Cost.

That’s an ugly four letter word in Christendom.

The Church never ever wants to count the “cost” if it can be at all avoided.

Why?

Cause it hurts too much.

Rather than “cost” Christians prefer those fluffy, frilly, fuzzy, words that put us at ease and make us feel safe and happy and comfy, words that don’t require of us anything much, words like

“free, hope, love, kind, pray, nice, trust, faith…”

Whoops, those last two are five letters a piece. We can’t get into words that are too big.
We can’t move too far beyond four letters in our words; faith and trust and heaven forbid we start thinking next of “humble”. Wow! Can you believe it. A six letter word! We are really getting too deep.

Oh how we hate hearing those words used by Christians today, because it’s nearly always in the context of:

“I am free to do what I want.”

“Hope for the best.”

“God is love.”

“Just be kind.”

“Just be nice.”

“Just pray.”

Most people in Christendom just lost me at the word hate. Ooooh! Nooooo!

Another four letter word, right up there with “cost”, which is neck and neck with “pain, hurt, loss, gone, work, fire, cold, dead, hard, and live”.

But opposed to cost stands the most favored Christian four letter word…

Ease!

This is what it ultimately comes down to. Not a battle between right and wrong, but rather a battle between doing what is right or doing what is easy.

What is right is of Messiah; what is easy is most often of
ourselves. Our nature prefers a soft, safe, easy environment, and does not therefore exert feelings of discomfort when threatened with said simplicities, the samplings of the world, the flesh, and the devil.

The cost of following Messiah is total, however, it demands the cross, but not an easy commandment.

The cross costs the loss of all.

Total abandon to the Word of our Saviour, total plunge into the blood flow of Calvary a total hold on suicide of the soul. That is the meaning of the dirty four letter word - “cost”. And that is why Christendom has made of cost a taboo.

Poor Paul would have been amazed, astounded, and aghast to catch a glimpse of the religion that does not value following the Savior; had he known what sissy, sanctimonious, self satisfying, sluggish, slothful, sleepy, sleazy skulking, skulduggerious , slattern, slavish and sinful, skittish, skimpy, sketchy, slanderous, slippery, slimy, slobbering, slog dodging, sloppy, sloven, slurring, smoldering, sluttish , smudgy, sneaky, sniffling, snobby, sodden, soggy, soluble, somber, Summer Salting , Slothful, serpentine Saints 2000 years would create, no doubt enough room could not be found in 50 books for all the letters he would have penned these generations and those to come.

The problem is that cost is everything in The Way.

But Christianity loves things of value yet despises things of cost.

Sadly, they have nothing of value because everything of value has cost.

The greater the value, the greater the cost.

As it is said, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch.” It may not cost you, but it costs somebody.

Our salvation is a bit more pricey than a burger and fries.

The cost was blood.

The cost was the Son of the Almighty.

The cost was death for of Life Himself.

But the value of that cross on which He died, the value of the sacrifice attainable only to those who count the cost, the value is total! The cost is everything, and the value, everlasting life. The value is knowing the Sole One, the Maker of all, and becoming wrapped up in His love and enraptured by His Life.

Salvation is there for the asking, and that is valuable beyond imagination, but greater value than this is perceptible from the earth awaits all those set-apart ones who despise safety, ease, comfort, and life itself to count the cost and obtain the value of Messiah more fully than the one who merely makes it through the door and no more.

Those who slugged along their own way, have Messiah by faith because He bought them, but those of us who paid the price, carried the cross, owned the weight, and paid the cost, to us goes the value of the victor.

The cost is the loss of all; the value is the gain of all! So will you do what is right or what is easy?! Eternal or easy?Comfort or cost?
Christianity or Calvary?

Question Everything
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