The Cost of Discipleship

"He who loves his life loses it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it to life eternal."
-John 12:25
      Ever since I started attending my church's "adult" worship service, I started to get more and more responsibilities. First of all, I began playing drums on the praise team. Then people started asking me to help them perform their special song (a special song is a time where one group of people sing a song during the worship service). Our church's piano player sometimes wouldn't go to church for various reasons, so they asked me to play piano for the service when he didn't show. I also have to sometimes pray during the service or do different things like write a testimony. On the past Sunday I actually played drums for praise, piano for hymns, and guitar for special song all in the same service.
      The point I want to get across is not that I am special or that I am burdened by all these responsibilities. While I may sometimes get annoyed while doing so many things, most of the time I enjoy doing what I can to glorify God and bless the church. Doing all these things for church made me think about sacrifice. I am a selfish person, we all are to some degree, and sometimes I would question other people's contributions to the church. I wonder how some people can just show up to church with seemingly no responsibilities. It seems like they just consume and don't do anything to help. Then I started thinking about the sacrifice and cost of being a Christian.
       Jesus in Mark 12 is at some treasury of a church or synagogue, where He watches people put in money. He notices people putting in large sums for a while, and then He notices a widow put in two small copper coins. He tells His disciples that the widow put in more money than the rest of the people, because she gave all she had. To the other people, giving large sums of money was easy because they already have a surplus of money. The widow had almost no money to live on, yet she dedicated what she had to the church. Jesus wasn't looking at how much money the people were putting in; He was looking at how much it cost them to put in their money. Jesus judges people's heart more than their works. Of course works are important; referring back to the parable, the people putting in large sums of money do more to help the church than the widow, but Jesus noticed the widow because of her sacrifice.
      Honestly, it's hard to know how much a person sacrifices in their Christian life. This is one reason why Jesus tells us not to judge others. Only Jesus can righteously judge people; but the point of this post is not judging others. I confess that I often look at what other people are doing rather than encouraging them. What may seem like a small sacrifice to me may cost that person more than I know. Jesus is looking at our hearts, and that is what we should work to cultivate in ourselves and in fellow believers.
      What does Jesus say about the cost of being His disciple? He says "if anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me". He also says that "He who loves his life loses it". Jesus is telling us that becoming His disciple will cost us our lives. The talents we have or our ability to do things vary from person to person, but everyone is able to give up themselves. Being a disciple of Jesus is not easy, because it will cost us much. However, the reward of being Christ's disciple is much greater than our sacrifice. Paul says "I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord (Philippians 3:8)". While being a disciple of Jesus will cause us to lose many things, knowing Jesus Christ is much greater than those things. I pray that we would be able to give up ourselves and become a true disciple of Jesus.
-Smart