Count the Cost

How many of you ladies go shopping? I don’t mean looking for random stuff to buy I mean grocery shopping. Do you just wander into a grocery store and buy whatever looks good on display or do you make some kind of a list before you go. My wife looks at sale ads and goes to different stores to get what is on sale at each store. We sometimes keep a list on the fridge for things we are in need of or want. She usually asks me the day before if there is anything I can think of that we need. Sometimes she buys things that are not on the list and sometimes she doesn’t get everything on her list because they are out of something so sometimes there is a substitute brand or item and sometimes we do without for that trip but she always has a plan for what to do.

On Friday Skip helped me replace some brake pads on my Terrain. Actually he did most of the work and supplied the shop and the tools so mostly I talked while he worked, what a guy huh! It all started because he had bought some brake pads for a Terrain before we met and held on to them and he asked me if mine needed any pads since he already had them. I checked the pads and they did need to be replaced so I asked him to bring them to church and he offered to have me come to his shop and use his lift and his equipment, which I don’t have. I jumped at the chance. When I got there he had his coveralls on and he took over and did most of the work. How great is that?

If you have ever worked on a car, you know how handy it is to have the right tools and the right parts available, it makes the job so much easier and faster but it takes a plan, the plan doesn’t always work but its much better to have a plan than to not have a plan. I find that this is even more important when building or remodeling a shop or house, you have to have some idea of what you want to do an what it will take to do it. The better your plan is and the more you know about what you are getting into and what you will need the better the whole project goes.

That is true about a lot of things in life

Luke 14:25–35 NASB95

Now large crowds were going along with Him; and He turned and said to them, “If anyone comes to Me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple. “For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough to complete it? “Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who observe it begin to ridicule him, saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ “Or what king, when he sets out to meet another king in battle, will not first sit down and consider whether he is strong enough with ten thousand men to encounter the one coming against him with twenty thousand? “Or else, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. “So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions. “Therefore, salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? “It is useless either for the soil or for the manure pile; it is thrown out. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

Jesus told his disciples to make sure they knew what they were getting into. To count the cost before they committed themselves. Imagine beginning to build a house and running out of materials and money half way through, the house would probably not be fit to live in and all that time and effort and money would be wasted.

Building a house, in the biblical example a tower, is an big project and you need to make sure you can finish before you start. Building a church is a lot like building a house, only more complicated. When you build a house you only have to worry about what you and your family and maybe the builder think, when you build a church you have to worry about what a lot of different families think.

A church is a lot bigger than a house so it is going to take more time and effort, more space,more materials and it is going to need some things a house doesn’t generally have. Not only that but it involves more people who all have different opinions and different likes and dislikes. When you built a house you typically only have to get one or two people to agree on what it should look like and how big it should be, where it should be or other such factors. When you build a church you may have 10 or 20 people’s preferences and opinions to deal with, sometimes it might even be 100 or a 1,000 different people.

When you build a house you might put some thought into what other people like since you may someday want to sell the house but when you build a church you need to consider visitors and future generations. Yes building a church is much more complicated and requires more planning and better execution of the plan than building a house, and that’s only if you are talking about a church building.

What if we are talking about building a church. Not a building but an interconnected group of people, different people from different backgrounds who are going to worship and serve together, who are going to be part of each other’s lives and invest in each other. People who are going to help each other grow and learn and mature, people who are going to rely on each other for one of the most important part of their earthly lives, the eternal part.

Now add that fact that even if you could plan for and anticipate the needs and desires of all of these different people and of the generations that will follow them you would have to stop to consider that you still have not addressed your primary concern.

You see in a church the most important opinions and the most important ideas are not the ideas of the people but the ideas of God. Not only are you trying to plan and anticipate the needs and desires of multiple families some of whom you haven’t even met yet or maybe some of whom have not even been born yet but you are also trying to anticipate the plans of the creator God of the universe who tells us that his thoughts are above our thoughts and his ways are above our ways.

When you build a church you are first considering the desires of a God you cannot understand or anticipate and then trying to meet the needs of a group of people who are all different some of whom you have never met and some of whom may not even exist yet. Does that sound intimidating, or even impossible? That’s because it is, at least it is in our own power.

So one way or another, either because we realize the task we are faces with or because we have tried it ourselves and failed and we are now desperate we are faced with turning to God in order to build a church. He is a God who makes plans and a God who encourages us to plan and to count the costs the best we can. He warns us that following him can be expensive even while he promises us that following him is far better than trying to do it on our own, in fact it is the only possible way.

I believe that we need to build up this church. I believe that God wants us to build up this church and that he has a plan for getting that done. I have taken a look at what the cost of building up this church may be. Like most of my projects I am sure I have missed something somewhere but I want to tell you what I expect.

I expect that building this church will take a lot of time and effort by me and by others, I expect that at least occasionally it will take more time than we want to give and sometimes it the time that God asks from us will be when it is least convenient for me or for someone else. I believe this to be true and I expect to be imposed on in my spare time, but I also believe that it will be worth it so I give God permission to impose on my time. He doesn’t need my permission but I need to offer it up to him.

I expect that building up this church will take some of my resources which I give freely, it will also take the resources of others. I expect that from time to time it will take more than I am willing to give, but I believe it is worth it so I give God permission to make me tighten my belt a little bit.

To build up this church I believe that I will have to trust some people and love some people. I will have to put my heart and my life out there and open up to others and let them become important to me, to be a part of their lives and let them become part of my life. I also expect that some of those people will hurt me. Some may leave, either by moving on in this life or moving on to the next one and if I allow them to become part of my life their leaving will leave a hole in my life. I will miss them. Some of the people I love may even turn their backs on me, they may betray me but will endure the loss and I will recover from the betrayals if that is what God chooses to bring into my life. I believe it will be worth it.

I have counted the cost of building up this church and I think it will be worth it. I am willing to commit to it. We may go through a lot of different plans and a lot of different struggles before we get there. I am not sure what God has in store. I have tried to get God to brief me on his plans for the future several times and he has never yet decided to do so.

I don’t believe that God needs me to plan things for him or even to be fully aware of what his plans are. I believe that God has granted me free will so all he needs from me is for me to surrender that free will back to him. He wants me to count the cost and to be sure that I know the cost may well be high. I am aware. I commit to surrendering my will to God and working whenever and wherever he wants me to so that his plans can be accomplished.

I stand here today to ask you a question. Have you counted the cost? Are you willing to do what God wants you to do, to go through what God wants you to go through, to give what God wants you to give and to serve where God wants you to serve? If you are then there is no limit to what God can do through you and through this church. The only limits God has are the ones he imposes on himself. God has granted us free will, we can choose not to submit to him if we want to. We can choose not to receive what God has chosen to give us. We can choose to oppose God, its not a good idea but it is a choice that is open to us.

Will you commit to serving God even if its inconvenient, even if it costs you something, even if you might get hurt. I can promise you that God’s plan is better than your plan. I can promise you that his way will work out better than anything you can plan or imagine. I can’t tell you exactly how God will do it, all I can do is commit to it and all you can do is commit to God and see what he has in store.

This new years count the cost. Determine if it is worth it to you or not, determine what you will do. As for me and my house we will serve the Lord, what will you do?