Best-selling author challenges Christians to follow lead of the early church

Mega best-selling author Max Lucado celebrates his 25th year of publishing—appropriately—with his 25th book, Outlive Your Life: You Were Made to Make a Difference, describing it as “a call to compassion” for Christians.

Examining life in the first church according to the book of Acts, Lucado said: “The assumption of the book is that we can do what they did. We still have the same God, the same Spirit, I wonder if we might have the same impact. The whole theme of the book is, let’s just do our best to do what they did.”

Challenging believers to live in such a way that their lives will make a difference for generations to come and even will be talked about in heaven, Lucado says the early church addressed both spiritual and physical concerns.

“You’re not even out of Acts chapter 2 before you realize that they were helping each other meet each other’s needs in the community as they reached out to one another,” he said. “We come with a message of the heart and the message of the body.”

Practicing what he preaches, Lucado is seeing that all proceeds from the book’s sales go to World Vision to build water wells in northern Uganda and to the James 1:27 Foundation to minister to the needs of single mothers.

He emphasizes that every Christian can have an impact when exercising compassion. “Not one person can do everything,” he said. “Bill Gates can’t do everything. Barack Obama can’t do everything. Not one person can do everything. Everybody can do something. All I do is challenge people to identify one personal mission that you have.

He encourages “a tri-focal view of the world”—meeting the immediate needs in our own community, addressing the needs in our region and then remembering needs around the world “because the truth of the matter is, some people are born in the conditions that are simply overwhelming.”

Wisdom as to where resources should go is necessary, however, as “some people are poor because they’re lazy and I’m not talking about those people,” he said. “Some people are poor because they were simply born in the wrong place and born on the wrong latitude, born in a place where the government does not provide clean water or good roads—those are the kinds of people that we can help.”

Rather than putting hope in government or a large organization, Lucado rests in God who is in control of all things. “I am big about contributing the holiness that is in each of us and trust that the sovereignty of God is going to redistribute that according to His plan and use that to reach the people around the world,” he said.

Lucado says he hopes that every reader will identify his or her own strategy for dealing with the needs of the poor around the world, “that every single person would put the book down and say, OK, I cannot do everything, but I can do something. Here’s my something. Here is the thing I’m doing. … If enough of us do one thing, then God will take all of our one things and build something that’s greater than all of us.”

Companion products, including a teen book and curriculum, will be released. Lucado also will travel on the Make a Difference fall tour with Michael W. Smith, Third Day, TobyMac and Jason Gray, where concert-goers will be challenged to be one of 25,000 new World Vision sponsors.

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