Why Serve the Lord? You Can’t Help It. You are Who You are!

Personal Note:  I apologize for not posting for almost a week.  I have just been struggling with writing, but hopefully, we will be getting back on track.  Keep pushing on for Christ.

1 Peter 1:22-23 – “Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth for a sincere brotherly love, love one another earnestly from a pure heart, since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding Word of God…”
Have you ever heard somebody give the excuse, “I can’t help it. It’s just who I am,” when he answers your question of “Why did you do that?” It is actually a pretty common answer that is given by teenagers when questioned by their parents as to why they had a problem at school. You might have even given this answer a few times in your life. In most cases where this excuse is used, the guilty person is usually just trying to get through an awkward situation without having to think or answer the question truthfully. Instead, he just blames it on genetics. But in a select few cases where a person is usually talking about an unusual characteristic about himself (not necessarily in a “Get in Trouble’ situtation), this statement is actually true. Some people just can’t help certain characteristics of themselves coming out – It is just who they are.
For example, if a person owned a wolf as a pet, just like in Call of the Wild by Jack London, and trained it to be obedient to all his commands, to never bite anyone, and to patiently stay calm instead of instinctively hunt and fight, if that master decided to leave it in the woods, the wolf would eventually pick up most of its wolf-like instincts once again. It may retain some of the training, but the wolf would still be a wolf and would act like it. Another more graphic example is with the Siegfried and Roy magic act at the Mirage Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, NV. These men Siegfried and Roy are famous for taming these beautiful white tigers that perform in their magic shows. A few years ago though, one of the tigers actually mauled Roy. Although they had trained the tiger for years to become “domestic,” the tiger still retained some of its natural insticts and attacked the magician. It couldn’t help it; the tiger just did what tigers do.
Now, certainly human beings can have much more control over our impulses than animals, yet just like these animals, if a characteristic is truly part of who we are, it cannot help but show in our lives. Although a pauper may dress like a prince, the actions of the pauper will display that he is a pauper. This idea is spiritually true as well.
In 1 Peter 1:22-23, Peter gave the believers another reason to live obedient righteous lives for Christ, lives that represented what it meant to be a disciple of Jesus Christ, lives that were pure and full of love. The reason he gave was simple – live like a disciple of Jesus Christ because you are a disciple of Jesus Christ. He reminded the believers that they were born again, meaning that they had put away the old sinful ways of the flesh that lead to death and had been raised into the new life in Christ that will never perish. He simply tells them that used to be of perishable seed and have now been born to seed imperishable. Peter understood that a person who has been truly changed by Christ cannot help but begin to reflect the characteristics of Christ; it just flows out naturally, just like a dog will be a dog and a tiger a tiger. I am almost certain that when he wrote this letter he must have thought about what Christ spoke of when warning about false teachers in that they would know them by their fruit. A thistle cannot produces grapes, likewise a vine cannot produce thistles. Each produces its own fruit. Therefore, a person who has been born again to imperishable seed can no longer live to the flesh but begins to show the fruit of the Spirit in his life (love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, self-control, etc. – Galatians 5:22-23). In the same manner, a person who is an unbeliever may show some fruit that looks spiritual but in the end account for nothing without the blood of Jesus Christ changing him from the inside out. He becomes nothing but a dirty cup that is beautiful only on the outside.
You are what you are. If you say you are a disciple of Jesus Christ, then His fruit should be produced through you, for He lives in your heart. You should not need any other reason to live for Christ if you call yourself a disciple – you can’t help it, it’s just who you are.

The Cost of Discipleship

Luke 14:25-35 – “Now great crowds accompanied Him [Jesus], and He turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.  For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it?  Otherwise, when he has laid a  foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, “This man began to build and was not able to finish.”  Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand?  And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace.  So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.  Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored?  it is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile.  It is thrown away.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.'”  

Take a piece of paper right now and write down the three most precious things in your life.  They do not need to be in a specific order.  They do not need to be material objects although they can be.  They just have to be the three things you treasure the most in this life.  The three things that if you could only possess three things it would be those things.  If you were Gollum from Lord of the Rings, you might write down “The One Ring to Rule Them All.”  If you were Sherlock Holmes, you might write down your best friend Watson.  If you were in love, you might write the person you are in love with.  If you were Lebron James, you might write down your only NBA championship ring.  Now, that you have written down your list, which one of these items would you be willing to give up?  Could you give up any of them?  Would you be willing to give this up for Jesus Christ, even if you got nothing else in return?  Consider these questions as you read the rest of this devotional.  Today, I am asking you to count the cost of discipleship.  Today, I am asking you to reconsider and redecide whether you truly want to be a disciple of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Throughout the Bible, God has made clear that He is not willing to share His position of first place in the hearts of His followers.  In Exodus 20:5, He states, “You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God…”  In Isaiah 42:8, He states, “I am the LORD; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols.”  In Deuteronomy 6:13-15, it states, “It is the LORD your God you shall fear.  Him you shall serve and by His name you shall swear.  You shall not go after other gods, the gods of the peoples who are around you — for the LORD your God in your midst is a jealous God — lest the anger of the LORD your God be kindled against you, and He destroy you from off the face of the earth.”  These are only a few of the verses that speak directly to this issue.  We also see it implied throughout other passages in the Word, such as, in Genesis, where God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to test whether Abraham’s devotion was fully given to God or to his son.  Our God did not change from the Old Testament to the New Testament, and we see this same demand given to the disiciples of Jesus Christ here in our passage today in Luke 14:25-35 – “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own ilfe, he cannot be my disciple.”

A disciple of Jesus Christ is a person who is not only a student of the principles that Christ taught but an adherent, meaning a follower, a person who will stick to and allow the Lord to be King over his life.  Just as with anything else in life, Jesus Christ asked the large crowd following Him at the moment to count the cost.  He reminded them that if they were building a house, before they would even start laying the foundation of the house, they would count how much it cost lest they leave the project unfinished.  He reminded them that if they were going to war against another that they would consider if they could win in the first place, because if they could not, they would surrender.  So why would they not consider the cost of following Him?  They needed to count the cost,  “Everything.  If you are to follow Me, it will cost you everything.”

I am currently at a stage in my life where I am considering what I want to do with the rest of my life.  Yes, it is true that I probably should have made that decision quite a whiles ago, but I am seriously contemplating the issue now.  As I think about this question, I look into every career option counting the costs and benefits of each career.  If I were to get at PhD in a biological science alone, I would have to spend almost six years of my life performing research with a minimal stipend for living.  Then, I would spend the next six years after obtaining the PhD with a “limbo” position called a post-doc, where I would be working under someone for a barely liveable salary.  Finally, I would be able to have a professor position at a university, where I would struggle year after year to obtain grant money to continue research and pay my salary.  But throughout all of this, I might discover something that will put me in the history books, like Jonas Salk’s polio vaccine or Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine.  The benefit does not seem to outweigh the cost.  If I were to get a MD degree and become a doctor, I would possibly end up making a huge income after eight years of schooling, but I  would come out of school with piles of debt that extend for miles high.  It definitely has a huge cost, but the benefit might be just as great.  I am currently doing this with every single career option that I am considering – something that I am certain that most of you have also done with big decisions in your life.  The funny thing is that most of us have not counted the cost for discipleship.  We have taken the choice to follow Christ lightly and have not considered the cost, making our witness and testimony in reality fairly weak.  He asked for everything, are you willing to give it all for Him?  From this point forward, we will do three things:  1)  We will consider the cost of following Christ, 2)  We will consider the benefit of following Christ, and 3)  We will decide whether we will follow Christ or not.

The first thing that we will consider is the cost of following Christ, which has already been stated over and over – Everything.  Can you give up everything for Christ?  Can you take all three things on that list and lay them on the sacrificial altar to and for Him?  The reason I bring this question up to you today is because this is the same exact question that the Lord has been asking me lately – “Are you willing to give this up for me?”  For my list of three things, I would write my faith, my parents, and the rest of my family.  When I think about my faith, I know that the Lord does not necessarily need to ask me to give that up, because my faith is in Him.  But am I willing to give up my traditions and ideas of what the Christian faith should be like and follow His commands and His rules though it may not be according to what I originalyl thought?  Yes, I believe I am willing to.  When I think about the rest of my family, I feel like if He told me to leave them all and go and serve Him, I might be able to do that, since I already pulled off a year away on the other side of the country.  But when  it comes to my parents, I have to pause and reconsider the cost.

Just three days ago, I experienced one of the most horrific experiences in my life.  I can easily say that I have never had a more difficult experience than that.  Thursday night, around midnight, my dad and I had just finished watching Hoosiers on television.  He had stepped up and went to the bathroom before heading to bed, while I waited for the end credits to roll up on the screen.  Suddenly, I heard a huge thump coming from the bathroom.  I figured that my dad had dropped something so I headed over there to see if he needed help picking something up, when my eyes saw the one thing I feared the most in life.  I saw my dad on the floor not responding and unconscious.  I had never understood before that time what it was like to have one’s heart stop and one’s breath taken away but I understood right then and there.  As I failed to wake him for the next five-ten minutes, I had thought I had lost my father.  I cannot describe the feelings and thoughts that were rushing through my mind at that moment.  The only thought that really stuck was “Please Lord, You can’t have him.  I’m not ready to lose him yet.”  Thankfully, he regained consciousness and is now healing from the ordeal, but this incident has given me the opportunity to reconsider the cost of discipleship.  Was I willing to give up my dad to God’s will?  Would I be willing to give up my mom to God’s will?  Could I hate my father, my mother, my future wife and children, and even my life for Christ?  At that moment, the answer was clear – “NO!  No, I could not.”  Then, I could not be His disciple, for the cost is everything.  I could not like Keith Green said, “Pledge my life to heaven for the Gospel.”  I could not pay the cost.

I thought about this again tonight as I lay by my father’s side, “Am I willing to give him up for Christ?”  The truth is the decision came long and hard, but my answer finally came to a Yes, but not because I was ready to give him up, not because I felt like I could, but because I knew that when the time came, Christ would make me ready to handle the loss, all I had to be was willing to allow Him to have it.  Take a look at your list of three items.  Can you seriously give these up for Jesus Christ?  He asks that you hate all of these things in comparison to your love for Him.  Can you love Him that much?  Can you pay the cost?  You might not be ready to but are you willing to?

Now, like in every decision, you do not only count the cost, you must weigh the benefits, for sometimes, when the cost is high, it may be all worth it for the benefit that you will gain.  What do you get for giving up everything to the LORD?  The answer is just as short as the answer for the cost – “Christ.”  This is who you get for your giving up everything.  You get Jesus Christ.  Surprised?  I know.  So many people today teach that if you follow Jesus Christ, you will receive tons of blessings in this life.  There is this idea that is going around that “If you are good, your life will be good in an earthly sense.”  Look how Christ follows up in vs. 27, after telling the people that they needed to give up everything for Him, He tells them what they have to pick up – their own cross.  That does not sound anything like the prosperity preaching we hear today.  In exchange for the heavy cost of everything, you get a cross and the opportunity to follow Christ.  Is that worth it to you?  Are you willing to give up everything to have Jesus Christ and Him alone.  Yes, of course, Christ promises that you will have a home in heave, so you will be getting that.  Yes, of course, Christ promised that you get to partake in His glory.  But these are all just added things and to tell you the truth, these are given to everyone who chooses to make Christ Savior and Lord.  You do not need to be a disciple to have these things, you just need to be saved.  If you are to become a disciple what you are guaranteed is Christ and Him alone.  I want you to take a moment and consider if God took all these benefits away – no eternal life, no home in heaven, no promise of any of that.  If all He was to give you was Himself and freedom from sin and guaranteed persecution and difficulty, would you still give it all up for Him?  This is what He demands of each and every one of us.  Is Christ enough for you?  He is the benefit of discipleship.  (In Mark 10:29-30, Jesus also states that the person who gives everything up for His sake and the Gospels will receive a hundredfold in return, as well as, eternal life, but that will also come with persecution.)

Now knowing the cost of discipleship (EVERYTHING) and the benefit of discipleship (CHRIST), you can make an informed decision as to whether you still want to be His disciple.  In vs. 33, Christ states, “So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.”  He is asking you today at this exact moment, what is your decision?  Will you give up everything to have Him?  I have been careful not to write “just Him” because you are not getting something small and insignificant, you are receiving the Lord of the Universe as your own personal Lord.  You are having the Ruler of the Universe as your own personal Guide.  You are receving the Prince of Peace as the Peacemaker of your heart.  You are receiving a great benefit, though the cost may be very high.  Christ asked the great crowds that followed Him that day, whether they were willing to pay the cost, and He is asking you today the same question.  Are you willing to pay that cost?  If not, you calling yourself a Christian is as good as salt that no longer has the salty taste – useless and only for throwing into a pile of manure.  But if you are willing to, then you can become a great disciple of Christ. Make the choice today.  You never know when your life will be over.  My dad’s accident happened suddenly and who knows how long your life will be?  You can finish reading this blog and just stop dead in your tracks right after.  You must make the decision today.  You must listen to today.  Can you give it all up for Him or not?  This is the Cost – Everything.  This is the Benefit – Christ.  This is the choice – Discipleship.

Who Is Jesus To You?

Nehemiah 10:29 – “…join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the LORD our Lord and His rules and His statues.” 

In our culture today, people are often defined by their relationships to another person.  For example, if a man has a son, then he is considered a father, and if he was married, then a husband.  If the man was working for a company, then he would be an employee to the company, the employer.  If he played basketball in a league on the weekends, then he would also be considered the teammate of one of the players, as well as, the opponent of a player on the opposing team.   To clarify even more, I will use myself as a personal example.  I am a twenty-three year old man, who has a large extended family and is currently working at the NIH as a post-baccalaureate researcher.  From this one sentence, you can already see how I can be defined as different things to different people.  To my father and mother, I would be their son.  To my extended family, I would be their nephew or cousin.  To my Principle Investigator (PI) (something like a boss in the science field), I would be his student researcher.  To the government, I would be a contractual employee.  To different people, I am different things, all based on my relationship to them.

In our passage today, we find that the people of Israel are once again entering into a covenant with God in that they will obey His commands, His rules, and His statues, but in this passage they make a very key statement, “the LORD our Lord.”  LORD in all capital letters is the English translation for the Jewish name for God Jehovah or Yaweh.  This was the name that God used to designate Himself in the Bible.  On the other hand, Lord in not all capital letters is the word adonai, which is a word that means “master.”  This word was used in general by wives to refer to their husbands, slaves to their masters, or a person in humble submission to another person of respect.  When combined in this phrase, we find that the people of Israel were recognizing God specifically as their Master and Lord.  They defined a particular relationship with Him and made Him that to them.  He was their Master, and they were His servants, just like my PI is my boss, and I am his employee.  The people of Israel could have easily just said we “will obey the commandments of the LORD,” never making the relationship personal, yet they took the specific action to say “LORD our Lord.”  They defined the relationship, so that God is no longer just a god of the land like foreigners might have thought of God as, and God was no longer just Creator of the universe, God was their Lord.

Jesus asked His disciples to define His relationship to them as well in Matthew 16:13-20.

13 When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am? 14 And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias; and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets. 15 He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am? 16 And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God. 17 And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. 18 And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. 19 And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. 20 Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ.

He first asked His disciples who people thought he was, to which, the disciples gave some general answers – John the Baptist, Elias (Elijah), or one of the prophets (vs. 14).  But Christ then asked them a more personal probing question, “But whom say ye that I am?”  He was basically asking them to answer the question, “What is my relationship to you?  How would you define me based on our relationship?”  Peter probably speaking on behalf of the disciples then says, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”  He called Jesus the Messiah, the Ruler and Deliverer of the Jewish nation and all peoples.  At that moment, Peter was basically telling Jesus that He is the Chosen One that the Jews have been waiting centuries for, the One who would deliver them from bondage and the One who they would serve.  In addition, Peter called Him “the Son of the living God,” showing how Jesus had authority over all things and was God.  Peter had defined their relationship at that moment – Jesus is Messiah, Savior, Lord, and God.  He may not have at that moment made Him Lord of his life, but he recognized Christ as more than just a man now but God.  To Peter and the disciples, Jesus was Deliverance (from Rome not from sins, for they had yet to understand that Christ came to save us from our sins.  They would soon realize their mistake and would trust Him as Deliverance from sin.).

The same question goes out to each and every one of us today, “Whom say ye that I am?”  Is Jesus Christ just another prophet to you?  Then you have missed the clear claims of Christ in the Bible that He is God.  Is Jesus Christ just another good teacher?  Then you have missed the clear claims that Christ came to seek and to save that which was lost.  Is He the Judge of your sins?  Then you must have not experienced His justification for you.  For me, Christ is my Savior, in that, He died and saved me from my sins.  He is my Life, in that, apart from Him I have nothing to live for and also no chance at eternity.  He is my Lord, in that, He rules and reigns over my life.  He is my inspiration in that He is the reason I spend time writing.  He is my Justifier and Advocate, for He pleads before the Father before me that I am now righteous before His eyes.  He is my Friend, for He will stick to me closer than a brother.  Who is He to you?