Thoughts on Giving up & Sacrificing family for the gospel. This is long but SO good!!!
The hardest thing for me to give up in deciding to return to New Zealand was giving up family, especially my grandparents. So i thought it might help to hear what i processed through.Four verses that were very timely during this process were.
The Rich Young Man Mark 10:17-2917As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
18"Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. 19You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'
20"Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy."
21Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
22 At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
23Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!"
24The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is[e] to enter the kingdom of God! 25It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God."
26The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, "Who then can be saved?"
27Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."
28Peter said to him, "We have left everything to follow you!"
29"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last first."
Luke 9:57-62
57As they were walking along the road, a man said to him, "I will follow you wherever you go."
58Jesus replied, "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."
59He said to another man, "Follow me."
But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father."
60Jesus said to him, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God."
61 Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-by to my family."
62Jesus replied, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God."
Matthew 12:46-48
46While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47Someone told him, "Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you."
48He replied to him, "Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?" 49Pointing to his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. 50For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."
Luke 14:25-35
25Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26"If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. 27And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.
28"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? 29For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, 30saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.'
31"Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? 32If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. 33In the same way, any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.
34"Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? 35It is fit neither for the soil nor for the manure pile; it is thrown out. "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
Excerpt from 90 Minutes in Heaven by Don Piper p22-23
This book is about a man who died and was brought back to life through prayer. During his dead period he had a vision of heaven before he came back to life. Here is an excerpt from when he first arrived in heaven.
"I knew instantly that all of them had died during my lifetime… they rushed toward me, and every person was smiling, shouting, and praising God… The first person I recognized was… my grandfather… my grandfather released me, and as I stared into his face, an ecstatic bliss overwhelmed me. I didn't think about his heart attack or his death, because I couldn't get past the joy of our reunion. How either of us reached heaven seemed irrelevant… One person in that greeting committee was Mike Wood, a childhood friend… When I attended his funeral, I wondered if I would ever stop crying. I couldn't understand why God had taken such a dedicated disciple. Through the years since then, I had never been able to forget the pain and sense of loss. Not that I thought of him all the time, but when I did, sadness came over me. Now I saw Mike in heaven. As he slipped his arm around my shoulder, my pain and grief vanished. Never had I seen Mike smile so brightly. I still didn't know why, but the joyousness of the place wiped away any questions. Everything felt blissful. Perfect."
As I read chapter 2 and 3 and heaven became more real to me, I became more okay with not being close to my family. Before I feared not being able to be close enough to love my family the way I should while I was in New Zealand. It wasn't until I believed in the reality and normalcy of life in heaven that I grasped I would have all of eternity to love my family(who will be there) more. So unless it is a matter of spiritual life and death, these temporary years of not being close to my family pale in comparison to all eternity of telling and showing them how much I love them. This gave me an added sense of freedom to focus on loving others where God has called me.
Donald Miller expressed this idea about heaven in "Searching for God Knows What." He also helped me create a more familiar sense of having time to enjoy those I love in heaven. The point of the book is saying the Bible is more about a relationship than about rules and competition with others.
"When I saw heaven, I didn't imagine sitting at the right hand of God, as Scripture says, but I pictured myself off behind some mountain range doing some fishing, and writing a good detective novel. But if the gospel of Jesus is relational; that is, if our brokenness will be fixed, not by our understanding of theology, but by God telling us who we are, then this would require a kind of intimacy of which only heaven know." P46
The camera then lifts upward from the bodies to reveal Romeo and Juliet's tender limbs gently folded in an embrace, their forms laid amid a thousand burning candles that, as the camera lifts father, reveal the image of a cross, the two lovers, finally, together in peace, one purifying the other, now enjoying the beauty of their companionship uninterrupted by the enmity that once ripped them apart… Paul woud present to the Romans with these beautiful ideas:
Rom 5:9 justified through his blood and saved through him
Rom 5:10 being reconciled and saved through his life
Rom 6:5 united with him like this in his death, certainly reunited in resurrection
Rom 6:8 if we die with Christ we also will live with Him!!!" p230-231
Heaven is the reuniting of a long lost friend and lover. That is the gospel
I put these two thoughts together while reading and pictured being behind the mountain fishing on a lake with Jesus and my friends…mmm…
Then, Jamie read this in My Utmost for His Highest...
"Yes— But . . .!"
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Lord, I will follow You, but . . . —Luke 9:61
Suppose God tells you to do something that is an enormous test of your common sense, totally going against it. What will you do? Will you hold back? If you get into the habit of doing something physically, you will do it every time you are tested until you break the habit through sheer determination. And the same is true spiritually. Again and again you will come right up to what Jesus wants, but every time you will turn back at the true point of testing, until you are determined to abandon yourself to God in total surrender. Yet we tend to say, "Yes, but— suppose I do obey God in this matter, what about . . . ?" Or we say, "Yes, I will obey God if what He asks of me doesn't go against my common sense, but don't ask me to take a step in the dark."
Jesus Christ demands the same unrestrained, adventurous spirit in those who have placed their trust in Him that the natural man exhibits. If a person is ever going to do anything worthwhile, there will be times when he must risk everything by his leap in the dark. In the spiritual realm, Jesus Christ demands that you risk everything you hold on to or believe through common sense, and leap by faith into what He says. Once you obey, you will immediately find that what He says is as solidly consistent as common sense.
By the test of common sense, Jesus Christ's statements may seem mad, but when you test them by the trial of faith, your findings will fill your spirit with the awesome fact that they are the very words of God. Trust completely in God, and when He brings you to a new opportunity of adventure, offering it to you, see that you take it. We act like pagans in a crisis— only one out of an entire crowd is daring enough to invest his faith in the character of God.
Hope That Helps!
