Re-Focus Discipleship

In somewhat of an indirect way, this Lenten season, we have been taking a look at discipleship and what it means to be a disciple. I have posed a few challenges to you to prompt you to Re-Focus on what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. I challenged you to give up something for forty days as a period of fasting. To commit yourself to a time of prayer daily that goes hand in hand with fasting. To offer your bodies as a living sacrifice as your true spiritual act of worship. Last week we talked about what it means to live a life of service. This was all posed to you as a challenge to test the mettle of your discipleship. To pull you out of the spiritual ruts of routine; coming to church for an hour and a half on Sunday, singing the songs, reading the verses, hearing the sermon, and trying not to fall asleep during the preaching. You know who you are! All joking aside, we have engaged with Lent this year as a corporate body to evaluate the level of maturity in our spiritual lives. To metaphorically sound the depths of our commitments to being followers of Jesus. In week five we will talk directly to what it means to be a disciple. At the base of our belief, a properly basic belief, or self-evident truth, if you will, is the understanding that salvation is free gift given by God to reconcile ourselves to Him. It isn't something we can earn, and it is something we don't deserve. God freely gives it to us, and it is incumbent on us to freely receive it. What we must now realize is that if salvation is free, it doesn't mean that it is cheap. On the contrary it is extraordinarily costly. It is extravagantly costly. It is the pearl of great price that the merchant will sell all he has to attain. There is an abundant cost of discipleship. It will cost you your life because it cost the life of God's one and only Son. What else could possibly be worthy of that gift? If you think you have given enough, God asks more. If you think you have done enough, it's only the beginning of your doing. If you think you have gone far enough or deep enough, God calls you farther and deeper still. There is a cost to discipleship, and as it should be. The brilliant German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote an entire book on this topic called, "The Cost of Discipleship" and in it he says, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die. Costly grace is the treasure hidden in a field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Christ at which the disciple will leave his nets and follow him." As a disciple there shouldn't be anything that you wouldn't or couldn't give up to follow Jesus. Nothing should stand in your way. Nothing should hold you back. Nothing should anchor you down when Christ calls you to come and follow Him. No request of Jesus should be too big, too small, too hard, or too costly. You are not your own, you were bought with a price. You belong to Jesus, and it is the best place you could ever hope to be.