The Cost of following Jesus

Take Every Passage to Prayer - Volume 2, The Gospels
^{Thursday August 29, 2024}

Luke 14:25-35

Father, please help me to be a true follower of Jesus. Help me to make Him number one in my life. Help me to become His servant and to live only for His pleasure. Please help me to never give up or turn away from following Him. Father, please make me useful to Your Kingdom so that I never lose my value to You in the building of Your Kingdom. Amen.

Father, the text tells us that a large crowd traveled with Jesus. He was popular and He was someone the people wanted to be affiliated with and to claim Him as their friend. The people believed that life would be good, and times would be easy being with Jesus. Their future looked bright.
Jesus turned to them and shocked them with His words. Following Jesus is anything but easy. It is hard. True disciples of Jesus pay an exorbitant price for following Him.

1. Jesus must be number one. Nothing else is important, not even family ties. If anyone considers their family members more important than Jesus, they are not true followers of Jesus. Jesus must be our highest priority and the most valued treasure in our lives.
2. We must sacrifice our lives. We must cast aside the pursuit of wealth, power, fame, influence, and pleasure. We must repent from our rebellion and surrender our lives to Jesus. We must obey Jesus every hour of every day of our lives. Jesus must be our master and we must become His servants. We must cast aside our independence, which means sacrificing our lives for Him. We must give over to Jesus everything we own so that all of it can be used by Him to advance His Kingdom.
3. We must persevere. A true disciple of Jesus doesn’t give up on following Him. A true disciple takes the time to analyze how his or her life needs to change in order to be a follower of Jesus. Just like someone preparing for a major building project or a king preparing for battle, a true disciple of Jesus calculates the costs of following Him and gird themselves so that they will never quit no matter how hard life becomes. The last thing that should be said of a follower of Jesus is that they quit following Him because they didn’t realize how difficult it would be.

Jesus compares a true disciple with salt. A true disciple perseveres in His commitment to Jesus just like salt preserves food. A true disciple adds value to the Kingdom of God just like salt adds taste to a meal. If a disciple falls away and stops following Jesus, he becomes like salt that has lost its saltiness. It becomes useless and is thrown out. Any follower of Jesus who stops following Him will also be discarded.
Jesus concludes this passage by saying:
“Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. (NIV)”
It was His way of saying that what He just shared was vitally important. Those who have the desire to be true followers of Jesus should seriously consider what He just shared with them. Amen.