Cost Counting, Cross Carrying

This past Saturday night C. B. Eder spoke to our Cross Culture Youth meeting on one of most challenging texts in the New Testament.

Luke 9:23-24 And he said to all, "If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. ²⁴ For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. (See also Matt. 16:24-25 and Mark 8:34-35)

With great passion and pastoral care C. B. brought the weight of this passage to parents and teens alike. So often this call of Jesus to radical discipleship is something that teens are given a pass on – like they’re not really ‘ready’ for primetime discipleship. But Jesus clearly gives this call to “all”, which means, well, “all”. C.B. spoke to everybody there when he talked about the particular challenges of counting the cost to carry the cross that affect families in good churches. He shared a quote from the 150 year old book Holiness by J.C. Ryle, that could have just as easily come from a sermon last week.

“For want of ‘counting the cost,’ the children of religious parents often turn out ill, and bring disgrace on Christianity. Familiar from their earliest years with the form and theory of the gospel, taught even from infancy to repeat great leading texts, accustomed every week to be instructed in the gospel, or to instruct others in Sunday schools - they often grow up professing a religion without knowing why, or without ever having through seriously about it. and then when the realists of grown-up life begin to press upon them, they often astound everyone by dropping all their religions, and plunging right into the world. And why? They had never thoroughly understood the sacrifices with Christianity entails. They had never been taught to ‘count the cost’.” (p.90)

Parents, let’s not assume that good church upbringing creates cost-counting, cross carrying discipleship. Let’s make sure that our kids understand their faith as a faith of sacrifice – most profoundly a sacrifice for them of the precious Son of God. But let them not miss the point of this passage – that it is the Sacrificial Lamb himself who calls everyone to sacrificial obedience. It is the one who was nailed on the cross for us who calls us to pick up the cross daily.

There are dozens of big and small cost counting and cross carrying opportunities each day for us as parents and for our teens. Do we model cost counting and cross carrying in our lives? Do we help them see the call of Jesus to count the cost and carry the cross in their lives? Do we see as an essential part of our parenting helping our children understand ‘the sacrifices that Christianity entails’?

If this is a thought provoking question for you, be freshly convicted and envision by C. B. Eder’s message, which you can access here.