The Bible says some crazy things, and not just the Bible but Jesus himself. God himself in human forms says some stuff that can mess up your life pretty bad.
What do I mean?
``Jesus turned and told them, "Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one's own self!—can't be my disciple. Anyone who won't shoulder his own cross and follow behind me can't be my disciple.`` Luke 14:25-27
That`s the message translation, it is a bit nicer than the NIV.
``If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. And whoever does not carry their cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.``
Now I don`t know about you but when I read that this little voice rises up in my spirit. The one that says, now Jesus didn`t actually call us to hate our father and mother, He called us to love and to honour our parents.
So how do we as Bible believing Christians navigate our way through scriptures like this.
Well most churches just skip right over them, when is the last time you heard a sermon preached on this passage. It`s too `hard` for most Christian to hear and attendance would go down. And church is really about numbers right not Biblical truths.
Well I sure hope not. I greatly admire pastors who don`t skip (proud to be in a church that just preached from and through the Word, no skipping to the parts we like.)
Well I imagine if we actually applied this scripture to our lives most of us would be forced to change our lives a lot.
God calls us to `hate` our family, which means He must be our highest priority, He must take value over every single thing including those who we love most. And it also means our love for Him should be so great, that how we feel towards our parents and our husbands should look like hate in comparison. God commands us to have such an overwhelming deep love for him, that how we feel towards those closest to us seems like hate.
“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me,` Matthew 10:37
Wow. Let that settle.
Does your love for God make your love for your husband look like hate?
Secondly he calls us to carry our cross and follow him.
We are to walk the path marked for a convicted sinner, carrying a cross twice our size, being mocked and ridiculed the whole way. We are to follow behind our Saviour in every moment, even if it means that shameful walk to our death. And the biggest part of it all, is that we will gladly pick up our cross because our love for Him is so huge, so gigantic that we are willing to walk to our death if that is where He calls us.
`Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me.` Matthew 10:38
Here`s the thing. Jesus didn`t carry that cross for His sins. He did it because there is not a chance in this world we ever could live a perfect life. He did it because He was blameless. He did it because His love for us ran so deep that He longed for us to know Him in an intimate way. He did it because He didn`t want the divide in the temple, He wanted us to be made blameless so He could dwell in us.
`I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.` Galatians 2:20
`Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.` Matthew 10:29
But here`s the thing. We should follow Him out of sheer love and gratitude for all He has done for us, but His love is so huge He adds even more. He invites us into eternity with Him. He promises us that if we live our life completely for Him, our reward will be great. That we will find our life, that we will have more than we could have imagined in eternity, and isn`t eternity what really matters.
I truly think that the devil loves nothing more than for us to have comfortable lives. He likes that we go to church every Sunday and then go on like nothing is changed. He likes that our prayer life consists of a prayer before meals and possibly a quick one before bed. He doesn`t disturb the Christian when they have a comfortable house and a well paying job. Sometimes I even think God is the one that throws the curve balls at us (He did this with the Israelites in the desert to shape them into the people of God he had called us to be) He takes away so that we will be reminded where it all came from. He brings on periods of grief so that He can teach us to fully rely on His spirit. I don`t think satan really likes to bother `comfortable` Christians because frankly they aren`t bothering him.
You know what scares the hell out of satan (if that were to be possible), the Christian who radically gives. They spend all their moments serving and loving others, they radically give their finances to fund Kingdom building. They radically pray, and I mean pray. Like from the moment they wake until when they fall to sleep, their mind is on the Spirit and they constantly pray. They speak radically, they don`t care what people think so they speak the Word of the Lord as loudly as possibly, through their words and their life. The Christian who scares satan is the one who has truly given up every part of me and taken on every part of HIM, the Christian who is living for eternity and wants to bring as many people with Him as possible. These are the Christians who impact the Kingdom, and also the ones who make satan tremble.
...I want to be a Christian like that.
`Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.` Hebrews 11:16
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