1. Do We Know What We’re In For?
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Do We Know What We’re In For?
One day as Jesus was walking beside the Sea of Galilee, He saw two fishermen, Simon Peter and his brother Andrew, casting a net into the lake. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt. 4:19). At once they left their nets and followed Him. Did they know what they were in for?
Jesus began at once to teach His new disciples. The sermon on the mountainside was His starting point, and it was a bombardment of seemingly impossible requirements. Then He proceeded to demonstrate His supernatural power to heal the sick and the blind, to calm a storm, to raise the dead. He reminded the disciples that the student should be like his teacher, the servant like his master—and that they would be able to do greater works than He did. They were warned not to be surprised if they should lose their lives for His sake. Jesus told them He must go to Jerusalem where He Himself would suffer many things, then die. This was too much for Peter. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” For this, he received a stinging reply: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God but the things of men” (Matt. 16:22–23). Then, immediately after speaking so scathingly, Jesus offered an invitation: “If anyone would [wants to, wills to, wishes to] come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24).
The Cost Is High
Jesus never lured disciples by false advertising. Once, when great crowds were following Him, He turned to them and said, “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be a disciple of mine” (Luke 14:26, NEB). With terms like that, there was never a stampede to join Him when He walked the roads of Galilee. There is not likely to be one now.
He wanted followers, didn’t He? Would Jesus ever make some kind of deal with potential recruits? Would He waive a few of the requisites? No. He added one more: “So also none of you can be a disciple of mine without parting with all his possessions” (Luke 14:33, NEB). Surely He exaggerates.
Does He? Twice He repeats His unequivocal words to great crowds. He is not speaking privately to the twelve whom He had instructed at length in the principles of discipleship, but to the masses. His message is: What I am asking is more than any of you can possibly give. You must ask for terms.
There is no hope for any of us until we confess our helplessness to be Christians. Then we are in a position to receive grace. There we have the “terms”: grace—first, last, and always. So long as we see ourselves as competent we do not qualify. Jesus vividly depicted the obligations as beyond us. But “Come to me,” He says. Carry your cross and come with Me. I alone can make you a disciple.
Like the twelve, we would-be disciples are “foolish and slow of heart to believe.” We don’t know what we’re in for, but we’re signed up and we’re pretty sure we want to go all the way with Him. However, we are hampered by our preference for familiar comforts, and even sometimes by our exalted notions of the noble sacrifices we will make for the Cause. We miss the significance of the very sacrifices that count the most, the ones that convey our hearts to the One who has purchased us with His blood.
The first sacrifices in the Bible were those of Cain and Abel. Cain was a tiller of the soil and he offered grain, and Abel was a hunter who offered blood. God accepted Abel’s sacrifice but rejected Cain’s. Cain was infuriated, murderously so. But the problem was not in the choice of sacrificial substance, it was a matter of the heart. Cain’s sacrifice was not offered from a trusting heart. “By faith, Abel offered God a better sacrifice than Cain did. By faith he was commended as a righteous man, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith he still speaks, even though he is dead” (Heb. 11:4, NIV).
When a little boy comes to his mother with his sweaty fists full of smashed dandelions, there is nothing intrinsically valuable in the gift, but it is welcomed by her simply because her own son has offered it. When I was little I used to ask my father for money so I could buy him a present, and my father would give me a dime. In those days, a dime could buy a whole box of chocolates. So I would go to the drugstore and buy candy for my daddy. It wasn’t chocolates that he wanted and he had given me the purchase price in the first place, but he was delighted with my small present.
No Turning Back
If we have chosen the narrow way, it is fortunate for us that we cannot always find a way to go back. We are committed—we have trusted God and agreed with His objective, though we do not know all that this is going to mean.
An early lesson in commitment is a ride on a roller coaster. Remember the eager waiting at the gate, the rush to climb in when the cars came clattering to a stop at the platform, the ecstasy with which you gripped the cold steel of the guardrail in front of you, the first steep climb over the top—only to see the tracks dropping away beneath you? You gasped at what you were about to do. The impossibility of changing your mind was an awful revelation. Why are so many of us willing to pay to have ourselves helplessly flung through the air like this, sickeningly plunged and whirled and jerked? The worst of it, the part that doesn’t bother children, is that the train isn’t going anywhere. You’ve had this terrible ride just for the ride?
The initial choice to go the whole way with God is made, of necessity, in ignorance of all that will follow. We have been warned that the road will be a hard one, for our Master Himself walked a hard road, and He reminds us that servants are not greater than their masters. But if, given all the previews of what is coming, we have nevertheless set our faces to follow the Pioneer of Faith, there will be many times along the road when we look over our shoulder, longing, like the Israelites on the way to the Promised Land, for the “leeks, the onions, and the garlic” of our slavery (Num. 11:5, RSV). We are fortunate, then, that it is hard to find a way back.
During my first year in the jungle, before I married Jim, I lost my informant as well as all my language materials. It was as though God said to me, “What did you expect? You gave everything to me when you were twelve years old. When you were a young woman, you told me that you would go anywhere that I wanted you to go. You prayed, ‘Work Your whole will in my life at any cost.’ And so when your informant is killed and Jim’s station is demolished in a flood and you lose your language materials, is that your business? It’s Mine. I can do what I want with what you have given to Me.”
The cost of discipleship seemed pretty steep.
The Joy Paradox
What is the result? Paradoxically (and generations of Christians will back this up) it is joy. “Jesus, . . . for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2, RSV). We don’t have to wait for heaven to have the joy; it comes to us regularly right here on earth. The Lord Himself disciples us so that we can share the joy of our Master. A merciful Father strips us as a tree is stripped of its blossoms before it can bear fruit. He is not finished with us yet, whatever the losses we suffer. As we lose our hold on visible things, the invisible ones become more precious. Where our treasure is, there will our hearts be (Matt. 6:21).
Once an earnest young man asked what worldly things he must forsake for the sake of Christ. The answer was very specific:
Colored clothes, for one thing. Get rid of everything in your wardrobe that is not white. Stop sleeping on a soft pillow. Sell your musical instruments and don’t eat any more white bread. You cannot, if you are sincere about obeying Christ, take warm baths or shave your beard. To shave is to lie against Him who created us, to attempt to improve on His work.
Sound absurd? It was a sincere response and it was given in the most celebrated Christian schools of the second century AD. We can all think of contemporary counterparts. Does “giving up worldly things” buy us a ticket to bliss?
There was nothing distinctively ascetic about Jesus. He ate what other people ate, drank what they drank—and even in questionable company, and in such a manner that He was accused of being a glutton and a drunkard. The Son of God went to a village wedding. Not only did He attend, He worked a miracle so that the guests could have second servings of wine when the host’s original supply failed. Surely He dressed as other men dressed if He was not easily recognized on many occasions. (He even had to be identified by Judas’s kiss.) The one garment about which we are told must have been of the currently acceptable cut, or it is doubtful whether soldiers would have quibbled over it.
So if Jesus didn’t seem to condemn worldly things themselves, why do we have the lists in Colossians and James of worldly things that are condemned? Let us be very careful to note that these do not list material things—they are characteristics of people, that is, they are specific sins. We are to put to death these worldly (or “earthly”) things, since we have been raised from the dead with Christ Himself, and we no longer have any business with immorality, impurity, evil desire, covetousness, anger, malice, slander, foul talk, or lying. These spring from a desire for “things” that the world can provide, such as acclaim and status, or they attach themselves to material things in such a way that we may need to be stripped of the thing in order to repent of the sin.
He may be asking us to sell a much-loved house, to retire from a position in which we feel ourselves irreplaceable, to turn over to Him fears which hold us in bondage, to give up forms of self-improvement or recreation or social life which hinder obedience. Afterwards, with a joyful lightness of spirit and awareness of God’s active involvement in ordering our happiness, we may wonder why we waited so long.
The process of being stripped does not feel good. But the joy we taste is not incompatible with the sorrow. I remember waking up one morning in my house in Shandia after Jim had been killed. The bed was empty beside me. Suddenly, in the place of fresh tears of sorrow, I was surprised by a sudden, unexpected surge of joyful exultation, realizing where Jim was at that very moment. He would never have to suffer again. He would never have to undergo the degradations and humiliations of old age. I would never have to spend days and nights in that dreadful fear of not knowing if he was safe. He was now with the Lord. Even with the reality of my widowhood and my daughter’s fatherlessness and the house and station that I had to run all by myself—there was joy! Psalm 116:17: “I will offer the sacrifices of thanksgiving.”
I will offer Him both my tears and my exultation. Nothing we offer to Him will be lost. It is the person who tries to save him- or herself who loses it all. Jesus gave His word: “Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:39, NIV).
Indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to his death.
Philippians 3:8–10, NKJV
Knocking Out the Props
It is an unsettling business, this being made conformable to His death, and it cannot be accomplished without knocking out the props. If we understand that God is at work even when He knocks out the small props, it will be easier for us to take it when He knocks out bigger ones.
The very week which I had looked forward to begin the writing of a book found me dragging around with what appeared to be a heavy cold, accompanied by a deep cough. I tried to work at my accustomed place and pace. I couldn’t. I could not grasp a thought, hold onto it firmly, and carry it through to its logical conclusion. A day or two went by with little to show. I took myself by the scruff of the neck—“Get on with it!”—but found that a prop had been knocked out. I had a fever. Only a degree or two, but enough to scramble my brains, and a salutary reminder that normal health and the ability to do ordinary work are gifts from God for which I should thank Him every day of my life. A letter “happened” (was ordained) to come then, remarking that God is much more interested in making us holy than He is in getting a job done. The letter made me pause. The interruption was more important, for those few days, than the book.
I was reminded of St. Augustine’s words, “The very pleasures of human life men acquire by difficulties.” Sometimes we recognize them only in retrospect. On one of those terrible days during my second husband’s cancer, when he could hardly bear the pain or the thought of yet another treatment, and I could hardly bear to bear it with him, we remarked on how wonderful it would be to have just a single ordinary day.
And then there are the inevitabilities of old age. Wear and tear make their indelible marks on our face reflected in the mirror which (weirdly and shockingly sometimes) becomes the face of a stranger. Fear overtakes us as we take note of how much altered we have become, and we contemplate what is to come. The specters of loneliness, illness, abandonment, and the serial deprivation of our powers stare back at us from the furrowed and sagging face. But God will be there. There is no need to fear the future, God is already there, and God’s promise for us is, “They still bring forth fruit in old age” (Ps. 92:14, RSV). The best fruit will be what is produced by the best-pruned branch.
More, and Then Some
I will offer Him my prayers, my sighs. I will pour out my heart to Him. Even in their distractedness, inconsistency, and deficiency, I can be confident that my prayers rise to Him like incense (“Let my prayer be counted as incense before thee, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice!” Ps. 141:2, RSV). He receives my imperfect prayers like the mother receives the crushed dandelions, as gifts made perfect in love. Besides, He Himself has been praying for me all along: “He is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them” (Heb. 7:25, NIV).
What else can I offer Him? In the words of Isaac Watts’s great hymn, “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”:
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
My all, to gain all.
The widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17) was destitute, even more desperate than the ordinary widow of the time because those were days of famine. Along comes Elijah, who had been getting supplied with bread and meat morning and evening courtesy of divinely ordered ravens, but who had left when the brook dried up from the drought. The ravens did not come with him to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, he saw the woman gathering sticks.
He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”
“As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”
1 Kings 17:10b–12, NIV
The widow was a most unlikely prospect to provide for his needs. But the prophet Elijah prevailed upon her, and she believed him when he spoke, “For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord gives rain on the land’” (1 Kings 17:14, NIV).
The nameless widow used up all her flour and oil and made him bread, giving her all, and the word came true. The same God who ordered for Elijah more than was on the menu will do the same for us, if we are listening when He asks us for some small, but usually very important, sacrifice.