Costly Devotion

It is a serious insult to our “good news” that members of ISIS or the Taliban are more devoted to a demon they call “Allah” (“god”) than we are to the Creator of all that is and the Redeemer of all that has been reclaimed through His blood. Repeatedly, we are called to the level of devotion to Jesus that counts property as beyond our possession and counts life as already spent. Living sacrifices get to lay their lives down over and over – not just a bomb belt that blows once.

Be challenged to take up your cross daily and follow Jesus. Modern terms may make that easier to connect with our lives: take up your place of dying: to doubt, to pride, to fear, to stinginess, and be raised from that death to do it again on another day. If we wore electric chairs or nooses around our necks instead of crosses, we might get a few extra opportunities to share Truth and Life with unbelievers than we are currently getting by using crosses.

The costly places, the baptisms, the deaths of our reputations and feelings, these may be the Kingdom-accessing places Jesus is thinking about when He says, “Take up your cross and follow Me.” Don’t fail to notice that He had not yet been murdered on a cross when He instructed His disciples to take up theirs.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone wants to come with Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life because of Me will find it. What will it benefit a man if he gains the whole world yet loses his life? Or what will a man give in exchange for his life? For the Son of Man is going to come with His angels in the glory of His Father, and then He will reward each according to what he has done.

(Matthew 16:24-27 Holman Christian Standard Bible ®©)