FBC Daily Devotional – July 22, 2021

Well, a good Thursday morning to you. Hope your week is going well and your day has gotten off to a good start today.

Today we are in Luke chapter 14. And I can think of a couple of scenes that aren't too far from where we live that remind me of the illustration that Jesus used here in Luke chapter 14.

Up in Rockford, on the south side of Rockford, let's see, I can't remember the road now.

Anyway, it's just south of Route 20 by the airport. There is this huge, huge shell of a church building.

I remember the first time I saw that. It was about 18 years ago, the first time

I saw that. I drove by that structure and I saw it and I said, wow, that church is really building a big building.

And it was just some concrete cement block walls that weren't finished and didn't have any brick on them yet.

And there was the framing for a roof and all that kind of thing. And I thought, man, that's going to be quite the building.

And a while later, a few months later, I drove back up to Rockford that direction and drove by that same building and I looked at it and I thought, it looks like there hadn't been anything done on it since the last time

I was here. That's odd. And here it is, 19 years later almost, and still nothing's been done since that time.

And come to find out, this was one of those cases where a church bit off more than they can chew.

They didn't sit down and count the cost of what it was going to take to actually finish this project.

And now it sits as a monument to that failure. Well, there's another church building like that south of here, right off of I -80 and what, 39, maybe east of 39, down near the

South Peru area, in that area. And I remember the first time I saw that too. I drove by it and now that one was more obvious that this was not a project in the process of being built.

This was a project that had reached a stopping point in the construction and it was not completed.

Again, just a frame. Now there I knew that the thing hadn't been touched in quite a while just because of the grown -up weeds and everything else.

But again, it was obviously just from the size of the structure, it would have been a multimillion -dollar facility, and yet there it still sits.

Years and years later, a monument to inability to count the cost or insufficient counting of the cost or something along those lines.

Well, Jesus uses that idea of counting the cost, of sitting down and counting the cost before one goes out to war or before one builds a building.

He uses that as an illustration for determining to follow him.

He said, if you want to be a follower of me, you need to sit down and count the cost.

Well, what is that cost? Well, he tells you a little bit earlier in that passage, right after the beginning of our reading in this section.

He says, well actually in verse 26, chapter 14, verse 26. He says, if anyone comes to me, now get this, and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, in his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.

Whoa, whoa. That's pretty strong language.

What is Jesus getting at here? If I don't hate my mother, my father, my spouse, my kids, and even my own life,

I can't follow Jesus? Well, just to make it clear, he's not talking about the emotional disdain that we often associate with hatred.

He's talking about rather choice, choosing. For example, in the

Old Testament, you read how the Bible says, God says, Jacob have I loved,

Esau have I hated. What God is saying in that is, I've chosen

Jacob and I have rejected Esau. The same idea here.

The point would be this. If it comes to the place where I have to choose between my loyalty to Jesus and my loyalty to family, close family, mother, father, spouse, children, then whom will

I choose? Whom will I choose? Jesus says, if you don't choose me, then you're not worthy to follow me.

You better sit down and count the cost. If you had to renounce your family in order to follow

Jesus, would you do it? Now, for those of us in the Western world, there's not too much threat of that, is there?

That we're going to be put in that kind of a position where we have to choose between Jesus and our family?

Some of us may have gotten converted in a family where they don't particularly appreciate our faith.

I know people like that, where they got converted out of a particular religious religion and the family still in that religion, they were angry, they were upset, but they didn't disown them.

They didn't cut them off or anything like that. There are some believers in other countries where it can cost them their life and their own family would kill them if they chose

Jesus or following Jesus. And Jesus is saying to those would -be converts in a nation like that, or would -be converts in a family that is so, so loyal to their religion,

He's saying, are you going to choose me or are you going to choose your family? Sit down and count the cost.

Sit down and count the cost. Well, I wonder if it's cost you anything from family, loved ones, where you've had to say, you know,

I'm following Jesus. If you don't want me around because of that, okay.

I don't want that to be the case, but if that's your choice, okay, I'm going to follow Jesus, even if that means you're going to cut me off.

I hope you haven't had to do that, but if you have been faced with that choice, I do hope and pray that you choose

Jesus. Father, thank you for this challenge and this very sobering challenge, really.

And I pray that our faith would be so firmly settled and so strong in the

Lord Jesus that we would be loyal to Him, even if it means having to say no and to reject very close loved ones and family and friends.

Give us that kind of faith, we pray. And we ask this in Jesus' name and for His sake, amen.