Weighing the Cost?

It has been a few months of long hours of focusing on work and so having a few days of downtime is refreshing. Sometimes you don’t realise how tired you are till you stop. The snoozing in the morning and hitting the alarm a few times does not make me feel guilty. Well not at the moment anyway.

I was watching a few renovating shows, later that evening.  Most of them had a huge budget and they were changing the entire layout of the house. The team were flipping. That’s what it is called when they buy an old worn out, tired house and renovate it and then sell it at a profit. When the couple bought the old house and got in one of the builders who works for them, I thought that they had made a mistake. After going through the plans with the builder on which walls they wanted to pull down to open up the space, they found that they all were loadbearing walls. This means to pull them down without reinforcing the roof would cause the roof to fall in. It would cost a substantial amount of money to reinforce every wall. They decided to pay more money to put in strong metal roof beams in only a few of the walls. Their plans had to change.

Then they found a good portion of the house’s internal walls were termite infested. They would all have to be replaced. Even one of the posts holding up the house was badly eaten away, and this would need replacing too. Again, costing more in the renovating budget that they had not planned for. Then the internal plumbing was leaking, and pipes needed to be replaced.

Yes, I truly thought they had made a mistake in buying this house and not finding out these problems with it before buying it.

It made me think of Jesus sharing with the apostles and the large crowd that was following him in Luke’s Gospel.

²⁸ For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see 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 will begin to ridicule him, ³⁰ saying, ‘This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.’

Luke 14:28-30 NRSV

Now Jesus was not talking here about being foolish in building a house and not having enough money to finish it. Jesus was using this metaphor that those who dedicate their lives to Him must count the cost and make sure they are willing to pay it.

Entry into God’s Kingdom is free and for all but being a useful citizen takes sacrifice.

If we follow Jesus, we may have people ostracise us because of our beliefs, (many of us would know what that is already like), criticize us because of our beliefs, laugh at us, question us…….

We need to count the cost….

Would it not be better to be laughed at as a Christ follower than to give up and not finish?

Now we don’t know what is ahead of us in our lives. What dangers, sickness, difficulties we might have to negotiate, but we do know that with Jesus we get strength to negotiate them, and we are never alone.

The joy of knowing Jesus outweighs everything.

Knowing Jesus (well getting to know Him for it will take a lifetime) makes you know truly that following Him is not a mistake. Not like my judgement of these House Flippers who had cut off more than they could chew, or so I thought. I thought that they had made a mistake. Many may feel you have too, in following Jesus. But they are wrong. It is the best decision you could ever make.

These house Flippers, because of their experience, weighed up the unknown difficulties that might occur and decided to continue renovating, building, making this a new house. (It turned out to be so beautiful and they made a good profit on selling it.)

We need to look to others who have gone before us and followed Christ. Because of their experience, they give us good examples of ordinary people weighing up the unknown of life, carrying the cross Jesus might have for them and building, renovating, and bringing in this New Kingdom. Then our lives too will be beautiful and well worth the effort we put in.

May these jottings from my journal inspire you to believe in and fall in love with Christ- the hope of the world, as stated in Jeremiah 17:7, ‘Blessed is the man who believes and trusts in and relies on the Lord and whose hope and confident expectation is the Lord!’

Love

Rosemary

Every week groups of ladies meet together to chat about the things I raise in my weekly blog post and to chat about life in general. We call these ‘Heart Connect’ groups.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

Have you counted the cost of what it takes to follow Christ? Why have you decided to keep going?

Has the cost ever stopped you from following Christ? How did it stop you?

Who is an example of someone who has counted the cost and continues to follow Christ?