"Then He said to the crowd, 'If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow Me." Luke 9:23 NLT
With so many denominations and sects of Christianity there is, it can sometimes be difficult to navigate the true way of following Jesus. Many people think they can believe in Jesus and not change. Many think they can go through life and do whatever they want to do and claim to be a Christ follower. Some of this thought comes from lack of biblical teaching. Some of it is because of poor teaching, then some of it comes from no teaching at all. I'm grateful that we can look at the scripture and actually glean from Jesus the actual cost of following Him. The first cost of following Jesus is your life. You have to die. Don't flip out. I don't mean literally, He already paid that price. You do have to die spiritually. You have to give up your will. One version says you must "deny" yourself. The New Living Translation helps us understand clearly, "you must give up your own way". When we follow Jesus, we make Him the Lord of our lives. That means we give Him the reign's of our lives and submit to His Will for us. In other words, our lives are submitted in obedience to His Word. It means my sole purpose in life becomes to please Him. The second cost of following Jesus is servant-hood. Jesus says, "take up your cross daily". Each of us that has been placed on the earth have a cross to bear. What kind of cross? Do I mean you have to be nailed to a cross? No. Each of us has been given a purpose that is supposed to impact the world. God created each of us uniquely in order to solve a problem in the earth, serve our fellow man, and to give God glory. Ephesians 2:10 says, "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared before hand that we should walk in them" (NKJV). The New Living Translation says, "For we are God's masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago."(NLT) He's created us to do good, to serve. Every person in Christ has a job to do and a purpose to fulfill. It's our responsibility to discover and accomplish that purpose, through consistent study of the scripture, consistent attendance in gathering with a community of believers where you are being taught the scriptures, consistency in prayer, and consistent service to others. The third cost of following Jesus is loyalty. Jesus wraps up this verse with two words. "follow Me". The original word used for "follow" in the verse means, to follow one who precedes, join him as his attendant, to be his disciple and to side with his party. Before we made Jesus the Lord of our lives we were apart of the kingdom of darkness. But through His sacrifice we have been moved into the Kingdom of God. Now that we are apart of the Kingdom of God we should be about our Fathers business. What does that mean? II Corinthians 5:17- 20 says, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come. Everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, certain that God is appealing through us. We plead on Christ's behalf, 'Be reconciled to God.' (HCSB) We are to be about reconciling people back to God. We are to preach the Good News of Jesus every where we go and be a witness of the transformation that has taken place in our lives because of Him. (Acts 1:8) We get to take part in God saving the souls of men in the earth. Yes, it does cost to follow Jesus but the cost is nothing compared to the price Jesus paid on the cross for our sin. The cost of following Jesus is worth it. Sheldon
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AuthorHusband, Father, Red-Letter Christian, Preacher of the Gospel. Archives
June 2021
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