What is the Cost?

It has been an interesting week on the 400 block of South 31st Street. I've been thinking all week about what I might write to describe it. I want desperately to communicate, as much for myself as anyone else, the thoughts in my head, what God's Word says, and how much He has changed my heart.

In Luke 14 Jesus makes it very clear that we ought to count the cost of following Him before we make that choice. What is the cost? "Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:33)

After much thought, I can't decide whether, thirteen years ago when I became a believer, I would have made the same decision had I really known what the cost would be. If someone had read me that verse and told me you're going to live in the inner city amongst violence and poverty, you will be manipulated when you're trying to show grace, you will lose hundreds of dollars to dishonesty, what you want now you will not get. In the emotion and passion of my "conversion moment", maybe I would have been okay with that. But a day, a week, a month later, after I had calmed down and really had time to think, what would I have said?

Jesus doesn't beat around the bush. He doesn't try to make us feel good by telling us how much He loves us and how peachy life is going to be if we would just believe.  In verse 26 he says "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."  Jesus is not begging us to believe in him. He is telling us to honestly consider what we are willing to do in His name, and if it doesn't include giving up everything we value in life including life itself, then we're following the wrong guy.

So what is the cost? Many believers around the world choose to follow Jesus knowing that it is a death sentence for themselves and their families. This is not the case for us, but the statement Jesus makes is no less pertinent. I think these are some of the most cutting words Jesus gives us, and when the Bible cuts us, we probably ought to pay attention. We are not in a situation of literally giving up our families or renouncing all that we have. But we are in a situation of renouncing our allegiance to those things. Am I making my decisions based on following and obeying Jesus, or am I doing it because I think I ought to be safe? Or I love my children? Or I need financial security?

This brings me back to the questions I've been asking myself: If I had really known, what would I have done?  Of course I can't answer that question, but it gives me a greater picture of God's grace in all of this. He is teaching me what the cost is, and He's giving me the grace to be willing to endure it. More than endure it, He is giving me the grace to find joy in suffering. It is not a begrudging cost, it is a willing cost. My only hope, my only joy, my only satisfaction is in Him. If, even for a moment, I think that my happiness will be found in my money, my home, my husband, my children (the list goes on) I will be disappointed, empty and lost. Life is found in obedience to Him. It is found when what I want no longer matters, only what He wants. God is transforming what I want into what He wants.

"It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."