A Committed Disciple

Luke 14:25-35

Intro:

How many of us struggle with commitments? When we hear this word at times it can have a negative effect on us. The pressure of responsibility comes upon us like a hammer. Its necessary pressure. It’s the responsibility we have to fulfill the commitment that we feel. Our lives are shaped by our commitments. The lives we live today are the results of the commitments we have made whether good or bad. Look at your life and ask yourself.

What am I committed to? Family, friends, jobs, making money, going out, video games, careers?

Your life is controlled by where your commitments lye.

I want to talk to you today about being a committed disciple of Jesus Christ.

A committed disciple:

1. Jesus has supreme authority over your life.

Jesus has first place in your life. An exchange has taken place…one life for another. Jesus gave His life for yours, and your life for His.

· The word “hate” in verse 26 is Hebrew figure of speech that means preference not “hate” as we know it in our culture.

2. Jesus is saying He must have priority over and above all else. We give Jesus our life and we receive His life. The life of Christ living through us.

You bear your own cross.

This is absolute surrender. The committed disciple lives a life of total surrender to the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is what Romans 12:1 is talking about when Paul says to be “a living sacrifice”

This is where self-discipline comes in. We must take authority over our flesh and it’s desires. There are times when Jesus tells us to do something we’re not going to want to do.

It will not be a convenient time, and it will make us uncomfortable. You will have to make sacrifices following Jesus.

3. Are we willing to pay the price? Consider the cost.

Counting the cost causes us to pose the question…What are we willing to give up to follow Jesus?

Jesus’s disciple left all to follow Him: they left their whole careers behind to follow Jesus.

Listen at Paul in Philippians

Philippians 3:7-11

But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

· Paul had given up all connection to his old life. He made the exchange.

· Being a committed disciple you understand that the benefits of following Christ out weighs what the world has to offer.

· What we attach ourselves to cant’ be compared to the eternal rewards of following Jesus.

4. Benefits of a committed disciple

Jesus made some shocking statements about following Him. Some of those things would make you say…”I don’t want none of this Christian stuff” or “geesh…it don’t take all that”.

Jesus wants all or nothing. It’s for your benefit. So what’s the benefit?

John 10:10

The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.

· Abundant life. That life to the fullest, completeness, security, God is active in your life.

John 8:31-32

Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

· Complete freedom. Freedom from sins in our lives, freedom from addictions, freedom from anything that has us bound and captive.

John 14:1-4

“Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. And where I go you know, and the way you know.”

· There is a place in heaven with your name on it. You have a secure place in heaven with Jesus. In other words your life is secure in the Lord.

There is a special gift the will actively present in your life. That is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

John 14:15-18

If you love Me, keep My commandments. And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever— the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you. I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.

The committed disciple is you and me living a life that sold out to Jesus. We don’t have to get it every time, and understand all the time. We are to walk in faith all the time.