Now We Are Talking

What does it cost to belong to Him?

Here is a question that might make us smile before it makes us examine ourselves.

If my salvation cost Jesus everything, why would I imagine that following Him should cost me anything less than everything?

He gave Himself for me. Peter reminds us that we were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. (1 Peter 1:18–19)

What response am I making to a love like that?

I once had a pastor named Trotter who taught about this quite a bit.

“To be a Christian costs you everything.”

Then he would take us through a conversation something like this.

A man kneels to repent.

“God, I will live for You. I will even love my wife more.”

“Oh, you have a wife, do you? It will cost you your wife.”

“My wife?”

Now we are talking.

It was one thing to offer God an improvement in his behavior. It was another to discover that the surrender reached into the relationship he held most dear.

Then came the explanation.

“I give her back to you. You have to know that she is Mine.”

The conversation would continue. The man had children. He had a car. He had money. One thing after another came into view.

And one thing after another had to be surrendered.

We can almost hear ourselves bargaining.

Surely there is something I can keep as exclusively mine. Surely there is some little corner of my life where I retain the final say.

Then I remember what Jesus said about denying ourselves, taking up our cross daily, and following Him. He spoke of losing our life for His sake and saving it. (Luke 9:23–24)

That reaches considerably further than improving a few habits.

Paul asks whether we understand that we are not our own. We were bought with a price. (1 Corinthians 6:19–20)

If I belong to Him, what part of my life falls outside that belonging?

My marriage? My children? My money? My plans for tomorrow?

The point of Pastor Trotter’s illustration has stayed with me. God gives the man his wife back, but the man’s understanding has changed. He now knows she belongs to God.

And that should affect how he loves her.

Paul tells husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her. Consider what that asks of a husband who has just surrendered himself to Christ. (Ephesians 5:25)

He began by promising to love his wife more. Now he is learning whose love is to shape his own.

His children belong to God. His care for them becomes part of his service to their Father. Scripture tells fathers to bring their children up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4)

His money belongs to God. His possessions belong to God. The Psalmist declares that the earth and everything in it belong to the Lord. (Psalm 24:1)

Even his plans must come before Him. James teaches us to approach tomorrow with the recognition that our lives and our actions depend upon the Lord’s will. (James 4:13–15)

God wants everything. And as I surrender it, I begin giving Him room to change how I live within everything He has entrusted to me.

I can still drive the car. I can still go to work. I can still sit down at the table with my family.

But something has changed about the man doing those things.

His possessions no longer hold the place they once held. His natural circumstances no longer supply the whole measure of his life. He is beginning to understand that he belongs to an eternal Kingdom.

Paul tells us to set our minds on things above, and describes our life as hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:1–4)

That changes what I mean when I say that things are going well.

I am not measuring my walk with God by whether everything in my physical world has become fabulous. I am learning to live with Him in what He has given me, allowing Him to shape the person who uses it.

Jesus spoke plainly about counting the cost. He said that becoming His disciple reaches even to renouncing all that we have. (Luke 14:28–33)

So I return to that man on his knees.

“God, I will live for You.”

Those are precious words. But as we begin discovering what we have included in that promise, the conversation becomes very personal.

Everything?

Even this?

Yes, Lord. Even this.

Now we are talking.