With three days left at home, the question everyone is asking me is, “Are you ready?” And, to be honest, I have never really known how to answer this, like—how do you prepare for something that is a complete unknown? Should I be doing something to prepare for this? Should I feel ready?
The question is well-intentioned, but anyone who knows Jesus or has been on the World Race knows that, no, I am nowhere near ready for what is coming. I am entering this with basically no expectations, no vision, and no plan. I haven’t even packed my stuff yet.
The question that Jesus has been asking, though, me is a bit more personal and significantly more relevant. He’s already made it clear to me that doesn’t need me to have it all together or have it all mapped out. He doesn’t even need me to be emotionally stable and composed. Jesus has never asked me if I was ‘ready’.
When I look to Jesus, in all my apprehension and ignorance, the question He is continually asking me is, “Are you willing?”
And His words from the gospel of Luke burn in my heart:
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 follow me cannot be my disciple. … Any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.
Jesus says,
“Avery, are you willing to lay down all that you have, materially and spiritually and emotionally, and place it at my feet? Are you willing to say goodbye to the people that you love the most? The ones that have walked with you, grown you, and loved you for years? Are you willing to be messy and spend the majority of your time with people that are nothing like you and very well might have nothing to offer you? Are you willing to let me be your best friend, your counselor, and your sole support? Are you willing to forfeit the American dream and the college life and the conventional route? Are you willing to press in to the unknown for the sake of sharing my gospel to the ends of the earth? Where are your priorities? Where are your loyalties? Are you willing to give your whole self to me and be my disciple?“
Answering these questions has been the most challenging part of my summer. I wish I could say that the choice has been easy, but to be completely honest, I couldn’t identify the idols in my life until Jesus was calling me to let them go in pursuit of Him and I hesitated.
I genuinely had to look inside of myself, look at the dreams that I had for myself, look at the image of myself that I had always portrayed, look at my beautiful and comfortable relationships, and I had to count the cost of being a disciple of Christ. And as Jesus makes pretty clear in His word, the price is high.
It was told to me at training camp, “Salvation is free. But to walk as a disciple of Jesus will cost you everything you have.”
These words become really disturbing when you actually have to apply them in a literal way. (Which is how they are intended to be applied.) Jesus wasn’t even just saying I had to be okay with the idea of leaving everything behind, He was saying I actually had to do it.
So, here I am. It is not going to be easy. And Jesus continually reminds me that that is okay. He didn’t design me for easy.
The cost is great, but the reward is much greater.
For, “whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For, what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?”
–Avery
Subscribe to this blog and you will get an email every time I post a weekly update. I can’t wait to share with y’all everything that He is going to do over the next nine months. I freaking love you guys so much. I will never understand why God has been so gracious to me in giving me such an encouraging community. And I will never go one day without praying for everything that God is doing in Aledo and Fort Worth. He is moving.
