Luke 14:25-30 A large crowd was following Jesus. He turned around and said to them, ²⁶“If you want to be my disciple, you must hate everyone else by comparison—your father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even your own life. Otherwise, you cannot be my disciple. ²⁷And if you do not carry your own cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.

²⁸“But don’t begin until you count the cost. For who would begin construction of a building without first calculating the cost to see if there is enough money to finish it? ²⁹Otherwise, you might complete only the foundation before running out of money, and then everyone would laugh at you. ³⁰They would say, ‘There’s the person who started that building and couldn’t afford to finish it!’

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Have you ever heard of the question about what would happen if you were to go back in time and kill your own grandfather?  If you could do that, then you could never have been born, making it impossible for you to go back in time in the first place.  It’s one of those “chicken or the egg” questions that’s a bit hard to answer.

The real question is, what is your destiny?  And better yet, how do you know?

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There’s a song that goes:

My hope is built on nothing less
than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.
I dare not trust the sweetest frame,
but wholly leaned on Jesus’ name.

Refrain
On Christ the solid rock I stand;
all other ground is sinking sand,
all other ground is sinking sand.

I think some people live that out.  Their hope is truly in Jesus and not in the world.  And because of that they take the mission Jesus gave us, of making disciples, seriously.  But there are plenty of others who might say they stand on Jesus when they really just stand on their own opinion of Jesus.  And many of the people like to keep their religion indoors and just have a country club kind of church where only people who fit in already are welcomed.  And there are tons of individual churches who keep themselves safely hidden behind their closed doors and cut off from everybody else and there isn’t even a chance for unity in our mission to save the world.

Any church that is an island to itself is missing the point:

Ephesians 4:11-16 [Jesus] is the one who gave these gifts to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers.  Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ, until we come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature and full grown in the Lord, measuring up to the full stature of Christ.

Then we will no longer be like children, forever changing our minds about what we believe because someone has told us something different or because someone has cleverly lied to us and made the lie sound like the truth.  Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ, who is the head of his body, the church.  Under his direction, the whole body is fitted together perfectly. As each part does its own special work, it helps the other parts grow, so that the whole body is healthy and growing and full of love.

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Who doesn’t love free stuff?  God has a pretty cool free gift he’d like to give you.  Wanna hear about it?

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