Our entangling, conflicting loyalties

“I am Yours, God. Take me and use me.”

 

“I’ll live my life for You. I’ll do anything You ask.”

 

“I love You more than anything else.”

 

“All I am and all I have—Lord I give them all to You.”

 

You and I sing words like those, and sometimes pray them, but do we really mean them?

 

Jesus taught, in Luke 9, that when we say we’ll follow Him, we must first count the cost.

 

He resolutely set out for Jerusalem and, on the way, met three men.

 

“The three different levels of commitment represented in people He met along the way,” writes Lloyd John Ogilvie, “expose the ways many Christians relate to their discipleship today.” (God’s Best for My Life)

 

Man #1 promised he’d follow Jesus wherever He went. Ogilvie says the man “made a grand, pious commitment that went no deeper than words.”

 

In reply, Jesus challenged him, as if to ask, “Oh, really?” He no doubt recognized the man’s emotional enthusiasm and naiveté, so He pointed out that He didn’t have a home—not even a place to lay His head. It was as if Jesus asked, “Are you sure you want to live that way?”

 

Jesus said that because those who follow Him must live in sacrificial ways, they need to count the cost—realistically.

 

When Jesus invited Man #2 to follow as a disciple, the man said that first he wanted to bury his father.

 

Some Bible scholars suggest the man’s father might have still been alive; if so, he could’ve waited years before setting out to follow Jesus. Others surmise the man’s father had only recently died.

 

Either way, no doubt Jesus recognized the man’s commendable commitment to his family but cautioned him to recognize his priorities. He had what Ogilvie calls “a secondary loyalty” that “kept him tied to his past.”

 

Ogilvie writes, “In substance, Christ said, ‘Forget the past; follow Me!’ We dare not misinterpret His words to suggest a lack of concern for life’s obligations, but rather a call to be concerned about His call to live rather than worry about what is dead and past.”

 

Man #3 agreed to be a disciple but first, he wanted to say goodbye to his family. Ogilvie calls him a man with “competing loyalties.” We’re to seek and serve God first. We must count the cost of doing so.

 

Discipleship involves extreme demands. Clear priorities. Radical commitment.

 

In Luke 14:27-28, Jesus said, “You cannot be my disciple if you do not carry your own cross and follow me. But don’t begin until you count the cost” (NLT).

 

Little did I know then, before going to Africa, that I would 

meet numerous colleagues who counted the cost realistically, 

people who followed God to extremely demanding locales and tasks, 

people who held on through thick and thin.

 

And they did it without complaining!

 

That’s clear priorities. That’s radical commitment.

 

Jesus knew human nature so well—He said, “Anyone who puts a hand to the plow,” in other words, whoever gets started as a disciple, “and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God” (Luke 9:62 NLT).

 

Conflicting loyalties, commitments, and obligations pull many of us in directions away from where God longs for us to go.

 

“We have one hand on the plow of discipleship,” Ogilvie writes, “and the other reaching back to the past or to lesser commitments. In what ways are you looking back?”

 

“What entangling loyalties,” he asks, “. . . make it difficult to give your whole mind and heart and will to Christ?”

 

That was the question I had to wrestle with before I was willing to relocate to Africa.

 

God was asking me to let go of my kids and place them in His hands,

and then asking me to die to the dreams and plans I had

as mother to my kids

and grandmother to their kids.

 

What He was asking of me left me stunned, broken.