City Life Starter

I. The Word: Mark 8:34-37 & Luke 14:27-30

And He summoned the crowd with His disciples, and said to them, “If anyone
wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake
and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world,
and forfeit his soul? For what will a man give in exchange for his soul? (Mark 8:34-37)

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. For
which of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate
the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a
foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying,
“This man began to build and was not able to finish”. (Luke 14:27-30)

II. Study Questions

1. What does it mean to count the cost of being a disciple of Jesus?
2. What would be difficult for you to give up?
3. What has it cost you so far?

Introduction

I remember vividly when the Holy Spirit began drawing me to Jesus, and I remember exactly what it was that stood in my way. When I was a child, missionaries would come to speak at our church. I am sure they told glorious stories of people who came to Jesus and how their lives were changed, but I only saw one thing: they were always dressed in the styles of a decade ago and they looked impoverished. I thought “no way am I doing that.” So, as the Holy Spirit began to deal with me, I had to count the cost. Was I willing to follow Jesus anywhere? I finally submitted to the Lord and picked up my cross.

Discipleship

Taking up our cross is the ultimate act of surrender, a conscious choice to deny ourselves and live for Christ. It means a willingness to follow and obey Christ to whatever end. Paul says in Galatians 2 that he has been crucified with Christ so that he no longer lives, but Christ lives in him. If you read Galatians 2 you see that Paul is talking about the direction of his life and his purpose. It could not have been an easy decision to take the gospel to the gentiles instead of his own race, but God’s purposes became his purposes.

I can’t stress this enough. The scriptures quoted above are clear. Jesus is not talking about a half-hearted decision, a cultural allegiance or a fad.

The Cross

There is a difference between the cross of Christ and the cross we pick up when we become His disciples. Because of Christ’s victory on the cross, we are freed from sin and made “slaves of righteousness” (Romans 6:17-18). He gives us the power to pick up our cross and follow Him. When I counted the cost of discipleship those many years ago, did I feel I had the power to obey? Probably not, but I was willing with my whole heart to follow Him no matter what came my way. The power came from the surrender; that’s when I was born again and Jesus put a new heart in me. As we go into this season of emphasizing discipleship, let’s all make sure we are disciples of Jesus and we are discipling disciples of Jesus.

The Reason

Why is it so important to count the cost? I’m sure there are several reasons (such as the ability to be more like Him), but Jesus makes one of them very clear in Luke 14. If we don’t count the cost “all who observe him will begin to ridicule.” For decades the church (those who use the name of Christ) has been subject to ridicule because it has not preached the cost of following Jesus. If we remove the cost and the surrender, we may have more people in our congregation but we will not have more people like Christ.

The end

And by the way, I became a campus missionary in Great Britain and was never impoverished.