The past few weeks, I have been hit extremely hard by the passage Luke 14:25-35:
Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even life itself—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
“Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.
“Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
So many people ignore this passage or just skim over it and never devote their lives to this "concept." But isn't this what Jesus commanded us to do? To give up everything to follow him? My mind has been consumed with what it means to be a true disciple of Jesus Christ. For those of us who call ourselves Christians, are we really living that life - the life that Jesus has commanded us to live if we are to follow him. Are we giving up everything to go and preach the gospel to those who are unreached, who have no freedom in Christ? How is it that we just sit and wait for others to do the "dirty" work, yet call ourselves disciples? How is it, with so many unreached peoples, that so few Christians are going?
Jesus calls us to abandon our comforts and all that is familiar to us and natural to us. I mean look at Mark 10:17-31. A young man wants to follow Jesus but he cannot give up the things that hold him back and distract him in life, such as all the possessions that he values so highly. Jesus ends up telling this man to "Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me." (vs. 21) I don't think Jesus meant this literally, to sell everything, but he did want the young rich man to give up what was holding him back from following the Son of God. Jesus wasn't trying to strip this man of all his pleasure but offering him eternal treasure. He was saying that "This is better, not just for the poor, but for you as well, when you abandon the stuff you are holding on to."
I guess what consumes my mind is do we really believe that Jesus Christ is worth abandoning everything for? Our wants, desires, and even our lives? What does being a disciple really mean to us these days? Does it mean anything...or everything? Have we found something worth losing everything else for? Being a disciple of the one who calls us means believing in him enough to obey and follow him where he leads, even when the crowds turn the other way...
"But I want to know him. I want to experience him. I want to be part of a people who delight in him like the brothers and sisters in underground Asia who have nothing but him. And I want to be part of a people who are risking it all for him."
~ Radical by David Platt
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