The Cost of Discipleship

Raise your hand if you're stupid enough to not take into consideration the serious gut-wrenching, heart-checkin' you're gonna get when opening and ingesting a book with the title The Cost of Discipleship.

Hands. Raised. Both of them.

Call me a moron. I will agree with you. But it's one of those things that when it hit me around around the 5th word on page 2, I thought, no stoppin' now. Just hunker down and get on with it. Today I made it to page 78 and when I put the book down felt like I needed a drink...and I don't drink.

Okay, it's not really that bad. But I'm just sayin'...it's no walk in the park.

Today's little nugget of a chapter was about the story of the rich, young ruler who according to Matthew 19 rolled up to Jesus and said, "Teacher, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?" Jesus tells him to obey the commandments. So the man asks, "Which ones?" Jesus responds by essentially listing the commandments and I can't help but think he might have been rolling his eyes right about now. Then the man says, "All these I have kept. What do I still lack?" And Jesus answered, "If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."

And this part is killer...

"When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth."

This would be the point in which I start screaming at my Bible, "What the heck are you doing you crazy foo'!?! That's Jesus you just walked away from!! Helloooooo! Go back! He's worth it!!"

And then this thought crosses my mind. What if I went to work today and at lunch I walk outside and there's Jesus and He says, "C'mon, follow me." And He just starts walking. In that moment I would have to quite literally walk away from my job, my apartment, my paycheck, my friends, my family, my cell phone to let them know where I'm going, the cat that I take care of who has surely eaten all the food I left for him this morning, the kid across the street that I've been trying to help out lately, my summer camp...all of it. Just quite literally start walking away from it. One foot in front of the other.

Yeah, nope. If I'm being blunt, I don't know if I would do it. I hope that I would. I can trust what the scriptures say, that I would recognize Jesus' voice, and if my heart was assured of who He was and I fell back on the faith that I have that everything He says is true, well then there's a slight chance that I could get my feet moving. But it's so hard to think about it that I really have never sat on it for long enough to trust myself with that.

This is where this book comes in. Where Mr. Bonhoeffer points out how often we frequently just waste time skirting the issue when we know the call on our lives.

"The young man knows the commandments. But such is his situation that he cannot be satisfied with them but wants to go beyond them...Why does he pretend that he has for long been ignorant of the answer? Why does he accuse God of leaving him so long in ignorance of this fundamental problem of life?"

That's what we do all the time right? We wrestle with things we aren't sure about in Scripture. We wait to hear a "call" for a specific mission. We wait for our heart to change, our desire to serve to grow, our joy to come back. We wait for the church to provide us with opportunity, the weekend to be over or our cookies to finish baking. We come up with all kinds of excuses when the Word has already been given. Our call was spoken thousands of years ago.

And then, Bonhoeffer says this, "He [the young man] neglects the unmistakable command of God for the very interesting, but purely human concern of his own moral difficulties. His mistake lies not so much in his awareness of those difficulties as in his attempt to play them off against the commandments of God."

"The only answer to his difficulties is the very commandment of God, which challenges him to have done with academic discussion and to get on with the task of obedience...The one thing that matters is practical obedience. That will solve his difficulties and make him (and all of us) free to become the child of God."

Get on with the task of obedience. Ah sigh...groanmumblewhinegroancomplain.

It's a pretty clear message. Jen, stop sleeping in and get on with the task of obedience. Jen, stop waiting to be held accountable and get on with the task of obedience. Jen, stop waiting until you "feel" like doing it and get on with the task of obedience. Jen, stop waiting for sympathy and empathy and get on with the task of obedience. Jen, stop looking around and get on with the task of obedience. Jen, stop thinking about what is "wrong" in life right now and get on with the task of obedience.

That is my answer to my difficulties. To obey the command of God.

Bonhoeffer goes on to say, "[Jesus] refuses to take those difficulties as seriously as the young man does."

What? That can't be right.

But my heart knows that it is. All these grumblings and questions and doubts are merely stalling on my part and while God loves me immensely, He sees it for what it is. Wasting time pretending to decipher a call that's already been laid out for me in black and white.

None of this means that Jesus' love is any less than it has ever been and in fact quite the opposite. Mark 10:21 says, "And Jesus looking upon him loved him." Jesus desires to help us follow that call because He loves us. And He will be our help when we turn to Him for it.

This alone can be our motivation for taking the first steps of obedience.