All or Nothing

“Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” -Jesus (Matt 10:39)

This verse above follows some of the hardest verses when asked about discipleship. In these set of verses Jesus uses the illustration that a true follower of Christ puts everything behind himself except Jesus. Your family, your friends, your loves, your desires, your dreams and your goals, all are secondary to Him. Jesus commands nothing but the ultimate. He demands we pledge Him everything. Then after we give everything, He asks us to take up our cross and follow. The cross we bear are things we may not want to do, but for His Kingdom’s sake, we do it. We do it with out complaint, with out sorrow, without a nagging attitude, we do it with our whole heart and mind in it. Though this seems tough, and though it does not seem fair, Jesus gives us a glimmer of hope, that if we loose our life for Him, we will find it.

Working for a church I always hear about how much someone is 100% in for God, then the next thing I see is that the person no longer wants to do anything with God. Usually it takes some sort of medical emergency, or a sudden change in lifestyle, or a major catastrophic event in someone’s for them to reconsider following God. Who can blame people, following God is extremely difficult. Jesus demands a lot and sometimes He doesn’t tell you where He’s going. Faith, trust, hope, and everything must rest in Him. I’m not going to lie, I, at many times in my life was not 100% in. It’s hard giving up your dreams, it’s hard giving up your desires, it’s not easy to go against the grain in your family. It’s NOT EASY being a Christian. I was talking to a friend a while back, and I asked him, “If God wanted you to give up your house and job to go on a mission to Asia, would you do it?” I asked another friend, “If God asked you to marry this guy that you don’t like, would you do it?” Their answers went something along the line of, “Well, God would not ask me to do that because He knows me and He knows it would be bad for me... So, He wouldn’t ask me to do that.” I persisted on the idea that God may ask you to do crazy things. Both friends walked away with from our conversation insisting that God would never do that. The kicker to this story is that driving home, God turned the question on me, “Would I do...... if God asked?” I sat there in my car for a few hours debating the topic. Jesus demands my everything, nothing more nothing less. I’m sitting here writing this and cleaning my heart and doing a self check of what God is asking of me.

Oh Lord what a heart check tonight. I know you want everything. But it’s just so hard. Help me let go.

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