My whole life I have been taught that following the Lord doesn’t necessarily mean sunshine and roses all the time; but I was never taught that sacrifice and persecution is an absolute guarantee.
Do not get me wrong, life with the Lord is the sweetest and most rewarding life you can live. There is nothing better than living in harmony with your Creator, but in our entitled culture we have a very skewed idea of what that should look like. We think since we are being obedient and serving or following Him, we shouldn’t have to deal with the hard stuff, but the hard stuff has to come in order for the good stuff to come.
Not only is the possibility of trials, persecution, or hardship to come there, it is promised to us by the Lord.
Mark 10:29-30
“Jesus said, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.”
Jesus tells us here that while we will be blessed for being obedient to God’s command to leave everything for him, there will be persecution that comes with it. There’s a lot of sacrifice that comes with following Him. This verse says your giving up your house and all the comforts that come with that, it says you give up your entire family, it says you give up your land and possessions. You have to give up a lot, but then it says that this is given back to you x100.
The cost to following Christ is absolutely everything.
Choose Jesus no matter how high the cost or heavy the cross. Follow Him no matter what he asks you to sacrifice for Him.
The cost for me, currently, was to leave home. I had to leave my brothers and my sisters and my comfy bed and my access to Netflix and wifi and and my friends and everyone I love. It’s only for nine months and in theory I’ll get it all back when I come home; but it was still really hard. I’m not going to pretend there weren’t moments where I didn’t want to go, because those moments were there. I was scared. I was extremely wary. I was confused why God was asking me to do this when everything at home seemed like it was going to fall apart and leaving right now just seemed like the worst timing. But hey, guess what…
God is so so so faithful. Its been four days in Guatemala and He has already started to give me those things back x100. I left my two favorite boys back at home, my brothers. God has given me 10 new brothers. Brothers who look after each other and build each other up. Brothers who are showing me what true men of God look like. I also left my sisters back home. God has given me literally so many new sister from this World Race community. Sisters who love each other. Sisters who I can both laugh and cry with. Sisters who know the Lord’s heart on such an intimate level. Those new sisters and brothers are also making pretty fantastic friends. Not friends who replace the ones back at home, but just adding to my community. God is faithful. God is giving me more than I could ever ask for or deserve. Missing home isn’t the only hard thing we are going to face while we are here. There’s going to be many more trials and many more days where my faith is weak and I’m unsure what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. But no matter how fickle my feelings are, no matter how many times I am unfaithful to God, He will stay faithful to me. He is constant. He is good. He is my perfect God.
So yeah, the cost to following God is pretty dang high, but the cost to not following Him is even higher. So carry the heavy crosses. Carry the burdens and pain when they come, because if you carry them, we have a faithful God who is going to reward you for it. He is worthy of the pain you are feeling. He is worthy of you going through the hard stuff.
