Count the Cost – Luke 14:25-33

There is a very helpful study of what steps those who responded to the gospel took to get there.  They include coming to trust in a believer, becoming curious about Jesus, counting the cost of readiness to change one’s life, becoming a focused searcher of truth, and finally believing.  It is that counting the cost aspect that Jesus focuses on with the crowds.

Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.  (Luke 14:25-33 ESV)

Being a disciple of Jesus makes one susceptible to the same kind of opposition he experienced.  Though the crowds love him now and want to be around him, there is a cost to being with him.  And so Jesus challenges the crowds, and us, with making sure we understand the cost and are ready to pay it.

We look to the means at our disposal to make sure we are taken care of.  We should look to the Father to meet our needs, even if He does so through the means at hand.  If we love family more than Jesus it is because we feel we need them more than we need him.  If we love our lives more than Jesus, we have not really submitted ourselves to God’s care, but are still seeking to control that ourselves.

We must renounce all we look to for our sustenance and hold all we have lightly, depending instead on the Lord to be our provider.  Give us this day our daily bread.  If we don’t we are not truly Jesus’ disciples.