Can Christians have any tangible impact on culture? How can Christians affect tangible, lasting change when there are so many problems to address? In this video, David Platt provides four ways Christians can impact culture without becoming overwhelmed or frustrated. As Christians encounter numerous, overwhelming cultural issues, the first instruction David Platt offers is to not become overwhelmed. Rather, he encourages Christians to consider what the gospel says about each issue and commit to spending extensive time in prayer for those affected by the various issues. Even as time is spent in prayer, each Christian should consider where God is specifically calling them to take action, such as financially assisting women facing unplanned pregnancies or aiding families pursuing adoption, or other means of caring for orphans and the vulnerable.
- Not Becoming Overwhelmed
- Considering Gospel Applications
- Committing to Prayer
- Taking Small Steps of Obedience and Participation
Impacting Our Culture
Without question, when you look at the most pressing social issues around us, any one of them can be overwhelming by itself. You think about an issue like sex trafficking, there’s so many different facets that make sex trafficking the problem that it is. So, how do you combat sex trafficking? There’s so many different angles at which you have to do that, and it’s so complicated and so different in places around the world, so where do you begin?
Then you multiply that across other similar issues like abortion or orphans and widows, or religious liberty or racism, and you start to think, “Well, I can’t do everything.” Then that leads to a paralysis where we say, “Well, I’m not going to do anything then.” But this is where I want to help us see that there are specific things that we can do. It’s not that we have to address all of these issues and every single one of our lives in the same way, but first and foremost, that we think constantly about how the gospel applies to each of these issues.
There’s opportunities we have, and I think it’ll be good, this is something I do in my own life, to think through how can I in my daily life incorporate prayer and intercession when it comes to all these different issues in the world? I don’t want to ignore these. God’s put me in this time and this place, and I’ve got an opportunity to intercede, to stand in the gap for babies in the womb and girls who are being trafficked around the world for sex, and orphans and widows. So, there’s a part I can play in addressing those issues from my prayer closet on a daily basis.
Letting the Will of God Lead Us
Then to think through, “Okay, God, amidst this world, what specific things might you be leading me to do? Here’s my life, what do you want me to do? Is it to address this or that when it comes to orphan or Christ’s widows? Or is it to address this or that in abortion?”
It’s not that we have to do everything until we’re doing it all that we’re just not good enough Christians or anything like that, but this is the beauty of the creativity of God. He will, by his spirit, lead us, give us opportunities to address different issues in different ways. As he leads, we want to be open to that. So we want to speak consistently the gospel to each of these issues, we want to incorporate these issues in our prayer lives, and then to participate with God in the ways he leads us, calls us to participate with him in addressing these critical issues in our day.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
