True Discipleship: What It Costs to Follow Jesus

I took a deep breath, walked up to the pastor, and handed him my key to the church. I smiled at him and said, “I know you don’t understand why I am handing this to you right now, but I need to be obedient to the Lord. This is my church key. Please give me a call later, and I will explain.”  

I sensed the Holy Spirit’s leading, but for months, I chose disobedience and ignored His leading. Following Him in obedience this time was costly, and I needed to take immediate action. There was no time to explain to anyone what I was doing or why. After 10 years of attending and growing in the church where I came to know Jesus as Lord and Savior, He was asking me to trust Him to lead me to the church He was calling me to. For the first time, I was leaving what was familiar and choosing to follow the Lord into the unknown. On the outside, this decision looked foolish, and it didn’t make sense. This was my first lesson in being a true disciple of Jesus Christ.

Then Jesus said to His disciples, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.” (Matthew 16:24, NKJV)

Jesus tells us that the cost of following Him is complete surrender. It’s forsaking everything else, surrendering your plans and your desires, and choosing His. It’s choosing Jesus and His way first over wanting to do things your own way, but that’s only part of what it means to be a true disciple.

“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.” (Matthew 10:37-39)

Following Jesus Christ and being a true disciple is not only being willing to surrender your life to the Lord, but it is also being willing to lay your life down for Him.

2 Corinthians 5:17 says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold all things have become new.

True discipleship is recognizing that your life was bought at a price, and that price cost Jesus everything, including His life. He paid for so much more than many of us are choosing to live for. True discipleship is willingly choosing to die to self, that is, your old way of doing things, your old nature, ego, and pride, and choosing to walk in the newness and fullness of who He has created you to be, no matter the cost.

Just as an old wineskin can’t effectively hold new wine, your old nature can’t function in the complete, revelatory work of the Father, because your assignment and calling are much greater. It can’t operate in all that God wants to do in you and through you. As true disciples of Christ, we need to put on our new nature daily and live an interruptible and surrendered life. We need to be willing to do things that the world, our family and friends, or even our church would deem foolish. It is only when we are willing to look foolish in the eyes of the world to honor Christ that we become truly wise and truly disciples.

~

Scripture is taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.