And this isn’t prosperity gospel nonsense. It’s way better than just getting a lot of money or driving a nice car. It’s about your actual life… you can learn to be at east, at rest. You can learn to drop your self-willfulness and allow joy to bubble up from within you. You can learn to really love your life and be thankful for it, even though it might contain difficulties, persecution, or worse.
You’ll love who you are and how God created you, and you’ll be able to love others from a full heart. Worry will increasingly fall away. You’ll find everything you really need is taken care of moment-by-moment, day-by-day.
You will experience a power operating in your life that makes it very difficult to have a “bad day.” Joy and peace will be with you even in the hardest of circumstances, running through you like a deep underground river.
Your thoughts and feelings can be transformed: you can learn to be confident and hopeful, and won’t indulge in thoughts of rejection, despair, failure, hopelessness, because you’ll know better. You will become so aware of God’s presence and grace around you that you will hardly remember how to be gloomy or negative.
You’ll find that God works through your life to bring healing, joy, peace, and goodness to others. You will be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.
(For an even fuller picture of what disciples of Jesus end up “looking like,” look at the section titled “A Composite Picture of ‘Children of Light’” in this article by Dallas Willard.)
It won’t happen all at once, of course. We’ll have to learn how to do it, but if we take on Jesus’ easy yoke of discipleship, he will teach us. And he will send others to help us.
So what is the cost of discipleship?
The above description (and so much more) is what we gain. We should also be clear about what it costs:
1. You give up the old life.
“Whoever does not carry their cross cannot follow me” (Luke 14:27). That’s the meaning of the cross: the end of your life. There can be no half-measures here.
2. You make discipleship your top priority.
Discipleship means you make it your top priority to be involved in what God is doing. It cannot be an extra-curricular activity. It must be the filter through which every other relationship and pursuit passes.
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
3. You actually put Jesus’ teaching into practice.
One of the most pernicious lies is that you can’t do what Jesus said. The truth is that he expected us to put his teaching into practice, and will empower us to do so.
“Anyone who hears these words of mine and doesn’t put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matthew 7:26-27).
“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do what I say?” (Luke 6:46).
An investment worth making
“Counting the cost of discipleship” means that we realize the prize is worth the price. Once we see the treasure, it’s easy to sell everything and buy the field. But if we don’t know about the treasure, it will seem like a foolish investment.
But if we do a value proposition on discipleship, we’ll realize the costs are far outweighed by the “benefits!”
Then we discover the secret that “taking up our cross” is actually the same thing as taking on the “easy yoke” that brings rest to our souls.
We discover, as Dallas Willard said, that the obedient life is the abundant life.
This article originally appeared here.
