A few weeks ago I was watching a movie with my squad during debrief called, “The insanity of God.” The missionaries in the movie not only believed that the gospel was important enough that they were willing to give up their own life, but to give up the life of their families as well! This took me by surprise, which is strange as here I am on this 11 month mission trip to spread that same gospel. I watched intensely as…
- A 7 year old boy (whose dad was almost beaten to death in jail for refusing to deny Christ) cry as he told his dad that he was proud of him for standing up for the gospel.
- A family rushed to the hospital during the raining season in Africa, to try and save their little boy from dying of Asthma, only to arrive too late. It was Easter morning when he died.
- A man, who was such an outlaw of his country that they weren’t even allowed to say which country he was from, cry out to God asking what more could God want from him. He has already gone from killing Christians to being one and risked his life too many times to count just to smuggle bibles into the country. Yet, by the end of the movie, after all of that, he came to the conclusion that the gospel was not only worth what he’d already risked, but that he now needed to get his family involved in the risky gospel spreading as well!
I was completely stunned!
For such a long time, I thought this level of commitment to the gospel was just a calling placed on a few people’s lives. I’ve believed that each of our callings required a different level of sacrifice based on what God knew each of us were capable to give. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read stories like the above before, heard the martyrs of the Bible talked about in church, but as for me personally, I have never met anyone who I felt who would give EVERYTHING for the gospel.
In the lives of the people around me I see a wide diversity in the amount of sacrifice people are willing to make for the gospel. My goal has been to be a person who was willing to give up a lot, but of course not everything… that would be crazy! As I’ve stepped out on this 11 month journey, I’ve heard from so many people, “The sacrifices you’re making for the kingdom are so great. I could never do something like that!”
However, watching these stories unfold before my eyes; watching my hosts over these past 9 months; watching my squadmates willing to sacrifice so much; I realize that my logic doesn’t line up. Am I wrong or are they?
“One day when large groups of people were walking along with him, Jesus turned and told them, ‘Anyone who comes to me but refuses to let go of father, mother, spouse, children, brothers, sisters—yes, even one’s own self!—can’t be my disciple. Anyone who won’t shoulder his own cross and follow behind me can’t be my disciple… Simply put, if you’re not willing to take what is dearest to you, whether plans or people, and kiss it good-bye, you can’t be my disciple.’”
??Luke? ?14:25-33? ?MSG??
How can I argue with that? That’s clear scripture. On top of that, they are the red words in the Bible, the words that came straight from Jesus’ mouth! What?!?
What do I do with this new information? What do I do with these conflicting ideas? Everyone around me says my sacrifice is enough, but everything I see in front of me is telling me it’s not.
When I look at both the scripture and the Christians I have seen on my journey, it seems like to truly understand and believe the gospel of Jesus Christ inherently means you are willing to give up EVERYTHING for it! That includes your life, your family’s lives, your comfort, your security, your safety… literally everything you could possibly hold dear.
The gospel is freaking insane!
How can I actually believe this message?? That this relationship with Jesus could be worth more than every single thing I could possibly gain from the entirety of my life! There is no way this is what I believe… No freaking way!
This isn’t the gospel I heard about when I decided to give my life to Jesus. This isn’t even the reality that I agreed to when I decided to give a year of my life in order to spread His word around the world. No way. Not even close. I am not willing to give up everything. I want to live a life like most of the Christians I’ve grown up see around me… one where I have to make some sacrifices but ultimately believe that God would be proud of the sacrifices I had made and be content with that!
BUT HERE IT IS STARING ME IN THE FACE… THAT IS NOT THE GOSPEL!
God, I don’t know how to swallow these things! God, this feels like too much for me to bear. How can you expect me to give up everything for you? I know my life with you has been an incredible one; one of joy, challenge, struggle, adventure, peace, and incredible love!
I know giving up my life for this year is completely worth every single thing that it has cost! It is worth the financial sacrifice. It is worth the loss of my family and friends. It is worth the cost of watching my nephew learn to talk. It is worth the cost of a broken heart every month as I do life with and build deep relationships with the locals only to leave them, likely never seeing them again. It is worth the cost of losing the control I had in my life… from deciding where I wanted to go to what I wanted to eat. It is worth the cost of constantly feeling disoriented with a new language, ministry, conversion rate, city, culture, house, family, adventure, country, every single month! When I weigh the cost of the race verse the value I’ve gained, I would say 1,000 times over that it is worth it.
But giving up everything for the rest of my life…. I can’t see how the value of this can outweigh the high price that it will cost.
And if you know anything about how my brain works, you would know that my next thought began linking the words “high cost” with what I’ve heard about the gospel… about how Jesus paid the ultimate high cost.
So I go back through Luke 22- 23 to examine how high this cost that Jesus actually paid was, to try and figure out why He found our relationship to be worth it. Let me give you the summary…
- Jesus was misunderstood by his best friends (31-32)
- His friends couldn’t even hang with him through the night (45-46)
- Jesus was betrayed by one of his best friends Judas (48)
- Arrested by the high priests and religious leaders(52)
- Denied by his closest friend Peter (62)
- Humiliated, whipped, and had a crown of thorns dug into his head by the guards (63-65)
- Convicted of unknown charges (23:13)
- Betrayed by the people to trade his life for the life of a known murder (17)
- Crucified on a cross without pain meds (45).
That is literally the worst few days I can image… but was his life and all of this really worth the possibility of gaining a relationship with us? It wasn’t even guaranteed, because we still have to choose it and most people don’t.
I read through the crucifixion in the other gospels to see if there was anything Luke left out. Mark wrote this…
“At noon the sky became extremely dark. The darkness lasted three hours. At three o’clock, Jesus groaned out of the depths, crying loudly, “ Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani? ” which means, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?””
??Mark? ?15:33-34? ?MSG??
What if being separated from the father was actually the hardest part of the crucifixion for Jesus? Through all of the other struggles listed above, Jesus did not once cry out, much less even speak up for himself. It’s all, “that’s what you’ve said” or “what do you believe” kind of statements. But in this moment he “cries loudly.” This has to be the worst part. How can being separated from God be worse than all of the physical pain? Or worse than all of the emotion pain, including being betrayed by everyone (friends, government, religious leaders, strangers)? I don’t understand.
**In the very moment that I am processing all of this, we hear about the Ariana Grande bombing and immediately everyone in the room comes together to start pray for them.**
Everyone starts praying for the victims… but for a reason I didn’t totally understand, my heart starts breaking for the bomber. Imagine living a life filled with so much hate that you are willing to give up your own life to end the lives of others. How broken must you be?! Heart… what the heck. You should be breaking for the victims, not the persecutors. Stop being insane. The words of Jesus never rayng so clearly as they did then. “Jesus prayed, ‘Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they’re doing.’” Luke? ?23:34 MSG??
That was my hearts cry for these bombers… despite my mind not getting it. I realized that my hearts deepest desire was for these broken, hurting, hate-filled people to know hope… to know the truth… to know the gospel!
I then realized that despite the fact that I don’t want to follow Jesus, despite the fact that I believe giving up everything in my life for the rest of my life is too much, despite my mind not being able to wrap my head around the idea… my heart is in it. Jesus has touched my life in such a way that no matter how much I want to fight it, no matter how much my logic screams against it, my heart can’t help but spread the gospel.
It’s official… I am too far gone. There is no turning back, because my heart has somehow been radically changed. I can’t tell you how or when it happened… but I know that it’s only because of what Jesus did. It’s only because Jesus paid the ultimate sacrifice of being separated from The Father, that I now will forever be connected with Him. Yup that’s right… I’m officially one of those crazy Christians who will spend the rest of my life, giving up everything in my life, following wherever Jesus takes me. And somehow that’s the most hopeful conclusion I have ever come to, because of Matthew 19.
“Jesus replied, ‘And not only you, but anyone who sacrifices home, family, fields—whatever—because of me will get it all back a hundred times over, not to mention the considerable bonus of eternal life.’” Matthew? ?19:28-30? ?MSG??
