The Cost of Following

Luke 14:33 - any of you who does not give up everything he has can not be my disciple. 

This sure doesn't sound like the best way to get people motivated to follow!  I mean let's be real for a minute.  If someone came up to you and told you that in order for you to follow him you had to give up everything you had, you had to hate your family, you had to put everything aside and give it all up - do you think you'd start jumping for joy at the prospect of following after this guy?  I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't have gotten super excited about the idea of following a man who told me I had to give up everything. 

So why did he say it?  Did he really mean that in order to follow him we have to give up everything?  Do we all need to live in monasteries and have nothing of our own? Did Jesus really want us to have no home, no car, no clothes except those on our backs, no job, no retirement account, no toys?  I don't think that the stuff is the point.  I think it's a heart issue.  Much of what Jesus teaches about possessions and about discipleship has to do with the heart.  He's getting at the hearts of those who follow. 

Is your heart really in this following Jesus thing?  Are you willing to give up everything to follow him?  Perhaps the better way to address this is with regard to the possessions that you have - how can you use the things of your life (home, car, furniture, tv, computer, and all of it) to honor and worship and praise God?  Can these possessions help you worship God?  Can they be used to serve someone in need?  Can they show the least of these how great our God is? 

The cost of following Jesus is a large one!  It's not for the faint or the weak.  We have to be willing to go where we don't want and do what is uncomfortable.  We have to be ready in a moment's notice to walk through the firestorms of life knowing that with Jesus by our side we will make it through.  The cost of following Jesus is that we are willing to walk the path that he walked - a path that led him to the cross and eventually the grave.  If we are truly going to be Jesus' disciples then we must be willing to die to ourselves and our stuff that we might be truly made alive in the things of God.

Paul has a great blessing in 2 Thessalonians May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and by his grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.