I recently did a project for one of my classes on the cost of discipleship. My group, consisting of me and four others, chose Luke 14:27 as our focus for exegesis. Our pericope was Luke 14:25-33. The project was enlightening and thought provoking. It came together in over an hours worth of video complete with personal interviews with local people serving the Lord, famous people publicly serving and worshiping the Lord, and the group members.


In the book Radical by David Platt, he talks about what the cost of discipleship means and what we, as followers of Christ, are supposed to do. We are called to pick up our cross daily. That means we're supposed to carry instruments of our own death and torture everyday. You could choose an electric chair, a gun, or a guillotine. Scripture also tells us that we have to leave everything 


behind, without ever looking back. We have to completely separate ourselves from the life we knew outside of Christ. We have to give our everything to Him. In Luke 9, Jesus tells the story of some men who decide that they want to follow Christ. One says that he just has to go burry his father, but Jesus says "let the dead bury their own dead." The other man wants to say goodbye to his family. Jesus tells us that we should hate our families. The love that we have for them should be nothing compared to the love that we have for God. 


"Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."    “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.”


Have you chosen to follow Christ? Have you picked up your torture device? Have you looked back?