Count the Cost
READ
God doesn’t want us to merely believe in Jesus—He wants us to follow Him. God doesn’t want us to miss out on all that He has for us. He wants to give us so much more than salvation after death (as if that weren’t enough of a gift already). He wants us to give us a radically different kind of life on this side of heaven—a life characterised by authentic joy, enduring hope, deep humility, and boundless love.
Though, it is not easy to follow Christ. It requires us to surrender our old ways of thinking, speaking, and behaving. It requires us to completely reorient our priorities, live counter-culturally, and obey His call on our lives even when it doesn’t make sense. Following Him means sacrificing all of ourselves for the glory of the Father and the good of those He loves.
The cost of following Jesus can feel far too high. However, what we are being asked to surrender is not worth comparing to what God will do in and through us if we commit to being His disciples (Romans 8:18).
Let’s take a moment to read Luke 14:25-33:
A large crowd was following Jesus. He turned around and said to them, “If you want to be my disciple, you must, by comparison, hate everyone else—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be My disciple. And if you do not carry your own cross and follow Me, you cannot be My disciple.”
“But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it? Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone would laugh at you. They would say, ‘There’s the person who started that building and couldn’t afford to finish it!’”
“Or what king would go to war against another king without first sitting down with his counselors to discuss whether his army of 10,000 could defeat the 20,000 soldiers marching against him? And if he can’t, he will send a delegation to discuss terms of peace while the enemy is still far away. So you cannot become My disciple without giving up everything you own.”
REFLECT
Jesus’ call to discipleship is disruptive and unsettling. It challenges our most deeply-held convictions about what is most important in life and who deserves our ultimate loyalty. But Jesus isn’t asking us to neglect, disregard, or despise our loved ones—He is asking us to make sure our love for Him supersedes all else.
We can only love others rightly when we love God most. It is only when we learn how to love from Love Himself that we can love others authentically, unconditionally, and self-sacrificially. When we are more loyal to people than we are to God, we dishonor Him. We idolize mere human beings who cannot bring us the fulfillment, identity, and satisfaction only God can provide for us. We end up adopting their opinions, goals, and values, rather than His.
However, when we are more loyal to God than to others, we end up honoring both God and His children.
In today’s scripture, Jesus invites us to consider the cost of truly following Him. Many of us only engage our faith when it is convenient for us. We put God on the back-burner when being a Christian feels difficult or challenging. We abandon the project of becoming His disciple (likened here to constructing a building and fighting a war) when it feels impossible or proves tedious. We often want the benefit of salvation without having to do the hard work of surrendering our time, resources, and efforts to God for His good purposes.
But Jesus loved us and gave Himself for us at great cost to Himself. He chose to surrender His life, dignity, and infinite power for us, His broken and beloved people. To be Jesus’ disciples, we must learn to do what He has done. We must learn how to offer up everything we are and everything we have to love God and those He created. In this, God doesn’t expect us to be perfect, but willing to give our effort.
God knows that we cannot give Him the obedience, praise, and honor He is due—that is why He sent His Son in the first place. No one can become God’s disciple “without giving up everything [they] own.” The cost of true discipleship is high, and only Jesus could ever pay the full price. That is why we don’t need to have perfect faith—because Jesus’ faith was more than enough to satisfy God and reconcile us to Him.
The big takeaway is this: Jesus isn’t inviting us to be casual consumers of His message. He doesn’t just want us to accept the Gospel as true. He wants us to join in on His mission: to make God known and to bring heaven down to earth. He doesn’t promise that it will be easy. But He does assure us that it will be worth it.
RESPOND
Take a moment to process what God might be leading you to do in light of what you read.
Do you tend to be a “fair-weather follower” of Christ?
What might it look like to trust that the cost of being Christ’s disciple is miniscule compared to the privilege of following Him?
REST
Take a moment to rest in God’s presence and consider one thing you can take away from your time reading, then close your devotional experience by praying:
Father, You are great and worthy of all praise! Help me to count the cost of being a true disciple—and enable me make the difficult choice to surrender all of myself to You. Thank You for coming to earth and paying the full price of discipleship on my behalf and freeing me from the pressure to be perfect. Help me to respond to Your grace with diligent obedience and a moment-to-moment commitment to follow You, even when it’s difficult. Let me love You more than anything else, so that I can love others and myself rightly. In Your Holy Name, amen.
Port City writer Kate Redenbaugh wrote today’s devotional.