The Cost of Discipleship: Costly Grace

I am reading through some classics in an effort to focus on my inward spiritual journey in addition to my regular Bible study (Isaiah right now) and reading (Every Day with Jesus Daily Bible--our entire congregation is reading this).

Many years ago I read Bonhoeffer's 'The Cost of Discipleship' but I believe it deserves a re-visit.

“Discipleship is joy.”

I’ve never really thought about discipleship in this way before but if you stop to think about it, it is absolutely true. Discipleship should be a joy for us as we journey and grow closer to the LORD. I am hoping to remember this description of discipleship and use it.

Bonhoeffer starts off the book talking about how the Church has become to manmade and makes it difficult and confusing for people to truly follow Jesus. People end up replacing one burden with another.

For the Church to be successful, our quest needs to be Jesus Himself and what He is saying to us. Our preaching and teaching needs to be focused on the Scripture and not on superfluous church-ease.

Cheap Grace

p.37 “ cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church. We are fighting today for costly grace.”

Cheap grace amounts to a denial to the living word of God

Cheap grace is the justification of sin without the justification of the sinner

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship

First and last words Jesus spoke to Peter were “follow Me.” Inbetween were a life of discipleship.

Christian double standard= maximum and minimum standard of obedience

Cheap grace is thinking we can live as before and use grace as the card to allow it. This has led to the mass secularization of Christianity around the world. Real grace is real costly.

Cheap grace is the bitterest foe of all discipleship

The grace and the call to follow are inseparable.

Grace as a principle versus grace as a living word. Difference between cheap and costly grace.

“discipleship means life that springs from grace, and that grace simply means discipleship”

Wow. There’s a lot to take in. Basically to live as a true Christian one must be willing to accept the grace that He has for us by giving up everything. It is for very few and is very costly, but by doing so one can find true life. The mass secularization of Christianity has cheapened this idea of grace so much that it is essentially raped as a way for people justify what they are doing (sins) rather than truly justify themselves (the sinner). The focus is kept on the action rather than the heart. True grace, real grace, is a matter of the heart.

"When it rains, it pours"

Today I have heard the phrase "when it rains, it pours" several times in reference to our thrift store warehouse being burglarized. The vandals took an estimated $10,000 worth of ready-for-the-store merchandise, mainly all of our furniture. They looted through a fifteen foot high mountain of bags of clothing taking most of it, too, with them. They pilfered through boxes upon boxes of housewares and took most of that, too. They left an awful mess that can only be described as, one employee put it, "a tornado went through here." The appliances, both large and small are gone. They even took the scrap metal and the refrigerator that had employee lunches in it.

I called our headquarters to fill them in on what was going on and the response was "when it rains, it pours for you."

My mother-in-law in a text: "when it rains, it pours."

An employee in conversation this afternoon: "when it rains, it pours."

A dear officer friend who called and left me a voicemail: "when it rains, it pours."

When the bad storm back at the end of June blew the roof off of our thrift store the oft repeated phrase was, "when it rains, it pours."

Oddly enough I was thinking about this phrase during my morning devotion time. Our church community is reading through the Bible in a year and we all have the same daily Bibles. One of today's passages was about Noah and THE flood. I was struck by a verse that says (Gen 7:17) basically that the rain kept coming and lifted the ark above the Earth. I sat on that verse for a moment and tried to visualize it. That's when the phrase came to mind.

And it got me wondering. How high did the ark get lifted up? I believe it was above the highest mountains as there was so much water, but how HIGH? My four year old Elijah is absolutely fascinated with outer space so it got me wondering...did the ark reach space? How high above the earth did God put the boat?

Sometimes we go through things that we cannot control. I continually refer to a young adult that "adult life happens." It happens to the best of us. For some, the water just reaching land is high enough. For others, the tops of mountains and yet, for others, outerspace perhaps. For some, when it rains, it truly pours.

Church was AMAZING yesterday. You know, the good kind of church where you get Holy Spirit goose bumps and tears flow and the body is worshiping together and you don't want it to end and it is just wonderful. We had one of those days after a very trying (and immature on my part) first part of the morning. God moved. We invited Him and He came. It. Was. Glorious!!!

And then, the rain begins again. And it poured a little bit today.

Stuff can be replaced. The soul work that happened in the chapel yesterday cannot.

So I'll take a mess to clean up in an inconveniently located warehouse any day. And as I do, I will sing this song (Embrace by Jake Hamilton):

I want to feel Your embrace
I want to feel Your arms around
I want to feel Your heart beating
Next to mine, next to mine

And it's telling me

It's all gonna be okay
It's all gonna be okay
It's all gonna be okay
It's all gonna be okay

I want to see You Your face
Want to see who I can be
Want to see what You can see
In the mirror of Your eyes

And You're telling me

It's all gonna be okay
It's all gonna be okay
It's all gonna be okay
It's all gonna be okay

And I know, if Your eye is on the sparrow
Than Your heart is on me

And I don't have to wait
To go to heaven when I die
I wanna go right now
We're gonna go right now

'Cause this is the sound of heaven
Invading earth, this is the sound