Christian rap artists: Don't waste your life

|PIC1|Christian rap artists and an evangelical ministry have teamed up for a 25-plus city tour to challenge Christians and concertgoers not to waste their life.

The "Don't Waste Your Life" tour, presented by Reach Records and Desiring God Ministries, is making stops in major cities across the country over the next couple of months, challenging the younger generation to live passionately for Jesus Christ.

The main message is: shun seeking worldly joy and instead live lives dedicated to Christ.

It's a message inspired by evangelical author John Piper's book, Don't Waste Your Life. Piper, who leads Desiring God and is a pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, wrote the book for both Christians and non-Christians hoping to wake them up from living a life focused on comfort and pleasure and one that counts for nothing.

"God created us to live with a single passion to joyfully display his supreme excellence in all the spheres of life," Piper writes in the book. "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 our lives," he adds.

Piper learned this piece of wisdom early on in his life when he heard his father preach about an old man who opened his heart to receive Christ but immediately sobbed and lamented that he had wasted his entire life.

"The thought of coming to my old age and saying through tears, 'I've wasted it! I've wasted it!' was a fearful and horrible thought to me," Piper writes.

A prominent and passionate minister of the Word of God who doesn't believe in the popular concept of retirement, Piper wants to warn others, especially the younger generation, not to get caught up in a life that counts for nothing and not to "coast through life without a passion".

Helping spread that message is a lineup of Christian rap artists, including Dove Award nominee Lecrae, Grammy Award nominee FLAME, Stellar Award nominee Trip Lee, as well as Tedashii and Sho Baraka.

Commenting on the media-heavy culture the younger generation is growing up in, Trip Lee believes their perception and lives are being shaped and influenced by MTV, BET, and YouTube.

But anything separated from Jesus Christ is a waste of our lives, Lee says.

"I think by buying into the lies and pursuing things that are not of the Lord, pursuing things that don't show him to be glorious, and pursu[ing] things that don't help us to know him, it's a waste of our lives," he said.

The "Don't Waste Your Life" tour kicked off in Memphis, Tennessee, last week and is set to hit Manchester, New Hampshire, on Friday. In addition to stops in New York, Atlanta, and Miami, among other cities, the tour will also hit the country's largest Christian festivals, including Creation Fest East and West.

On the web:
www.reachrecords.com/dwyl