What is the real cost of following Jesus?
Last night, we had dinner and wrapped up a week with an awesome team from Living Waters Church from Hastings, Michigan. Daryl, our ministry director, was sharing and talking about the cost of following Jesus. How it is not a rose-colored version of what Jesus said but exactly what Jesus said. How sometime we say “well, I am willing to give it all if Jesus asked me.” as a way of saying “I’ll keep my comfort and my way of life until Jesus tells me otherwise”. It got me thinking: what has been our cost? What idols have we sacrificed at the feet of Jesus?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, was a pastor and Nazi dissident who was hanged for his work against Hitler. A witness to his execution wrote: “I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer… kneeling on the floor praying fervently to God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the few steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.” In his book “Cost of Discipleship” he wrote: “The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death—we give over our lives to death. Thus it begins; the cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise god-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time—death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at his call.”
What was the cost to the apostles for following Jesus? How about the Christians in the early church? Or the Christians in the persecuted church around the world today? What is their cost?
This week Luke Sullivan, a young missionary who had recently moved to Guatemala died in a plane crash. He leaves a pregnant wife and 3 beautiful girls behind. What was their cost for obedience?
What has been your cost? And yes, he is asking you…
To the rich young ruler Jesus said, It is going to cost you all your possessions to follow me: “Sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Matthew 19:21)
