Luke 9:57-62
The Cost of Following Jesus
57 As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”
58 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.”
59 He said to another man, “Follow me.”
But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”
60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
61 Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”
62 Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”...
Luke 14:25-35
The Cost of Being a Disciple
25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said:26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. 27 And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28 “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? 29 For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, 30 saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.’
31 “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? 32 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. 33 In the same way, those of you who do not give up everything you have cannot be my disciples.
34 “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35 It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out.
“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear.”
Luke 18:18-30
The Rich and the Kingdom of God
18 A certain ruler asked him, “Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
19 “Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good—except God alone. 20 You know the commandments: ‘You shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, honor your father and mother.’”
21 “All these I have kept since I was a boy,” he said.
22 When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still lack one thing. Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
23 When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy. 24 Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! 25 Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
26 Those who heard this asked, “Who then can be saved?”
27 Jesus replied, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”
28 Peter said to him, “We have left all we had to follow you!”
29 “Truly I tell you,” Jesus said to them, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God 30 will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”
Galatians 5:22-23
The Fruits of the Holy Spirit
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
The above verses show us the cost of following Jesus...The first three men, do not seem to follow Him, after they listen to what He had to say...And when the rich young ruler talked to Jesus about his eternal life, He hears the answer straight from Jesus' lips...And the rich young man was rich...Jesus said this to him, “You still lack one thing...Sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven...Then come, follow Me.”...When he heard this, he became very sad, because he was very wealthy...And then Jesus tells His Disciples, “Truly I tell you no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life.”...
When we read these different verses we see that Christianity is difficult and often untried...We do not want to give up our material things or our freedom to do what we want in our lives (me included) to follow Jesus...We do not want to change our lifestyle to follow Him...It is difficult to give up our material and earthly desires that we currently have to follow Him...We might think, we can make those changes later in life...Changing one's lifestyle is a great paradigm shift, which is very difficult...G. K. Chesterton said. “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting...It has been found difficult; and left untried.”...Christianity is not this great soft cushion, which keeps troubles out of our lives, and is easy to follow-easy life...Jesus' road is as Chesterton tells us is a narrow gate, where mercy toward others lives, forgiveness of others is there, the love of others is always found, kindness toward others hovers there, and loving one's neighbor (which includes all neighbors) is part of His Kingdom, and loving God are top priorities in your life...All the fruits of the Holy Spirit will be in the Kingdom of God...
Priest John RW Stott said this, “Jesus never concealed the fact that His religion included a demand as well as an offer...Indeed, the demand was as total as the offer was free...If He offered men His salvation, He also demanded their submission...He gave no encouragement whatever to thoughtless applicants for discipleship...He brought no pressure to bear on any inquirer...He sent irresponsible enthusiasts away empty...Luke tells of three men who either volunteered, or were invited, to follow Jesus; but no one passed the LORD’s test...The rich young ruler, too, moral, earnest and attractive, who wanted eternal life on his own terms, went away sorrowful, with his riches intact but with neither life nor Christ as his possession…The Christian landscape is strewn with the wreckage of derelict, half built towers—the ruins of those who began to build and were unable to finish...For thousands of people still ignore Christ’s warning and undertake to follow Him without first pausing to reflect on the cost of doing so...The result is the great scandal of Christendom today, so called “nominal Christianity.”...In countries to which Christian civilization has spread, large numbers of people have covered themselves with a decent, but thin, veneer of Christianity...They have allowed themselves to become somewhat involved, enough to be respectable but not enough to be uncomfortable...Their religion is a great, soft cushion...It protects them from the hard unpleasantness of life, while changing its place and shape to suit their convenience...No wonder the cynics speak of hypocrites in the church and dismiss religion as escapism…The message of Jesus was very different...He never lowered his standards or modified His conditions to make His call more readily acceptable...He asked His first disciples, and He has asked every disciple since, to give Him their thoughtful and total commitment...Nothing less than this will do”...
Let us all pray and ask Jesus for His forgiveness and for His Father's Grace...