“Jesus let people be consumers, but wanted them to become followers.”

–Andy Stanley

This is week two in the “Trading Up” series at North Point Community Church.

Salvation is free; it cost you nothing.

Following Chris will eventually cost you something.

Jesus is about to ask his disciples and followers to make the biggest decision of their life. He asks them who people say he is and who they thing he is. I don’t think this was a trick question. I think Jesus just wanted them to make a decision as to which side they were on without revealing what that was going to mean to them.

At this point, Jesus asks his disciples and the crowd to stop being followers and become consumers: “If anyone wants to be My follow, he must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me” (8:34).

But Andy pointed out that this isn’t an all or nothing deal. You can be a follower, then a consumer, and again a follower. It’s a cycle that happens and it’s OK.

Jesus was telling those around him: “If you want to follow Me, sometimes you’ll have to say no to you.” Saying “no” to anyone, especially yourself, is hard to do.

“…Take up his cross…” To those in the crowd, this only represented death. I can only imagine the murmurs in the crowd: “Did he say we have to die if we follow him?”

The disciples had it easy up to this point. They had been with a popular teacher who could perform miracles, and they had gotten to be involved in many of those. They had seen him heel blind people and bring people back to life. They were following Him, but they hadn’t been asked to do anything that would risk their lives.

“For whoever wants to save his life will lose it…” (8:35a). Everyone dies. Everyone who devotes their life to staying healthy dies. Everyone who tries to latest miracle drug dies. Everyone. “…but whoever loses his life because of Me and the gospel will save it” (8:35b). But for those who are willing to sacrifice it all will live. (Hint: this isn’t a physical life.)

What Jesus is referring to here is our soul.

“What good is it for you to gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?” (8:36 TNIV)

“For what will a man give in exchange for his soul?” (8:37 NASB)

We’re going to lose everything on this side of death the moment we die. We can make the choice to just follow Jesus and hang onto everything we have here and lose it all in the end, or we can get rid of those things we’ll lose anyway, and consume the Thing we won’t lose in the end.

The answer to the question in verse 37 is “Everything.” Is it worth clinging to the things we’ll lose anyway in exchange for our soul?

My soul > My things

What if that was how we lived our lives?

Jesus warns us what will happen if we pick our things instead of Him: “For whoever is ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels” (8:38).

If we cling to the things we can’t keep, we lose the thing that puts us in a far greater story.

We know what we gain if we decide to follow Christ; it will cost something, maybe everything. But refusing to follow Christ, that will cost your soul.

You either die of something or you die for something. Which will you choose?

I know how I want to answer, but I don’t know if it’s the honest answer right now. I don’t know that I’m willing to be a true consumer yet.

Today I’m going to start a semi-regular (or semi-infrequent) Monday post about Sunday’s message at church.

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 This week at North Point Andy Stanley kicked off the new year with a message called “This One Thing.” This message is all about figuring out what the thing you want to do this year is. It can be starting something new, or ending something negative. If you want to start a business or start a charity, begin that process this year. If you need to stop a negative habit in your life, do that this year.

Some of his other examples were:

A habit you must break.
A goal you must accomplish.
A project you must finish.
A relationship you must restore.
A relationship you must end.
A debt you must retire.

Andy focused his message on Nehemiah, who was a slave but made a huge difference in Israel’s history because he had one thing he wanted to accomplish and didn’t care about what others were saying. Nehemiah’s story is that he asked King Artaxerxes for a lot of time off from being a slave to go to Jerusalem and help them. The people of Israel were being exploited by powerful people in the area; they also had no wall to protect them from attacks.

Nehemiah got permission to go Jerusalem and King Artaxerxes even gave him a lot of supplies and safe passage to Jerusalem.

Once he was there he began work to rebuild the wall. The people who were taking advantage of the Israelites weren’t too happy with Nehemiah. They tried to get him to stop, but when he wouldn’t, they threatened him, then they blackmailed him. But he stayed true to what he felt God had called him to do and wouldn’t give up.

So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?” (Nehemiah 6:3 NASB)

Even though there were threats of telling King Artaxerxes that he was attempting to become a powerful ruler and getting him arrested and thrown in prison, Nehemiah refused to give up. One of his friends even tried to get him to give up and seek refuge in the temple where he couldn’t be arrested, but he saw through that plot as trickery.

Nehemiah knew what he had to do and he knew that the only way to get the job done was to stick to his plan. This was his one thing. It was his one chance to make a major impact on the lives of those in Jerusalem and restore their sense of pride as a people and a city. Fast forward a bit and Nehemiah gets the wall built and isn’t arrested.

Andy shared that Nehemiah 6:3 has become a life verse for him. Whenever he is tempted to do something that will distract him from his goals or his beliefs, he is reminded of that verse. It’s a powerful statement and question: “I’ve got something that’s more important than what you want me to do. Why should I stop doing it?”

“There are seasons in life that if you miss them you can’t go back and recapture them.” -Andy Stanley

If you’ve been following my blog you know that I have seven goals for this year as part my #FinishYear list. But of that list, if I don’t complete all seven of them, one of them is more important to me than all the others. My 7th goal is to be debt free this year and right now that goal will be accomplished in October or November. As Andy said tonight: “Debt makes you ugly. If you’re single, get out of debt as fast as you can so you don’t drag a third ‘person’ into a long-term relationship.”

That’s my one thing. What is your one thing? Do you have a list of goals for this year, but out of all those goals, one is far more important to you than all the others?