"I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that shall bear much fruit, for apart from ME, you can do NOTHING."
John 15:5 In a word, if you don't get your sustenance from me, you can't do jack crap. Jesus is straight up telling us that we need him.
"Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Matthew 10:37-39
Pretty self explanatory here. If you love anyone or anything more than God, sorry. You're not worthy. Oh, and one more thing. If you don't pick, up your cross, aka an instrument of torture and most certainly marked with suffering, don't even bother trying to follow Him.
"If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." mark 9:35
If you consider yourself before others, you'd better shape up quickly.
"Love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting anything back." Luke 6:35
Yeah, Jesus just said that.
Annnd one of my personal favorites:
"As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus replied, "foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has no place to lay his head." He said to another man, "follow me." but the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." Jesus said to him, "let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the Kingdom of God." Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me to back and say goodbye to my family." Jesus relied, "no one who puts their hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the Kingdom of God." Luke 9:57-62
There are no excuses. When the Lord calls, you go. Period.
So many of us have a pick and choose theology. We pick the happy go lucky verses from the Bible and take them to heart, but we skip over the ones that we don't like. The ones that we actually should be reading. The ones that, dare I say it, actually require sacrifice? That actually require us to change?
I shutter to think of the number of people that have heard that following Jesus is easy. I cannot in good conscience agree with that. To follow Jesus is to follow a road marked with suffering.
Please hear me. I am not saying that if you are going to follow Jesus, you will lead a miserable life. In fact I'd say the opposite. Life without Jesus is miserable.
Rather I am saying that there are a lot of people out there who don't like the guy. In 2 Corinthians 2:15&16 it says "we are to God the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life."
The gospel of Jesus is literally death to some people. The more they hear it, the more they hate it. And the more they will resent you.
"Brother will betray brother to death,and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of me…" Matthew 10:21,22
I hope at this point you are able to see that being a follower of Christ is not easy. You will be persecuted, you will face trials of many kinds just as Jesus himself did, and it may be that even your family and those nearest to you will turn their backs on you.
Only may we not forget the rest of the verse: "he who stands firm to the end will be saved."
