Count the Cost
January 29, 2007 
Tonight before dinner I talked with our guests about how following Jesus has a cost. There will be friends who are no longer your friends, places where you will no longer be welcome. I talked about how the Kingdom of God has a completely different currency than the world, about how the things that matter most to us in the world are meaningless in the kingdom.
Count the cost.
I remember, perhaps 20 years ago, someone telling me that there's no way they would become a Christian if that meant they couldn't have a glass of wine with dinner. I had no clue what to say. A number 0f years ago I trashed my entire cd collection, believing I should only listen to "Christian" music. I have no idea why that mattered so much. Don't drink, don't smoke, don't do this and don't do that - they were badges of honour that I proudly wore, so glad to count the cost.
Count the real cost.
Tonight I spoke with the guy who used to be "The Drunk Guy Who Calls Me Pastor". He's entering his third, miraculous week of sobriety, but can only sleep three hours a night. Four o'clock in the morning is the loneliest time in the world, all the more so when you spend the hours staring down the devil. For this guy, every night is another Gethsemane. I talked with a woman who lost her mother, three months ago to the day. I tried to talk her into having a meal, because she hasn't eaten, and going home and getting some sleep, because some idiot in her rooming house kept her up all night. I spoke with a guy whose new medication is sapping the life out of him, and he's no longer certain that being free of his seizures is worth feeling like this. What's it like to face that kind of choice? It seems to me that surely part of the cost has to be that a brother hurts when a brother is hurting. Part of it has to be that we carry some of the pain of the world in our arms, that we carry our brothers and sisters in our hearts, that we long for the love of God to be made real in the brokenness that surrounds us, that we wrestle and struggle and grapple and tussle and argue with God to see his kingdom come.
Because if that isn't the cost we're paying to follow Christ, then what are we doing?
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Reader Comments (5)
You have no idea how spot on you are.
"...we wrestle and struggle and grapple and tussle and argue with God..."
I think God absolutely loves when we are engaging Him so in our pain and grief - not that he likes our having to suffer - I think he hates that - but he loves the laser focus of our engagement with Him at those times.
Makes me think of Jacob wrestling... the dark night so beatifully described by St John of the Cross... the blessing of God pruning my destructive attachments to what I think works - not God - but me...it hurts bad...but the relief is indescribable.
the drunk is probably living in minutes sometimes seconds now - life is only about the present for him because the present is so there and won't go away. But, in His grace, that will pass and his new present will be better - pruning done - room for the fresh and new.
Please keep sharing.
goodnight.
I too gave up the record collection, the dope, the alcohol, the cigarettes. The records ( cds now) returned, along with the alcohol with some force.
My badges of righteousness are pretty rusty. Corroding in fact. I dont know what Ive learned, if anything in the last ten years.
Urbanmonk - I hear you, brother.
Brian - Yup. Grace is central to the practice of being Christ in our world largely, I think, because it was central to the character of Christ in the world. Without grace...?