The Cost of Discipleship

Ah...the project I have been working on for the past week is finally completed and I now have room to come up for air and think about other things I have been keeping on the back burner.

One of the things I have been holding onto is a comment made by my younger daughter in church last Sunday. The reading from the gospel of Luke dealt with discipleship and its cost. As Father C. was preaching and relating Jesus' words to would-be followers who had things to do before they followed Jesus, B. reached over and tapped my arm. I bent my head down to her level and she whispered in my ear, "Boy mom, it sure must be hard to get disciples!."

At first I laughed. But then, the profundity of what she said sunk in, and it hit me: She's right!

What my younger daughter "catches" is that it costs something to follow Jesus. She also understands intuitively that the demands of Christian discipleship are not particularly popular in modern culture. We tend to want the benefits, but not the cost of discipleship.

The word disciple comes from the Latin discipulus, i, which means "student(s)." To be a disciple of Jesus means that we are committed to learning how, with God's help, to live as Jesus would want us to live. We commit to being a student of Jesus Christ. We study what he said and attempt to do what he did in order to be like Him. It involves a process of dying to self that is often painful and definitely counter-cultural.

So yes, my darling B., it is hard to be a disciple. But it is in that very process of dying to self that we learn how to become more like our Lord. Discipleship to Jesus Christ is not necessarily easy, but it is the most rewarding way to live. It is truly the only way to really live. It is my earnest prayer that you and your brother and sister spend your lives learning how to delight in and live for the Lord Jesus.