SHIFT WEEK III WEDNESDAY

WEDNESDAY
Luke 14:25-33

Churches sometimes go to great lengths to get people to come to their church. Not long ago a church called the Positive Impact Christian Church offered a door prize of $1,000. All the local newspapers reported this unusual approach to evangelism. However, the preacher was deeply disappointed when only thirty people showed up when he was anticipating hundreds. After all, he thought, who could resist the appeal of a $1,000 door prize for a lucky worshiper.

Contrast that experience with a newspaper ad that appeared in London in the 1800s which said, "Men wanted for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful; Honor and recognition in case of success." Thousands of men lined up to volunteer because the ad was signed by Sir Ernest Shackleton preparing for his sea voyage seeking the Northwest Passage.
Do we make discipleship easy or challenging? Luke’s writing leaves no doubt about the method Jesus took. Instead of giving something away, he demanded that his followers give everything up.

Large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them some strong words about the requirements for being a disciple. These are hard sayings and demanding conditions.

Remember the words of President Dwight Eisenhower when he addressed the troops on the evening of the D-Day operation in World War II: "There will be no victories at bargain basement prices!" He was right. There never are. And this is never truer than when we become disciples of Jesus, the Lord of the cross.

Jesus doesn't mince words when he places the demand on disciples. "Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."

The cross is not a pretty piece of jewelry to wear around your neck. It is not really a tool for witnessing. It is not even a burden to carry. The cross is a means of death! We proclaim the same message every time we baptize someone when we say, "We are buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk in the newness of life." To come to Christ is to take up a cross, to die to ourselves and to live for Him.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran confessing church pastor and a leader in the resistance movement against the Third Reich, wrote from a Nazi prison just before he went to the gallows for following Jesus, "When Christ calls a man, He bids him, 'Come and die!'"
Whatever "carrying the cross" may mean in your life, Jesus makes it clear that it represents the cost of discipleship.

William Willimon tells the story about the time a recruiter from Teach America came to Duke. Teach America is an organization which recruits this nation’s best college and university students to go to teach in the most impossible teaching situations in our country.

This recruiter from Teach America looked out on a crowd of Duke students. She began by saying, “I don’t really know why I am here tonight. I can tell just by looking at you that you are probably uninterested in what I have to say. This is one of the best universities in America. You are all successful. That is why you are here, to become an even greater success on Madison Avenue, or Wall Street, or in Law School.

"And here I stand, trying to recruit some people for the most difficult job you will ever have in your life. I’m out looking for people who want to go into a burned out classroom in Watts and teach Biology. I’m looking for somebody to go into a little one-room school house in West Virginia and teach kids from six years to thirteen years old how to read. We had three teachers killed last year in their classrooms!

"And I can tell, just by looking at you, that none of you want to throw away your lives on anything like that. On the other hand, if by chance there is somebody here who may be interested, I’ve got these brochures and I am going to leave them down here and will be glad to speak to anybody who is interested. The meeting is over.”
With that, all of the students jumped up, crowded into the aisles, rushed down to the front and started fighting over her pamphlets. They were just dying to apply for Teach America.

People are hungry to give their lives to something more important than themselves. It is a fact of life, not only that everything costs us something, but that, in our better moments, we are even eager to pay the cost.

When Jesus saw the crowds casually following him, he said, "If you want to follow me, you must love everything less than me. Who is willing to count the cost, and join us in costly discipleship?

PRAYER
Jesus, I want to the pay the cost to be your disciple. I don’t want to walk the easy road and have my life count for nothing. I want to be called as your disciple to make a different. I want my life to count for something that matters.