Consider The Cost

One of the things I have learned concerning the Scriptures is that you never see all of the depth.  We read the Bible consistently (a daily reading through the Bible once a year) and also constantly turning to the study of different passages as the Spirit leads.  There is never an end to the awesome revelation in passages once thought "known".  I want to look more closely at one such passage.  Luke 14:25-30 (PHILLIPS)

^25-27 Now as Jesus proceeded on his journey, great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and spoke to them, “If anyone comes to me without ‘hating’ his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be a disciple of mine. The man who will not take up his cross and follow in my footsteps cannot be my disciple. ^28-30 “If any of you wanted to build a tower, wouldn’t he first sit down and work out the cost of it, to see if he can afford to finish it? Otherwise, when he has laid the foundation and found himself unable to complete the building, everyone who sees it will begin to jeer at him, saying, ‘This is the man who started to build a tower but couldn’t finish it!’ 

There are several steps revealed in this passage to the completion of the "work" that God has for us in this bubble of time that we are granted to prepare for eternity.  Jesus said He had completed the work the Father had given Him.  Paul said he had "finished the course."  What is required that we have this witness?  In Matthew 7:24-27, Jesus speaks of building a house on the sand or on the rock.  In the verses preceeding this passage, Jesus made an awesome statement of the final judgment.  Matthew 7:21-23 (NASB)

²¹ “Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. ²² Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ ²³ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’

How do we practice lawlessness?  How we live, how we think, how we judge the world around us.  I was thinking of a conversation I had with my mother years ago.  We were discussing styles of dress and she said that as a young girl she had to wear the hem of her dresses just at the top of her boots.  She longed for the day when she could drop the hem to the floor like "grown up women".  But when she reached the age when she could, the styles had changed and the hems were rising.  Her attitude toward this continual change became an opinion she shared with her generation.  We become locked into the "culture" of the generation we share.  We have often seen the rebellion of each generation to seek their own expression.  No matter how "modern" it may seem at the time, it will be replaced.  This happens to all phases of our culture.  If we conform to the world around us, it shapes us.  Our thoughts, our ambitions, our responses to circumstances and relationships are connected to the age because we are conformed to those of the age.  But Romans 12:2 warns us not to be conformed to this age.  Most translations say "world".  But everything moves on.  The vine of iniquity must come to fulness as well as the vine of righteousness--both grow together.  We seek to be conformed to, and follow, the One Who leads (and is) the way.  If we follow Jesus, we must be conformed to His image--not the image we see in the age around us.  This will cost us everything.  How we think, how we live and relate to everything around us becomes part of the cost.  To obtain the pearl of pricelessness, we must "sell" all we have and come to the completion of the goal set before us, conformed to His resurrection.