Count The Cost
Luke 14:28, 33
Count the cost...any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
Richard Baxter A Christian Directory
Consider the cost to be followers of Christ. See that there is no secret reserve in your hearts for worldly interests and prosperity. Take God as enough for you, yea, as all, or else you do not take him as your God.
Mark Frank, Master of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, Sermons, "A Sermon On Ascension Day", Psalm 24:3 "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord?", 1849
To be of the number of Christ's true, faithful servants is no slight work; 'tis an (uphill) fight, 'tis a race, 'tis a continual warfare; fastings and watchings, and cold and nakedness, and hunger and thirst, bonds, imprisonments, danger and distresses, ignominy and reproach, affliction and persecutions, the world's hatred and our friends' neglect, all that we call hard or difficult is to be found in the way we are to go.
G. Campbell Morgan
"The Terms of Discipleship"
I am increasingly impressed with the fact that whenever a soul comes to Christ the last battle is fought out over one thing. I do not know what it is in your case, but you know exactly what you have to do if you are to follow this Christ, to build and to battle - the thing that must be set right, the friendship that must be dropped, the habit that must be abandoned, the restitution that has to be made, pride that has to be humbled, prejudice that has to be crucified. God tells us what it is, and we know. Oh for one five minutes of soul honesty! Do not indulge in subterfuges. You are asked to be true about the thing that you know is between your soul and God.
“The Problems of the Religious Life: Is the Religious Life Worth While?”
In order to be a Christian, in order to be a disciple of Christ, in order to live the religious life, there first must be devotion, absolute loyalty; and, second, there must be such abnegation of self that there shall be no seeking for place or power, but, the enterprises of Christ possessing the soul, willingness to take up the cross daily and follow Him…He must lay all his treasure at the feet of his Lord, and recognize not only that what he is he is for Christ, and what he does he does for Christ, and that what he has he holds for Christ.
J.C. Ryle Holiness
http://www.gracegems.org/Ryle/holiness14.htm
We who preach the gospel can hold out to all who come to Christ "exceeding great and precious promises" (2 Peter 1:4). We can offer boldly to you, in our Master's name, the peace of God which passes all understanding. Mercy, free grace and full salvation are offered to everyone who will come to Christ, and believe on Him. But we promise you no peace with the world, or with the devil. We warn you, on the contrary, that there must be warfare, so long as you are in the body. We would not keep you back, or deter you from Christ's service. But we would have you "count the cost," and fully understand what Christ's service entails (Luke 14:28).
http://www.gracegems.org/Ryle/holiness6.htm
For lack of counting the cost, hundreds of professed converts, under religious revivals — go back to the world after a time and bring disgrace on religion. They begin with a sadly mistaken notion of what is true Christianity. They imagine it consists in nothing more than a so-called "coming to Christ" and having strong inward feelings of joy and peace. And so when they find, after a time, that there is a cross to be carried, that our hearts are deceitful, and that there is a busy devil always near us — they cool down in disgust and return to their old sins...because they had really never known what Bible Christianity is.
D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones "The Call To Battle"
http://articles.ochristian.com/article536.shtml
J.I. Packer Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God
The repentance that Christ requires of His people consists in a settled refusal to set any limits to the claims which He may make on their lives. Our Lord knew– who better?– how costly His followers would find it to maintain this refusal, and let Him have His way with them all the time, and therefore He wished them to face out and think through the implications of discipleship before committing themselves.
He did not desire to make disciples under false pretenses. He had no interest in gathering vast crowds of professed adherents who would melt away as soon as they found out what following Him actually demanded of them. In our own presentation of Christ’s gospel, therefore, we need to lay a similar stress on the cost of following Christ, and make sinners face it soberly before we urge them to responded to the message of free forgiveness.
In common honesty, we must not conceal the fact that free forgiveness, in one sense, will cost everything; or else our evangelizing becomes a sort of confidence trick. And where there is no clear knowledge, and hence no realistic recognition of the real claims that Christ makes, there can be no repentance, and therefore no salvation.
A.W. Tozer
Everyone who has lived for Christ in a Christ-less world has suffered some losses and endured some pains that he could have avoided by the simple expedient of laying down his cross. But while we are here among men with our sensitive hearts exposed to the chilly blasts of the unbelieving and uncomprehending world it is imperative that we take a realistic view of things and learn how to deal with them. And it is important that we tell the whole truth to those we are endeavoring to win.
The Root of the Righteous
Many of us Christians have become extremely skillful in arranging our lives so as to admit the truth of Christianity without being embarrassed by its implications. We arrange things so that we can get on well enough without divine aid, while at the same time ostensibly seeking it. We boast in the Lord but watch carefully that we never get caught depending on Him. Pseudo faith always arranges a way out in case God fails it. Real faith knows only one way and gladly allows itself to be stripped of any second way or makeshift substitutes.
Rut, Rot & Revival, “Decisions or Disciples?”
The idea that all you have to do is to accept Christ and you are in is a great mistake. It leaves people with the impression that if they accept Christ they have no fight to fight, no warfare, no job to do, and no temptations. They are just in. When you accept Christ rightly as your Lord and Savior you are in, but to be honest, you have just started to fight.
People get converted and we do not tell them that they must fight all the way through to heaven. They must fight, pray through, suffer it out, overcome personal sin, and live in praise and worship, because if they do not, they will degenerate.
“Costly Discipleship”
In our eagerness to make converts I am afraid we have lately been guilty of using the technique of modern salesmanship, which is of course to present only the desirable qualities in a product and ignore the rest. We go to men and offer them a cozy home on the sunny side of the brae. If they will but accept Christ He will give them peace of mind, solve their problems, prosper their business, protect their families and keep them happy all day long. They believe us and come, and the first cold wind sends them shivering to some counselor to find out what has gone wrong; and that is the last we hear of many of them.
Nowhere in the Gospels do we find anything visionary or overoptimistic. Christ told His hearers the whole truth and let them make up their minds. He might grieve over the retreating form of an inquirer who could not face up to the truth, but He never ran after him to try to win him with rosy promises. He would have men follow Him, knowing the cost, or He would let them go their ways.
All this is but to say that Christ is honest. We can trust Him. He knows that He will never be popular among the sons of Adam and He knows that His followers need not expect to be. The wind that blows in His face will be felt by all who travel with Him, and we are not intellectually honest when we try to hide that fact from them.
Steven Lawson It Will Cost You Everything: What it Takes to Follow Jesus, 2021
Following Jesus will cost you your old way of life and forfeiting your past sins. It will cost you a life of ease and living for this world… It will cost you following your own agenda for your life. It will cost you time and treasure. You are destined for glory, but know this—Jesus wants His followers to be His fully devoted disciples.
John MacArthur
Are you willing to give your life? Are you willing, not only to give up your desires, your ambitions, your dreams, your hopes, all the things that you think are your well-crafted purposes and plans, abandoning them to My sovereign authority, subordinating them to My will, but even to the point where it could cost you your life? Are you willing to say with the apostle Paul "for to me to live is Christ and to die is gain"? Are you willing to say that? Are you so eager to have your sins forgiven and the hope of eternal life that if it cost you even your life in this world, that's a small price to pay?