In case you want to know, it costs everything.

Jesus said, Unless you hate your life, you cannot be His disciple (Luke 14:26).  He said that unless you forsake everything, you cannot be His disciple.  He said, you will always love one and hate the other.  Wavering between two opinions only lasts so long.

In case you want to know, it does cost everything.  And, you can’t go back.  If you look at the life of Lot, you can’t even LOOK back (Luke 17:32).

Consider it this way, you were dead in your transgressions and sins.  There was nothing in your old flesh that could be patched up.  God didn’t fix your heart, He gave you a new one!

But, where does it end?

Many want it to end there.  They want to be “Israel”, with their calves in Samaria, and not “Judah”, with only the temple.  They want to be like Aaron’s sons, and offer what they should not.  They want to be Anannias and Sapphira, and keep back a portion of the sale, but look whole-hearted.

The Centurion, speaking to Jesus and recognizing the same in himself, said, ‘I am a man under authority, with people under me.’ (Matthew 8:9).  If we want to be in authority, we must be under His governship.  As a solider cannot concern themselves with civilian affairs (2 Timothy 2:4), neither does the one who wants to see the Kingdom go forward.

It costs everything financially.  You may never be rich in this life, but you will never lack.  It costs everything emotionally and relationally.  He who wants to be greatest must be servant of all.  It costs everything physically.  The Apostles are like those at the end of a procession, like those condemned to die.  It costs everything all the time.  We must daily take up our cross and follow Him.

It’s still good news.  It’s always good news.

I have only one desire, one focus, one pursuit.

Psalm 27:4

One thing I ask of Yahweh, this one thing I seek.  That I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, that I may gaze upon His beauty, and inquire of Him in His temple.

I want to see not only the end, but to have with stood the all the storms of this life.  I want, at the end of the run, to have had nothing on my record to blemish my report.

Jesus said that if you hear His words and do them, you will stand through the storms.  He said, if you have really listened to, heeded, and obeyed Him, your entire life will be built on the rock, upon the Spirit, upon the Kingdom, upon Himself.  His promise is that it will not fall.  Yet, we must lose all.

When Jesus said the prince of the world was coming, satan, he said that he had nothing in Himself.  He was pure, clean.  In the words of Abraham to the King of Sodom after the slaughter of the kings, he said, “far be it from me to take even a shoelace from you, lest you be able to tell me, ‘I made Abraham rich’.”  (Genesis 14:22, paraphrase).  His was a spotless walk, a clean life, with no thing from the enemy.

This is the only life that will stand the tests.  This is the only life that will withstand every storm.  If you want Biblical, Apostolic power, on a nation-shaking level, you can expect confrontation in the spiritual realms.  You can expect every part of you will be challenged.  Hear the word from Esther.  She only took what her helper, the eunuch Hegai, suggested (Esther 2:15).  Here’s the interpretation, only take what the Holy Spirit, your helper, suggests with you on that day.  Take nothing of yourself, but submit yourself to the one who is Wisdom.

If you really want to know, if you really want to be free, be in absolute bondage to the Holy Ghost.  Be in absolute submission to his love.  Be absolutely governed by His heart.

So long as you can be manipulated by anything else, that day will most likely come.  So long as you can seek anything else, the time will probably present itself that you will be given opportunity.  So long as you have yourself, there will be a war.

The way home is the way of the cross.  You can carry nothing of this life with you when you die, why not start now?  Why not, like the shrewd manager, use what you cannot keep to provide for yourself where you’re doing.  Why not, like the Master said, store up treasure in heaven, not on earth, where moth and rust corrupt, and theives break in and steal.  If you want gospel power on the level of the Apostles, pay for it.

But King David replied to Araunah, “No, I insist on paying the full price. I will not take for the LORD what is yours, or sacrifice a burnt offering that costs me nothing.”

1 Chronicles 21:24