Have you ever felt like you just can’t keep your head above water? I am going to assume your answer is ‘yes’ because if it is not, I don’t know how you do it. Life just hits hard. For me lately, it hasn’t been a packed schedule or a messy situation, it has just been life. Josh is home with the girls this morning for a few hours so I could get out and have a date with my Life Giver. Sitting in front of his Word, with journal opened and furiously writing all my thoughts, I am feeling like I can take a breath, finally. 

I am reading Multiply, by Francis Chan (strongly recommend this!) and the stinker keeps putting questions in the text and then telling me I have to answer them. It is so much easier when a author puts questions in the middle of a paragraph and keeps going. But God has better for me today than skimming over the hard stuff, so I keep stopping to answer. And DANG it is hard. 

So, I disciple students for a job. I love it. I love asking the hard questions and letting them dig deep into the depths to find an answer. This morning, I am having to dig deep and finding that the answers are murky and messy. Why Lord, am I feeling lifeless when you offer Life daily? Where am I looking to myself for power, discipline, love where you offer Better?

Luke 14:25-33

²⁵ Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, ²⁶ “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. ²⁷ Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. ²⁸ For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? ²⁹ Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him,³⁰ saying, ‘This man began to build and was not able to finish.’ ³¹ Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³² And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. ³³ So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple.

Here is the question that I can’t get away from: If you choose to obey Jesus’s call to follow, what might it cost you? Avoid being vague. If following Jesus would cost you specific possessions  comforts, or relationships, list them below.

When I read His words, I felt like I was getting punched. My girls are not in their right place. Honestly, I would have liked it a lot today if Jesus would have left the word ‘children’ out of the passage. Then I could keep putting them first all the time. I know He will still let me treasure them but for me to have Big L – Life instead of little l – life, I have to treasure Him most. Obeying Him has to be the joy in my step and the leap of my heart instead of trying to balance.

Balance sucks. It just makes me try to be good at everything. Jesus didn’t say to balance my love for being a wife, a mom, a minister of the gospel, a crafter, a homemaker, and a yoga-newbie. He just said to ‘Come after me’ (verse 27). 

Does that make you uncomfortable too? Today I am asking him how I can do that. Where would he like me to back off, relax, listen more, talk less, plan less, pray more, sacrifice, love differently? My answers can’t be yours but maybe today, like me, you need to stop the balancing act and come after Jesus.