Lukas Naugle is the Director of Resource Strategies at Desiring God.

Seth Godin, one of today’s best marketing minds, wrote a blog post last week entitled “Is it worthy?”

Godin reflects on whether any of his efforts are worth the investments and sacrifices of others, or whether someone else could have done better with the resources that he has been given.

Godin concludes his reflection:

The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.

There is much to affirm here. Yes, we fail and fail often. Yes, we should participate in something unimaginably big. And, no, the fear of failure should not keep us from continuing in this pursuit.

Godin’s remarks also raise two questions for me:

1. Is searching for “something bigger than we can imagine” enough, or do we need to find something, too?

The seeking is essential, but only because what we find is so wonderful. The asking is important and valuable because of the answers.

I sought the Lord, and he answered me and delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed….
The young lions suffer want and hunger; but those who seek the Lord lack no good thing. (Psalm 34:4-6, 10)

2. Can we be set free from the fear of failure by telling ourselves that it is in our nature to fail?

In part, yes, but for the Christian there is far more. The fear of failure is ultimately conquered through Christ. We need to…

• …own up to our sin—the real failure. We fall short of and belittle the glory of God by pursuing our own greatness. (Romans 1:18-23;3:23)
• …change our goal. In faith, we should pursue the glory of Christ, the perfect one, rather than our own perfection. (Galatians 5:1-5)
• …trust in Christ for our perfection, because we are judged according to his righteousness as he intercedes on our behalf continually before God, the Father. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

Recently Desiring God has been working with ReachLife Ministries. I've asked Trip Lee of Reach Records to tell us some of what God is doing through their work and our partnership.

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Too many youth today are wasting their lives. Our culture promotes it: "Buy this, wear that, drive this." Some cultures pride themselves on that very message. This is particularly true in the hip hop culture.

Unfortunately, many today believe the hip hop culture is unredeemable, better left to itself. Hip-hop is rarely thought of as a culture that ought to be invaded with the truth of Jesus Christ. Truth is, there's a desperate need of Christians who are willing to spend their lives in order to reach it and say with Paul, “I am not ashamed of the gospel” (Romans 1:16).

Reach Records and ReachLife Ministries are devoted to doing just that; reaching the hip-hop culture for the glory of God. We embrace the truth that all cultures are wicked and sinful—that is, until people within that culture are confronted with the truth of Jesus Christ. Our goal is to be used by God for this very purpose.

Reach Records creates music that is relevant to the culture and is packed full of biblical truth. This platform has proven to be an incredible tool, both to introduce people to Jesus Christ, as well as help others go deeper in their faith. Through our music, we have the opportunity to reach a culture that otherwise would have no interest in what we have to say.

As a result of the music, it became apparent that many in this culture lacked solid biblical tools and resources to disciple them in the Christian life. Therefore, we created ReachLife ministries, a non-profit organization which produces Christ-centered tools and resources for urban churches and ministries to provide what music is not designed to do, disciple.

This summer, we are very excited about the opportunity to travel the country for our first official concert tour. The “Unashamed Tour” will hit around 25 cities in the US and the UK. It will be an incredible opportunity to encourage young believers all over the globe to not waste their lives and to be unashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Each of us at ReachLife has been deeply impacted by the ministry of Desiring God and we are excited about the recent partnership with them. They have agreed to donate 10,000 copies of the book Don't Waste Your Life, which will be distributed free at our concerts this summer.

These books will be placed in the hands of urban youth across the country who have never been exposed to Desiring God or the teachings of John Piper. I cannot express the excitement I feel when I see young hip-hoppers not only hearing about the glory of Christ through our concert, but also leaving with resources that will help them to continue in that excitement.

Please join us in praying that the Lord will use both the tour and the books to glorify himself as he calls this generation to live unashamed.

Last week my wife found our mini-van window shattered and our stereo missing. Honestly, my first reaction was not biblically informed. My thoughts ran to Murphy's Law and the irony that I had just replaced our broken stereo with a new one two weeks earlier.

As with all shallow adages, Murphy's Law did not really help me make sense of my world.

Then my mind fled to Jesus’ words,

…lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven,... where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:19-20)

Now, a week later, I am thankful that God conspires against my sin to keep me from loving things, and I'm contemplating not shelling out more money to replace the stereo.

I think I want to leave that big hole in the middle of my dashboard. What better way to remind myself and my family that our treasure is in heaven where moth and rust cannot destroy and thieves cannot break in and steal?

In 1797, William Wilberforce wrote A Practical View of Christianity in which he addressed the defective nature of the Christianity many middle and upper class people in England professed. Here is an excerpt that sounds as if it could have been written about today. It makes plain that affluence has a consistent effect on Christians in every age.

Yet thus life rolls away with too many of us in a course of shapeless idleness. Its recreations constitute its chief business…amusements are multiplied, and combined, and varied, to fill up the void of a listless and languid life; and by the judicious use of these different resources, there is often a kind of sober settled plan of domestic dissipation, in which with all imaginable decency year after year wears away in unprofitable vacancy. Even old age often finds us pacing in the same round of amusements which our early youth had tracked out. (99)

Individually, let’s pray, plan, and live in such a way that no one could use his words to describe our lives:

• “shapeless idleness”
• “listless and languid”
• “domestic dissipation”
• “unprofitable vacancy”

Collectively, let’s pray, plan, and live so that affluent American Christianity does not devolve into

a system of decent selfishness…a system scarcely more to be abjured for its impiety, than to be abhorred for its cold insensibility to the opportunities of diffusing happiness. (99)

We love adoption, especially when it is done in a way that reflects our Heavenly Father’s adoption of us.

Dan Cruver with the Carolina Hope Christian Adoption Agency is a wonderful partner in gospel-centered adoption. Recently, we were able to send a cameraman and a camera with him on a trip to Ethiopia to help bring attention to the situation of orphans there.

Dan has written a great testimony of how something as simple as Marty, the cameraman, sitting down with the kids showed people Jesus. He writes:

The director of the orphanage ... told us that many professional cameramen come through their particular village (a village with 20,000+ known cases of AIDS) to capture footage, but he had never seen any of them sit on the floor to film. They always film while standing in order to protect their health. The orphanage director then went on to say that he was deeply moved that Marty did not hesitate to sit on the floor to film these beautiful children.

Along with capturing footage of their trip, we also have the opportunity to join with Carolina Hope at their benefit concert later this month. This event is to help with the launch of their new adoption ministry in Ethiopia. It's with Caedmon’s Call and is on February 29, 2008 in Greenville, SC.

We will be at the concert with a Don’t Waste Your Life table and a video message from John Piper. If you are interested in attending, tickets can be purchased online (and aren't that expensive, either). If you come, stop by our table and say hi.

As I was reflecting on the latest DWYL Podcast, featuring Joshua Project and its focus on world evangelization, I was drawn back to read about this unfinished task in the book, Don’t Waste Your Life.

For its own soul the church [and me too] needs to be involved in missions. We will not know God in his full majesty until we know him moving triumphantly among the nations. We will not admire and praise him as we ought until we see him gathering a company of worshipers for himself from every people group on earth—including all the Muslim and Hindu and Buddhist peoples. Nothing enlarges our vision of God’s triumphant grace like the scope of his saving work in history. (pg. 172-3)

Many Christmas celebrations, stories, gatherings, devotionals, etc. seem to focus simply on the baby in the manger, and often they don't leave the manger.

If I never leave the manger in my Christmas meditations, I miss the scope and depth of Christmas. The baby Jesus left the manger, increased in wisdom and stature, showed us true righteousness, and gave his life to ransom a people from the many peoples of the world.

For a meaningful Christmas season—and a meaningful life—it is essential to see that Christ was undertaking a global mission when he became a little baby in a manger.

We've just released two new videos on the Don’t Waste Your Life Podcast of John Piper encouraging baby boomers to not waste their retirement. If retirement is a long way off for you, you may find these videos a great reminder that life is not about trying to pack money away so that you can avoid hardships at the end of life.

(If you would like to use these videos for larger groups you can download the hi-resolution videos found in iTunes.)

Here's the gist of the message you will hear in these videos:

Consider a story from the February 1998 edition of Reader’s Digest, which tells about a couple who “took early retirement from their jobs in the Northeast five years ago when he was 59 and she was 51. Now they live in Punta Gorda, Florida, where they cruise on their 30 foot trawler, play softball and collect shells.” At first, when I read it I thought it might be a joke. A spoof on the American Dream. But it wasn’t. Tragically, this was the dream: Come to the end of your life—your one and only precious, God-given life—and let the last great work of your life, before you give an account to your Creator, be this: playing softball and collecting shells. Picture them before Christ at the great day of judgment: “Look, Lord. See my shells.” That is a tragedy. And people today are spending billions of dollars to persuade you to embrace that tragic dream. Over against that, I put my protest: Don’t buy it. Don’t waste your life. (Don't Waste Your Life, 45-46)

“The greatest cause in the world is joyfully rescuing people from hell, meeting their earthly needs, making them glad in God, and doing it with a kind, serious pleasure that makes Christ look like the Treasure he is.” John Piper, Don’t Waste Your Life, pg. 122

At Desiring God, it is our passion that as many people as possible will embrace this greatest cause for their life’s work. To that end, we hope you will be encouraged by a few new things at dontwasteyourlife.com.

• Released the 27th DWYL podcast, which is the beginning of a 4 part interview with the rock band Mainstay. We hope that you will be encouraged to hear how they seek to not waste their lives.
  
  
• Redesigned dontwasteyourlife.com with better navigation, a cleaner look, and a few more ways to get connected and spread the message.

What does a young, cash-strapped, spreading-oriented Christian Hedonist do when he is going to pick up his first son in Addis Ababa? He researches a church that he could encourage and emails DG with a proposal. His idea went something like this.

I have found a Sovereign Grace church in Addis Ababa. I would like to find the pastor and deliver DG resources to him. If you can donate some resources to me, I have 5 lbs of room in my suitcase.

We received the following update and photo from Dustin:

They were ear-to-ear smiles with thankfulness for the generosity of Desiring God. They were humbled by the gift and thankful to have the resources to use to further the Gospel in Ethiopia. The pastor wrote out a thank you, and here it is word for word:

"Dear Desiring God Ministries: Greetings in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. May the Lord bless you for your kindness in sending all the books and DVD materials. They will be a great help for advancing the Gospel here in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Sincerely, Molalign (Mo) Senior Pastor, Covenant Life Church, Addis Ababa"

We interviewed Dave Dravecky this May in his office at Outreach of Hope in Colorado Springs. He loves talking about the sovereignty of God over suffering, especially as it relates to his own life.

Today we posted the last of 3 interviews with Dave. This interview series has been striking to me because he shares candidly with us about the different struggles and dreams he has gone through over the last 17 years since his highly publicized traumatic event.

After tragedy life goes on. How does one pursue faithfulness and not waste it?

You can watch these interviews in iTunes or at our Don't Waste Your Life YouTube channel.

Desiring God donated some Light & Heat CDs to The Rebelution Tour. Below is an update from Brett Harris.

We just got back from our Dallas/Fort Worth Conference where we distributed 800 "Light & Heat" CD's (one per attendee). The conference was a tremendous success with 42 people coming to Christ, including several parents...

In addition to distributing the "Light & Heat" CD's we have been ordering and selling many of John Piper's books through our conference bookstore. We have been truly blessed by the ministry of Desiring God and are doing what we can to spread the word to our audience.

Many of you are aware of our video that is online for free on the website and available in iTunes podcasts. We have also begun to put our video on YouTube. If you use YouTube, you can subscribe to two Desiring God channels we just started this week. We would love to see you over there leaving comments and posting your own videos. There will be more to come over the coming months.

• Don’t Waste Your Life YouTube Channel
• Desiring God Conferences YouTube Channel

Here are the pertinent details for the challenge:

• We expect to receive many great strategies, but we will only be able to choose 1 strategy that is submitted.
• This strategy needs to have a clear and effective plan to spread 5,000 Light and Heat CDs in 2007.
• Proposals should be clear, compelling, detailed, and help us to see the strategic nature of the opportunity.
• Proposals must be received by July 11th, 2007. To submit a proposal please respond to this post.
• Once a strategy has been selected Desiring God will ship 5,000 Light and Heat CDs to a Continental US Address free of charge.

We will be praying for all of you. Pray that God would give us discernment.

On Saturday we received the following prayer request:

Firstly, I thank God for the Desiring God ministry. I come from Papua New Guinea. My prayer and request for prayer is God give us true servants of the gospel. We (the country) need well-educated men who hear the call of God to make earthly sacrifices for the sake of the cross to take servant leadership roles in our churches. Thank you for praying with us.

-Pana

If you are interested in missions in Papua New Guinea, check out To Every Tribe Ministries. The founder, David Sitton, was a speaker at our 2006 pastors conference. You can listen to his message Missionary Martyrs: Fools for Jesus for the Nations.

God created us to live with a single passion to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life. The wasted life is the life without this passion. God calls us to pray and think and dream and plan and work not to be made much of, but to make much of him in every part of life.

Don’t Waste Your Life pg. 37-38

Are you currently praying, thinking, dreaming, planning, and working to not waste your life? If so, we would like to pray for you here at Desiring God. No matter where you are in the process of dreaming, thinking, praying, or doing this is an open invitation to share your requests with us.

We will pray for these requests throughout the day as individuals and also regularly bring them to our staff prayer meetings.

If you are interested please respond to this blog post with your prayer requests. (They will not be shared outside the organization without your permission.)

At the age of 63 and contemplating retirement, I read Don't Waste Your Life. After much prayer by me and some prayer-warrior brothers, I sensed God calling me to take early retirement at age 64 so that I could do more volunteer mission work. As a result, God has called me to do mission work in Ecuador and I completed my sixth visit just this past month (March 2007) and am planning a team mission for July 2007.

-Ramon

Update - Responding to this post, a reader wrote in:

I gave my father (who also is 63 years old) a copy of Don't Waste Your Life and the next thing I knew, he was on a plane with me and my husband - all on our way to a foreign country to do mission work for a week. This is a man who has taught Sunday school all his life, but never felt "called" to be a missionary.  HA!  He and my mom are now retired and living in that country. God is good. 

We are thankful that the Lord has blessed Don’t Waste Your Life in the four years since it was published. Last week Crossway announced that it was awarded the Gold Book Award for more than 500,000 in sales.

At Desiring God, we are praying for another 500,000 to be sold or given away in the next year so that another half million people may lose their interest in the trivial pleasures and comforts of the world and find their full satisfaction in God. Can you imagine what would happen if thousands of souls were awakened to the glory of God and rescued from the American dream?

For more information check out dontwasteyourlife.com.

One reason we re-launched Don’t Waste Your Life with resources for small groups and churches is that we heard from many of you over the past 4 years, just like the testimony below that we received last week. Our prayer is that God would help thousands reconsider their calling in life; to take seriously the mandate from Christ to not seek to save their life, but to lose it for Christ’s sake and the gospel’s.

I have just made a very similar move. Having read Don't Waste Your Life a couple of years back--God began to move. I wasn't sure where or what--but then in a very quick moment--and without warning--God moved in and made it very clear what God had for me. In 6 months time I went from the corporate world to a position with Water Missions International. Desiring God played a significant role in opening my heart to hear the call.

- Jerry

We do not know what God’s call means for you. It is different for each person and season of life. We do know that the heart that treasures Christ above its own personal comfort will yield, by the grace of God, an unwasted life. This is an imperfect pursuit. May you rest in Christ’s finished work on the cross as you pursue a life in him.

I am a CPA, well at least for the time being. Which is really why I am writing. God has used the preaching and teaching of Desiring God and John Piper and led me to take a tremendous risk and enter the mission field. I want to thank you for your work and to testify that through your ministry I have come to taste and see a Savior that is worth risking all.

Last fall I attended the National Conference, and I went into it really struggling with this call. My life had been so comfortable, and I was on track to become a partner in the firm where I work. On Saturday night DA Carson preached a message on the Trinitarian Love of God , and heaven's doors opened, and I encountered a love so deep and so full of grace that I knew I must risk everything to proclaim it.

I am sitting on a pink and green motel bed this afternoon, thanking the Lord for his grace, and I wanted to share with you what we have been doing the past couple days. Yesterday, as part of our campaign to spread the message of Don't Waste Your Life, Desiring God hosted a booth at the Rez Week ministry fair on campus at Texas A & M. God was gracious to allow us to give away 900 Don't Waste Your Life books at the table. Last night, we were invited to attend 7 Christian campus organizations to talk with them about the ministry of Desiring God and the newly redesigned dontwasteyourlife.com and give away another 1,000 books.

Tonight John Piper will be preaching at Rudder Auditorium at Texas A & M. Pray that a few more thousand books would find their way into the hands of students and that God would use the preaching of his Word to radically change believing students and awaken the lost from their spiritual slumber.

Martin Manten and Christian Andresen train pastors at the European Bible Training Center in Berlin and Zurich, plant churches, facilitate German translations of John Piper books, and a number of other things in Switzerland and Germany. (There is also an English brochure in case you cannot read German.) I had an opportunity to talk with them outside of The Master’s Seminary Library surrounded by a few thousand pastors while attending the Shepherd’s Conference. I was greatly encouraged by the work the Lord has laid upon their hearts to do for the German speaking world. Martin and Christian have invited John Piper to come to Europe and Russia to speak to a couple thousand pastors. We will keep you posted on any developments. For now, be encouraged by Martin and Christian as they share with me about their ministry and John Piper’s books.

• Interview with Martin and Christian.
• Another interview with Martin.