What price are you willing to pay to answer Christ's call?

There are few things in this world as stressful as buying a house. Right now as I'm writing this, the real estate market is hot. Houses are appreciating in price and properties are selling quickly. The other day I had lunch with some friends, one of whom is a real-estate agent, and he admitted that he's doing everything he can do to keep up with the business.

I have purchased four homes in my life. Two were rental properties and two were primary residences. Three of those four properties were in a part of Pennsylvania where housing prices tend to be affordable, but my current home is in a part of the state that tends to be more expensive. Properties cost two or three times what they cost where I used to live, and property taxes are double or triple the rate I grew used to as well.

When we bought our current home, I had a hard time wrapping my mind around the cost. Its price was average for this area, but that price felt like a real stretch to me at the time. In fact, since the previous owners had been relocated by their employer, the home was owned by a relocation company. With that in mind, I decided to do something bold when I bought it. I offered a price that was substantially less than the asking price, requested several expensive repairs be made before we signed the papers, and asked the relocation company to cover our closing costs. If there was any chance of us being able to afford the house, they needed to accept my offer.

My real estate agent was shocked when I told her what I was requesting. She was concerned that we might offend them with our offer, but I said, "It's a relocation company. I don't think they'll take this personally." Thankfully, with very little adjustment, they accepted our offer, and we were able to buy the house.

When it comes to our walk with Jesus and His calling on our lives, we're also going to need to consider the price we're willing to pay to answer His call. The truth is, it will cost us everything, and that's why most people in this world aren't following Him. The price seems too steep, so they stick with what's familiar, miss the entire point of why they were created, and go to their graves having no clue that they just traded eternal joy for the fleeting riches of this world.

Let's not make that mistake. Look with me at what Jesus tells us about what it means to decide what price you're willing to pay to answer His call.

I. This statement will only offend you if your heart is in the wrong place.

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." (Luke 14:25-27)

During the course of His earthly ministry, Jesus said many interesting things that could at times puzzle His initial audience. Many of those statements still puzzle people today, and the words Jesus spoke in this passage certainly fall into that category.

At this point in His ministry, Jesus had revealed His divine nature. He taught about eternal things with authority. He healed people of diseases. He raised the dead to life, and he irritated religious leaders who were jealous of the attention He was getting. In fact, Jesus was becoming so well known that great crowds of people started following Him wherever He went and assembled to hear Him in the towns He visited.

It's ironic, but people still do the same things to Jesus today that they did back then. Some people in that crowd had devoted their entire lives to following Him, while others were just there to observe out of curiosity's sake. So to differentiate between them, Jesus made a definitive statement. He said that a person's love for Him must be so great that their love for their closest family would look like hate in comparison. He said we must be willing to identify with Him in every way, even by receiving the reproaches of this world, if we would really call ourselves His disciples. What do you think? Could that be said of you?

Several years ago, I received a word of criticism from someone that I think was intended to discourage me.  It actually had the opposite effect. I was criticized for caring more about my family than I cared about our church. That was certainly an interesting thing to hear because I know in my heart that I love my family and I love our church, but here's the thing... I do care about my family more than I care about anyone or anything else on this earth. I care more about my family than our church, my friends, and even myself. So I'm OK with that criticism. 

But according to Jesus, my love for my family, even though it is my greatest earthly love, must pale in comparison to my love and devotion for Him if I'm really going to be His disciple. The great news about that, however, is that when I truly understand what it means to walk in the love of Christ, that's when I learn what it really looks like to love my family. And through my relationship with Christ, I'm granted His power and wisdom to love and lead my family the right way.

So, when I look at Christ's comments about loving Him above everyone else, I realize that statement will only offend me if it needs to. It will only offend me if my heart is in the wrong place.

II. Have you considered the cost of what you're trying to build?

"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.’" (Luke 14:28-30)

When we bought our home, part of what made it affordable for us was the fact that it needed some updating and cosmetic repairs that we had to budget for overtime. In the years since we first purchased it, we replaced the outside steps, put on a new roof, replaced the furnace, and did a whole bunch of other things. But one of the biggest interior changes we made was updating the kitchen, appliances, and flooring.

When we did that, we had no idea how much it was going to cost, so we sat down with a contractor and did some planning. He mapped everything out for us, presented us with a variety of options, and surprised us with some really good prices that made it possible for us to get all the updates made as long as we did the majority of the prep work ourselves.

There is a natural cost to building something. Jesus used the example of building a tower to illustrate that. He said if you're going to build something, make sure you know what it's going to cost you ahead of time, otherwise you'll look foolish if you get the project started and can't finish it.

Christ's words in this passage are meant to give us a picture of discipleship and what it looks like to consider the cost of following Him. He's building our lives, and we're using His strength to build families, ministries, and businesses that are built with the specific aim of giving Him glory.

What will it cost you to follow His lead?

What are you willing to pay to build things His way?

III. Do you understand how much it will cost you to go to war?

"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." (Luke 14:31-32)

I find it very interesting that Jesus uses the analogy of a king going out to war in the midst of this challenge to follow Him. Going off to war involves planning, gathering resources, securing financial reserves, assembling a band of soldiers, training them to fight, and treating the wounds they might receive while in battle. It's not a small undertaking, and there's a lot of attention to detail that needs to go into it.

I preach a lot about Jesus, but sometimes I wonder if people really know what I'm talking about when I speak about the nature of following Him. The truth is that following Jesus can feel a lot like getting involved in a war. Not necessarily a war in the physical sense, but certainly in the spiritual sense.

If you decide to commit your life to following Christ and answering His calling on your life, you need to know that there will be people who will come against you. Their opposition won't seem rational and it won't make a lot of sense, but it definitely happens. Without exception, every time I have been obedient to committing myself to a major task or ministry that the Lord has directed me toward, I have experienced opposition.

But don't let yourself believe the people opposing you are the real enemy. They're being deceived into believing that their fight is against you, even though it isn't. The real enemy is Satan. The real battle is spiritual in nature. But the victory Christ secured in His resurrection from the dead is a victory that He graciously shares with all who trust in Him. His victory can become your victory if you're willing to entrust your life to Him without reservation.

IV. You're not ready to answer the call until you're willing to pay the big price.

"So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple." (Luke 14:33)

Is there anything in your life that's still more important to you than Jesus? When we look at what He says in this passage, Jesus makes it really clear that if there's anything in our lives that's still more important to us than Him, then we really don't know Him. In this passage, He encourages us to renounce our idols and all the things of this world that we mistakenly believed could satisfy the longing in our hearts. They can't satisfy you. I just hope it doesn't take us most of our lives to figure that out.

How big of a price are you willing to pay to follow Him and say yes to His calling? Quite frequently, I hear people say they're willing to pay the big price, but when you take a closer look, you quickly realize that most people are all talk and no faith. They're all talk and no action. How many people do you know that won't even give up watching TV to invest that time in themselves, take action on their dreams, or say "yes" to Christ's calling on their life?

There's a song called "Something To Believe In" by a group called FM Static. I became familiar with the song back in 2003 and there's a line from it that often comes to mind, especially when it comes to the subject of faith in Christ and answering his call. In that song, they say, "I don't want to spend my lifetime figuring out I missed the point now it's over."

Are you willing to pay the price to say yes to Jesus? I promise you, you won't regret it.

"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. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."  (Philippians 3:12-14)

© John Stange, 2024