Message: Count the cost to choosing salvation. It’s not something you add to your life. It will require complete surrender and cost everything! This passage compares it to building something. If you decide to build something before calculating what it will require and how much it will cost, you will look like an idiot when you run out of money and supplies and you can’t finish it.
Command: Count the cost.
Promise: We may feel like we’re giving up everything…and we certainly are, but the cost of our everything in comparison to what we gain can’t be compared.
Warning: If we walk out our relationship with Jesus without the understanding that it’s intended to be a surrender, we will be stuck between trying to please ourselves and frustrated with trying to please God. The struggle will cause us to resent God when we fail
Application: This passage is really about counting the cost before committing our lives to Jesus, but this is something we have to do regularly to keep in check. Our flesh never stops trying to rise up and demand first place. If we don’t count the cost regularly, we will forget about surrendering and try to live a double life of trying to fulfill our own desires and trying to appease God out of guilt. The sad part about it is that we will never be happy and fulfilled trying to live life this way. We can choose to live 100% surrendered to God or 100% selfishly and for ourselves, but we were created for communion with God. We won’t be fulfilled until we are surrendered but the fight for our flesh is real!
