The Cost of Discipleship

As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” (Luke 9:57)

At the end of Luke 9 we see Jesus interact with three different individuals that wanted to follow Him, but there were things each of them had to deal with before they could fully count the cost of discipleship.

Each of us can have aspects of each of these individuals when it comes to serving Christ. It is one thing to have a confessional theology that says Christ is our Lord and Master, yet it is quite another to have a practical theology where we walk what we talk.

Christ uncovers aspects of service that are in all of our hearts and must be dealt with before we can fully follow Him. It is a sobering mirror for each of us to hold up and allow to reflect what is in each of us.

I would echo Paul from Philippians 3:12 here, when he wrote “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.”

Just because I was led to write about this does not mean I’ve mastered any of this. Not at all – it is a struggle daily against my flesh that wants to distract me from Christ and make me an ineffective ambassador for my Lord.

Never let the enemy convince you that your struggles are unique to you alone. That is how he separates and divides us from our fellowship with brothers and sisters in Christ – he gets us to believe that what we battle is something no one else would understand.

Take hold of your commitment to Christ today and ask Him to reveal to you what aspects of your flesh are holding you back from devoted service to Him.