Indiscriminate Cost

I bought a dress the other day, and was so enamored of the print and the fit that I didn't even check the price tag before signing the receipt. Not the most prudent choice, and in fact, quite contradictory to the warning found in Luke 14:28 --

"'For which one of you, when he wants to build a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it?'"

Being a disciple means 'counting the cost;' looking with enough foresight to understand that diligent obedience will require sacrifice. Yet I think that is where many of us stop. We are all to conscious of the costliness of actually doing what we've been convicted to carry out, and we 'shrink back.'

Perhaps my attitude with the dress wasn't the wisest, but there's a delightfully carefree nature to that mind-set as well... because it sees the final outcome, and doesn't hesitate. Were we to live that way spiritually, how much less would we sit confounded, pondering our options, and instead simply embark on what God has called us to do.

I've recently been inspired by a dear friend who has stood firm in what she's known the Lord's leading to be, and has obeyed - at potentially great cost. The price paid is not relevant; her purpose is to be faithful to the One who's called her. Without being deterred by the price tag.

For obedience cries out that, no matter what we may pay, "our ambition [is] to be pleasing to Him" (2 Corinthians 5:9). And somewhere in that freedom, when we're removed from counting the potential risks and enabled to touch on the joy of being aligned with Him, we find that even what we pay is multiplied back to us through His sustaining us in the path which pleases Him.

Obedience transcends the losses endured, because it knows a higher accountability than to comfort or convenience. We do not move under the constraints of the ramifications, but under the command of the One who never counted faithfulness to us too high a sacrifice to make; the One whose very Life is evidence: the determining factor is never the cost.

Already Crumbled

A friend sent an e-mail today which asked why I wasn't fighting for myself; in short, why I wouldn't take matters into my own hands. My delighted response was reminiscent of the victory shout at Jericho [Joshua 6:20]: "we're gonna shout loud / loud until the walls come down... we're gonna shout loud / loud until the final shout... because we've already won... yeah, it's already done... we have already won!" (David Crowder).

The fact is, I've spent much of life fighting to secure for myself whatever I thought my greatest need. And the results were, while varied, all relatively similar in their degree of devastation, landing me in everything from isolation, to confusion, to a hospital bed. Never worthwhile. And always too short-sighted to grasp that the work is already done; the victory already secured!

I wonder how much time is spent pursuing those things which are already completed. How often has the Enemy successfully convinced us that the responsibility falls to our shoulders, and we end up chasing those things which God long ago finished on our behalf? How often have I been prone to take matters into my own hands, in the pointed (though never articulated) misconception that my Lord wouldn't actually invest Himself in undertaking for me that which I most need?

It's too easy a trap. Too simple to stare at that wall and convince myself that there MUST be something I'm required to do, all the while forgetting that the walls came down, not because of the shout in verse TWENTY, but because God had already 'given the city' into the Israelites' hands back in verse TWO.

The victory isn't ours because we fought hard for ourselves (in fact, our own efforts are what often bring us down), but instead, because He's declared to us what He has already finished! Praise be to the One who has secured for us the victory, and brings us the message that the walls are already crumbled!

"...thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ..." (2 Corinthians 2:14)!