The Cost Of Discipleship

MATTHEW 8

The Cost of Discipleship

18 And when Jesus saw great multitudes about Him, He gave a command to depart to the other side. 19 Then a certain scribe came and said to Him, “Teacher, I will follow You wherever You go.” 20 And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.” 21 Then another of His disciples said to Him, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” 22 But Jesus said to him, “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”



Matthew 19

16 Now behold, one came and said to Him, “Good[e] Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?” 17 So He said to him, “Why do you call Me good?[f] No one is good but One, that is, God.[g] But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” 18 He said to Him, “Which ones?” Jesus said, “ ‘You shall not murder,’ ‘You shall not commit adultery,’ ‘You shall not steal,’ ‘You shall not bear false witness,’ 19 ‘Honor your father and your mother,’[h] and, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”[i]20 The young man said to Him, “All these things I have kept from my youth.[j] What do I still lack?” 21 Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.” 22 But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

With God All Things Are Possible

23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “Assuredly, I say to you that it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. 24 And again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” 25 When His disciples heard it, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” 26 But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”







THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP





For lent this year I have decided to give the Lord Ten minutes each hour that I am awake. That goes for at home, at work, at the grocery store, and anywhere. No matter where I am at, I will give the Lord at least Ten minutes each hour. Rather it is prayer, studying the word, counting all of my blessing, meditation, or just singing a song of Praise (To myself of course, because He knows I cannot carry a tune).

Now at home I have no problem doing this, but the real problem comes at work. I work retail and anyone that as ever work retail knows that most of my days are jam pack and busy. Also being a supervisor makes my days even tougher, someone always has a problem, be it the customers or one of your employees. Thankfully, I have been able to be steadfast.

I said that to say this, tonight while at work and on my break I decided to spend the ten minutes of one hour looking up the two scriptures listed above. Now I did this because I have been feeling distraught lately about religion. To make it clear I feel distraught about religion not God. Anyway, I have been starting to feel like each time I go to church it feels more and more like a production rather than a worshiping service.

When I say production I mean it is more like a bad reality show where people come to get all of their wishes, we call them Blessing, to come true. The Praise and worship as moved out of the building and as been replaced with I’ll Praise the Lord IF… and I will Praise the Lord WHEN… Seriously, we come in order to receive. You do not think so, consider this then, when you miss church for one or more Sundays what is the first thing that one of the other church members says to you. Where were you last Sunday… you could have missed your blessing. I have heard and even said that line myself so many times. However, what we fail to realize is that this is not what the WORSHIP service is for.

Take the first scripture Matthew 8:18-21, where the scribe tells Jesus that he would follow him anywhere and Jesus replies, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.”

Now I interpret that to mean, at least in this world, there is no glory in following Jesus. However, we are actually preaching an entirely different thing. I hear one preacher say that if I wanted a bigger house, better car, better job, and more money I should start coming to Sunday school. Now I do not know why he thought this was better than telling me that if I wanted a better relationship with God I should started coming to Sunday school. I guess he was just trying to pitch the idea of coming to Sunday School in terms that he thought that I could understand, which is fine until I start coming to Sunday School and I don’t receive any of those promise. What will I do? I will stop coming to Sunday School and my relationship with God will falter, all because I didn’t know that my treasure are not of this earth, but are stored in heaven.(Matthew 6:19-21)





The second scripture has a young man asking Jesus how he could get into heaven. Jesus tells him that all he has to do is follow the commandments and the young man says that he already does those things. Then he asked what else he had to do. Jesus then told him to give away all of his worldly possessions and follow him. The young man walked away sorrowful because he could not bring himself to part with what he considered his treasures.

Now there we have Jesus telling someone to give up everything and follow him and yet we tell people looking to be saved that Jesus is the answer to all of their problems. While having Jesus in their lives is the answer to all of their problems, our presentation is wrong. If you said the very same thing to a season Christian then they would know what you meant. However, when you say that to someone who knows nothing about Jesus, contrary to most of our beliefs there are people that know nothing at all about Jesus, then they will take it as accepting Jesus is going to be some kind of fix-it-all. All of their problems will go away. If they are having car problems, coming to church will fix it. If they are having problems finding a significant other, coming to church will fix it. Sadly, I heard this one as well.

Now I hear those that say, God will bless them with all of those things and He does what us to live a healthy and joyful live. This is true, but this is not the reason that we come to church nor is it the reason we are Christians. We go to church to praise and worship God because He is God, not for what He done or even his going to do. Being new to the church one might think that we praise Him strictly on what he has done for us and when the storms of live come, and the storms will undoubtedly come, their faith will not be strong enough to withstand the storm. They will think that they were doing the right thing by coming to church every Sunday, thus pushing them further away from the church and even worst further away from God.

I know that Blessings from God has its place in the service, and that we all should be thankful for His many Blessing. I just believe that it should not be the selling point of salvation, especially when the plan of salvation that we are promise is so much better. (John 3:16)



As you see this thought went passed the ten allotted minutes, seeing how I am still writing about almost six hours later. However, that is what I love about the Word, You can be so immersed in it that you have tunnel vision and you forget about everything else. Hopefully you will come out of the other end enlightened. God Bless