Count the Cost

It was becoming a common experience. To go anywhere with Jesus was to be jostled and pushed by a huge crowd following him. This time he stopped, turned around and faced us, saying "to follow me, you must hate your mother, father, wife, children, brothers and sisters, even hate your own self. To follow me, you must carry your own cross. Know what it will cost you and decide beforehand that you are willing to make that sacrifice. Don't be like the builder who ran out of funds and had to abandon the project; he was the brunt of many jokes. Or don't be like the king who miscalculated his forces and lost the battle. It would have been better for him to have asked for peace beforehand. Once you have put your hand to the plow, look straight ahead. If you keep glancing back, your furrows are going to look all squiggly. So if you truly want to follow me, you have to give up everything that you have."
Stop.
Don't move.
Think about that.
Does God have the right to ask such a thing of you?
Are you really going to follow Him?
Have you counted the cost?

When it was time for us to move from Mexico, we had to decide what we would bring back and what would stay. It all had to fit on a 4 x 8 flat bed trailer with a 1,000 pound limit. Of course, the first and most important items were the books. I packed 40 boxes of books. There was no way that we could put those on the trailer, the weight alone would make it impossible. So the plan was to mail them to Dubuque, but that had to be done on the US side. Some friends who were making a trip to Texas agreed to take half of them and leave them in a warehouse at the border. Joel later made a trip with the other half, retrieved all boxes and shipped them from the post office. When he came home, he reported successfully having mailed 39 boxes. Ummm, "dear," I said, "there should have been 40 boxes." I would have to wait 2 months before knowing which box had been lost. It seemed like pure torture to wait and trust in the Lord. Oh, how my flesh wanted to start agonizing right away over what was probably gone forever! Finally, after arriving to Dubuque and beginning to unpack, what had been lost gradually surfaced. Mostly, they were replaceable items, but the worst loss was several journals that I had written while in Mexico. Not only could they never be replaced, but they represented the most difficult trial of my spiritual life. I was saddened at losing something so personal, but consoled myself with thoughts of God's sovereign control in the situation. Surely, He had a reason for taking them. Every now and then I thought about those journals, wondered where they ended up, wondered how the Lord used them to bless someone else, until one day, out of the blue, a new thought occurred to me, and I wasn't too thrilled. What if those priceless journals ended up in a garbage dump landfill, buried among all sorts of gross decaying stuff? The very thought felt like a stab to the heart and it hurt. My pride was pricked. Those journals represented my life. I didn't like the idea of my life being tossed in some trash dump. And then it hit me.
That is exactly what my life is, garbage. Isn't that what Paul said, "I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,.. and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ." ph3:8

Why do I do this? Why must I find gain in the life I have lived? Why must I see good in my suffering in order to endure it? Why must I find more value in my life than what Christ has already given me? Reality is that my life, compared to who I am in Christ, is but trash buried in a garbage dump.

Suppose you've been given a big warehouse type space in your life to fill with all that you have or wish you had. Now this imaginary space can include more than just physical possessions. You can store intangible things like abilities and dreams, include relationships, and even body parts.
What would go in your warehouse?
What do you have that...you can't live without?
What do you have that...makes you happy?
What do you have that...you sacrificed in order to get?
What do you have that....makes you feel lovable?
What do you have that...makes you feel useful to God?
What do you have that...makes you feel useful or valuable to others?
What do you have that....you are proud of?
What do you have that...you can't put a price on?
What do you .... hope to have in the future?
What do you .... wish you had right now?
Now let's imagine that you are going to invite Jesus into your warehouse where He can walk around and look at everything you have. As you walk with Him, you will offer Him the pick of anything and everything that He wants to take.
But first, in the corner of this warehouse is a locked room marked "no access granted", and you have the key. You can store in that room anything you want to keep, anything you don't want Jesus to take. What do you put in there?

The things in that room are what rob you of contentment. The things in that room keep you trapped, make your life here on this earth seem worth holding on to. Because you value those things so much, you fear losing them. Because they are a source of happiness, you complain when they fail to satisfy. Because they make you feel good about yourself, you compare them to what others have.

Look at your life in that warehouse.
What is it worth to you?
I'm not advocating that we take everything that we have, load it up on a truck and take it to the municipal dump. I don't believe that is what Jesus meant for us to do when He said those words. I do think, however, that He wants us to change our attitude towards all that we have, change the way we value what we have. He wants us to be willing to let Him help himself to all that is ours. If our value of things is properly placed, we won't mind losing anything, because we will already consider it loss compared to having Christ.

“There is no ongoing spiritual life without this process of letting go. At the precise point where we refuse, growth stops. If we hold tightly to anything given to us, unwilling to let it go when the time comes to let it go or unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used, we stunt the growth of the soul. It is easy to make a mistake here, “If God gave it to me,” we say, “its mine. I can do what I want with it.” No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of"
― Elisabeth Elliot