following jesus is harder than you think

A large crowd was following Jesus. He turned around and said to them, “If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:25-27)

Being a Christian seems easy until you start really looking at what is involved. And that is death to all you were before.

Jesus was not a pantywaist leader. He was a guy who was willing to die for what he believed. He was willing to endure scorn, harassment eve a violent and prolonged death for the sake of God.

What about you?

It is easy to go to an air-conditioned church and sit on comfortable chairs or pews and sing some songs with people who think the way you do. That is a piece of cake.

But what about when people get angry at you for going against what they want?

The Christians in the Middle East have the toughest time in the world, I believe. Or at least, the physically toughest time. In many of the Muslim countries, it is against the law to become a Christian. That means a person really thinks about it before he converts to Jesus. It is an action not lightly taken.

He recognizes that things could easily go bad for him, that even neighbors who had been friends could turn against him. That he and his family could be killed for their faith.

That makes a guy think.

The crowd following Jesus was following him because he fed them and he had interesting things to see. He did miracles, he argued with the religious leaders, he was always exciting.

And just following him around required no real commitment. They could always leave if things got bad.

So Jesus turns around and say that if you follow him, you have to hate everyone else by comparison. Even your own life.

That didn’t mean that you have to hate people. It just means that those around you would say, Well, I guess you must hate us the way you are taking on with that Jesus guy.

Your answer, No, I do not hate you. I just love God more.

A life lived half-heartedly is a life that is wasted. It has to be all or nothing. You cannot follow him from a distance.

And, again, as I have said before, you do not carry your cross around as punishment. You carry your cross around as death. No one was ever punished with a cross, beaten with a cross, had a cross tied to them.

When they took their cross, they went quickly to their death.

To be in Jesus means that you have to die to everything else. No halfsies in him.

That is hard.