ask the same questions of ourselves this trip caused him to ask. He also wants us to remember that Jesus is the ultimate hope for the world and that God has designed each one of us to spread that hope.
Reading this book doesn't mean you will feel compelled to go overseas to minister. Platt didn't. He became the head of a large mission organization and later the pastor of a church in Washington, DC. The challenge is to find where God wants you to share hope with others, whether it is across the world or across the street.
I received a complimentary ARC of this book from the publisher. My comments are an independent and honest review. -
In this book that raises so many important questions, I found answers for my own life.
The narrative the author shares revitalizes my thinking and my world view; it calls me back to living authentically and re-seeing life urgently.
This book will find those God wants to read it. This book will help change the world. -
Today, my students and I celebrated our annual “Tea with Miss E,” a raffle reward for our fall fundraiser for our school. The student chosen gets to choose a friend to enjoy tea, hot chocolate, treats and conversation with me after school (not to be confused with detention!). This year’s tea was particularly poignant to me for two reasons. I sat at a table with two boys, shattering the stereotype of girls’ tea parties, and I read David Platt’s Something Needs to Change:
“On a table in the room, I see cracked glass teacups. The woman who leads the home [for girls who were trafficking], Liv, tells us how these cups were an art project. In a recent class, the group talked about seeing beauty in the middle of brokenness. Each girl was given a class teacup and asked to break it by throwing it on the floor. The girls were hesitant at first, but one by one they threw their cups and watched them shatter into pieces. Then each girl was asked to glue her cup back together, piece by piece. Next they placed a small candle inside each cup and lit it. The cracks in those broken cups actually allowed the light of the candle to shine brighter...in our lives we might feel broken because of what we’ve done or what’s been done to us. But if we let him, God puts us back together and the light of his love shines brightly for others to see, even through our hurts.”
This vignette particularly resonated with me. I had just closed the cover of Soraya Chemaly’s Rage Becomes Her and was struck by the parallels. Both books center on social justice. Both books present the urgency for change. Both books grapple with the atrocities of inequality. Both books include the catharsis of throwing plates and breaking dishes!
Chemaly introduces and concludes Rage...with a scene in which her mother is standing on the veranda outside their kitchen, “chucking one china plate after another as far and as hard as she could into the hot, humid air...each dish soaring through the atmosphere, its weight generating a sharp, steady trajectory before shattering into pieces on the terrace far below...over and over until her hands were finally free.” Platt’s description is nestled into the middle of his journal of his hike through the Himalayas. Both explore the validity of women’s anger and its expression; both also affirm the restoration and freedom of forgiveness.
In our Western culture of binaries, we so often tend towards an either/or mentality. You can choose to be angry OR you can choose to forgive. We moralize, sort and label our feelings and those who experience them. Anger is bad, therefore, angry people are bad people. Forgiveness is good; therefore, forgiving people are good. However, in glass shattering revelation, both authors suggest that perhaps anger and forgiveness are not mutually exclusive and rather depend on each other to co-exist.
At the conclusion of her treatise, Chemaly eloquently expresses, “If it is poison, it is also the antidote. The anger we have as women is an active radical imagination. Angry women burn brighter than the sun.” Platt describes the small candles placed inside each cup. “The cracks in those broken cups actually allowed the light of the candle to shine brighter.” Forgiveness’ flame shines brightest through the beauty of anger’s fissures. -
Something Needs to Change is different than Platt’s other works. Which isn’t a bad thing. It’s not written like a sermon or like his books on the Christian life (in terms of format and style). It’s a story – an “experience” as he puts it – and a powerful one at that.
The reality revealed through this book is tragic, heartbreaking to the point of desperation. But the Greatest Reality that we are reminded of in the end is one that radiates hope and glory: “Every knee will bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord – to the glory of God the Father!” (Phil. 2:11). It is also a reality that, as Platt rightly and powerfully points out, demands obedience to the Great Commission: to make Christ known among the nations. In typical Platt style, (though I mentioned earlier it seems he often breaks his style with this book), Something Needs to Change is a wakeup call, a rousing rally to snap out of apathy and respond to the needs, both physical and spiritual, of the lost. He effectively uses his story, his fears, his struggles, his prayers during his hike through the Himalayas to drive home the lostness and brokenness of unreached people-groups and the great responsibility of the Church as Christ’s ambassadors in the world.
For what it was, this book accomplished what it set out to do. It’s creative format, authentic storytelling, and motivating, Christ-exalting message are all reasons why I rate it five stars. I think you’ll find it’s worth your time if you decide to pick it up.
