“Then Jesus said to the crowd, ‘If any of you wants to be My follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow Me.’” (Luke 9:23 NLT)
Let’s face it: commitment is costly. It calls us away from self-interest into sharing our lives and ourselves with others. It calls us to make difficult choices, and to live with the consequences. It means we cannot spend our lives keeping all our options open.
To live as committed individuals is, in fact, to live life as costly ointment, poured out in love to others, poured out in worship to God.
Is it worth it?
To find out, we will have to relearn the meaning of words like “sacrifice.” And still harder: “self-sacrifice.” We will have to relearn the special pleasure of deference as compared to instant gratification. We will have to give up our quick-fix, magic-wand approaches to Christianity, and pay the price of entering into relationship with a God who created and redeemed us for fellowship with Himself. We will have to learn how to sometimes say a final and ultimate “No” as well as a meaningful, and even eternal, “Yes.”
-- Maxine Hancock in “Re-Evaluating Your Commitments: How to Strengthen the Permanent and Reassess the Temporary”
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