I‘m going to warn you right now. You’re not going to feel comfortable reading this article. Jesus’ words here are very challenging, and what I’m about to share with you may dishearten you if you haven’t already considered the following passage in detail. In Luke 14:26-33 we read:
26 “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. 27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 28 For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? 29 Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, 30 saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ 31 Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? 32 And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. 33 So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:26-33 (WEB)
There is far more depth to this passage than what I’m going to cover today. But since Bible Money Matters is about personal finance from a Christian perspective, we’re going to look at this passage in the context of personal finances.
So my question for you (and myself) is this: When it comes to your finances, have you counted the cost of following Jesus?
The Cost
When you read about personal finance in the secular press (offline or online) you see that it’s all about you. What do you want? What are your goals? What are your dreams? What will make you happy?
But for Christians, life is not about us. Your personal finances are not all about you. When we choose to follow Christ, we must lay down all that we have and all that we are at His feet. We give up our will and say to God, “Your will be done.”
This has powerful implications for a Christian’s personal finances. We must start asking ourselves if the financial decisions we’re making are ruled by our will or God’s will. Then we must make the choice of following Christ or walking down our own path.
The problem is that we often fail to consciously consider those questions. Think about it. When was the last time you said to yourself, “Should I really buy that iPhone, or does God want me to do something else with the money?”
Or perhaps, “I really want to have a vacation home. But does God desire that for my life?”
Maybe this is you: “I can’t wait to have enough money so I can retire early and [travel, golf, relax] more. But I wonder how God would want me to spend my retirement. Or would He even want me to retire at all?!”
The truth is that we rarely question our desires and motives like this. Instead, we go on about our lives following the norms of our culture without hesitation.
Jesus is warning us to consider the cost of following Him because He knows we can’t follow Him unless we do this first. Otherwise, we’ll stick to our old ways and live as though nothing has changed. I’m not discounting the work of the Holy Spirit as we grow in Christ, but you have to be open to the Spirit’s working before you can expect to see change. If you haven’t counted the cost, how will you know what changes to pray for or look for in your life?
Take time to count the cost now. Realize that following Christ may mean giving up your dream home, your big luxuries, and even your little luxuries in order to pursue God and share His love with the world. Understand that Jesus calls us not to an easy life on Earth but to a difficult, arduous, and trying narrow path. Consider that you may have to lay down your life if you wish to follow Jesus to the end.
The Reward
As the world sees it, there is a great cost to follow Jesus. Why would you want to sacrifice your comfort in order to give to the poor? Why worry about what God thinks of how you spend your time and money? How could you even think about giving up the retirement of your dreams, which you’ve worked so hard for, in order to honor God???
But what the world doesn’t see is the great reward that comes from knowing Christ. The world can’t see the innumerable, everlasting heavenly riches that you have in Him. The world can’t see the joy of loving others even though it may require sacrifice on your part. The world can’t comprehend how the love of God could move you to live a life of contentment that overflows into generosity.
Counting the cost will discourage anyone who doesn’t keep their eyes on the eternal reward we can have in Jesus Christ. If all you look at is your life in this world, then the things of this world will overpower the promises of God (at least in your mind) and you will never be able to follow Jesus. You will only go so far and then say, “Wait, I can’t do this. I don’t want to give up my desires. I don’t want to give up my wealth. I’ve worked for it! I deserve it! Jesus, you’re just not worth it!!!”
How foolish would that be?! And yet, we do it every day in the choices we make with our money, don’t we? Brothers and sisters, let’s start questioning the way the world does things. Let’s not follow our culture in how we deal with and think about money. Let’s focus on eternity. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize we have in Christ so that we may lay hold of eternal life and the crown of glory that awaits us!
The Challenge
Jesus’ challenge to His disciples here is clear. We must love Him above all else. We must be willing to follow Him at all costs – even death. We cannot hold on to our desires, our wants, or our dreams if they are in conflict with God’s will. If we will not do this, then Jesus is very clear. We can’t be His disciples.
Jesus doesn’t give us any exceptions here. He makes it clear that nothing can come between our relationship with Him – not our family, not our spouse, and not even our own death. Talk about a challenge! It’s not easy to follow Jesus.
The challenge laid before anyone who wants to follow Christ is plain. We must let go of our grip on this world and pursue the kingdom of God relentlessly. When it comes to your finances, are you willing to say, “Lord, take it. Have it all! Do what You want with it. Show me how to honor You with my money, my choices, and my time. Change my way of thinking. Renew my heart and cleanse me from the ways I’ve learned from this world. Teach me to follow You no matter what!“?
If you’re not up to that challenge, I’d carefully consider Jesus’ words in this passage. I would dwell on them until the crushing weight of this truth bears down on my soul. Jesus is clear. If we can’t hand it all over to Him, we cannot follow Him.
Note: Please understand that I’m not talking about salvation based on your works. Living this way won’t make you righteous enough to save yourself, and it’s not a requirement before you accept Jesus. But once you say you’re going to follow Him, you have to be willing to leave this world and all its trappings behind. If you’re not willing to do that, Jesus unequivocally tells us that you cannot be His disciple.
Paul, this article is extremely challenging as I think most of us as Christians struggle to some degree with falling prey to consumerism, focusing on our own selfish desires vs. what is actually good for us according to God’s will, and trying to do what Christ would want us to do with our finances. It can be hard to give up ownership of everything you have to God – for many of us our self worth can too often get tied into how much we make, how hard we work, etc – instead of finding our worth in Him as wonderful creations of God.
I’ve struggled with this topic in my own life, and we’ve come a long way at our house. We didn’t used to tithe very much or at all when we didn’t have as much income coming in. Within the past 5 years we’ve become convicted that we need to be giving more, and focusing more on what God wants us to be doing with our resources, and it’s amazing what a blessing just starting to tithe and doing other giving has been. Releasing some of the hold the money has on us has been so freeing! It just goes to show for me that God wants what is best for us, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s the best according to the world.
Enjoyed the article. Preach on! Its not easy to swallow but swallow we must if we are to reach this world for Christ.
Thanks for commenting, Bob! This certainly isn’t an easy idea to swallow – especially if we’re still stuck in the world’s way of looking at things. But so much of what Jesus taught is far from being easy. And that just highlights the fact that following Him requires prayer to God and submission to His will. It requires us to lay down everything and follow His Holy Spirit. It’s only through His power that we can do this or anything else that truly honors God.
I’m not completely there yet either, Peter! This is something that God has been teaching me about as I’ve been studying personal finance in the Bible, but I think it’s clear that the implications go much deeper than our finances. Anything we do that’s not within His will for us takes us away from Him and puts up barriers in our relationship with Him. It can be so difficult to hand over those areas of our life when we keep looking at things the way the world does. As the apostle Paul says in Romans, we have to be transformed by the renewing of our minds so we won’t conform to the patterns of this world.
Thanks for sharing your testimony about how God has blessed you and cared for you as you’ve learned to hand over your finances to Him. The world (which is currently ruled by Satan) wants us to think it’s not worth following Christ in anything. But we need to keep our eyes focused on the immeasurable heavenly riches we have in Him and not look back to the puny things this world offers us.
Stay tuned, I have a post coming up in the next couple weeks about a similar topic – about how restrictions and guidelines that God puts in place aren’t to cause us harm (even though the world portrays them as being “no fun”), but to give us the best possible life. They are there out of love. By the same token, in our finances, the guidelines we put in place because of a budget can sometimes seem like a drag or no fun, but in the end they are there to help us prosper and live a free life.
Have you read the book Radical by David Platt?
You could be taking pages right from there!
I just finished reading it a few weeks ago, along with True Religion by Palmer Chinchen. Both are excellent and follow this line of thought pretty well.
We are in a season of re-assessing what God wants us to be doing, what our focus really should be, simplifying (read getting rid of clutter!) and seeking God’s will. I can’t wait to see what God has in store for our family!
I look forward to your next article in this series!
Blessings on the journey~
I haven’t read either of those books, Deb. But I’ll keep an eye out for them! This article isn’t really a part of a series, but the next one I’ve got coming up for Bible Money Matters does seem to follow this line of thought. Blessings to you as well!
Thanks for the David Platt suggestion, Deb! I was up late last night watching some of his stuff on YouTube and reading some other stuff. I can see why it came to your mind. Good stuff!!! Based on what I understand about his book (not having read it, mind you), I do think maybe he should be pushing people even farther.
Though I sometimes struggle with my understand of personal finance in the Bible. Maybe I soften Jesus’ words about wealth too much? Or, maybe not so much about wealth but about saving in general. Sometimes I read what Jesus said about storing up treasures and leaving everything behind to follow Him, and I wonder if maybe I’m still missing the point even in all my talk about contentment and sacrificial generosity. I’m still praying for more wisdom and strength so I can learn how to follow Him better!
Great article, Paul. We all need to be reminded that what we have is not ours in the first place and that we receive true blessing out of an obedience and devotion to Christ. And we do have to count this cost of following Him. But it is all worth it!
Thanks for commenting, Richard! Your words are so very true. The cost of following Christ is infinitely small compared to the glorious reward that awaits us!!!
*Loved* this article! We need more of these sorts of articles. Helps keep us on track. :)
I’m glad you liked it, BD. :) I’m just trying to encourage and admonish with the truth. Salvation comes only through Christ and by God’s grace, but we so often forget that following Him requires the Spirit’s work and our conscious decision to do what Christ commanded. The Spirit will change our hearts to give us the desire to follow Christ and the power to follow through, but we still have to make that choice every day to put the world behind us and press on toward Him. Thanks for commenting!
Great post! I believe that the costs aren’t even as bad as we make them out to be. We don’t necessarily have to give up or dreams of the things that we want, but we must be willing to give them up. (2 Corinthians 8:12 For if there be first a willing mind…) I think once we get the mindset that God’s will is good and acceptable and perfect, it becomes so much easier to say no to ourselves and yes to the Lord.
Thanks for commenting, Cherelle! I agree the costs certainly aren’t as bad as we might make them out to be – especially if we fail to consider our eternal riches. You’re right that we might not necessarily have to give up the things we want, but we need to be willing to give them up if that is God’s will. The only danger with thinking that way is that we might ignore God’s will if it requires us to give up something we really want because our minds may say “at least we are willing to give it up”.
The willingness doesn’t matter at all if we won’t actually follow through. The verse you quoted is Paul speaking to Christians who want to give generously but are so poor that they have nothing or very little available to give. In that case it’s very clear that you could be willing to be generous but unable and God is pleased with your willingness.
But if you are willing and able to do it then God wants us to actually do it. If a rich man says he is willing to be generous yet gives nothing, his willingness without action will not be acceptable to God. Faith without works is dead, and empty words are no sacrifice at all.