Inconvenienced by God

A man on the road sees Jesus and tells Him, “Lord I will follow you wherever you go” (Luke 9:57). That’s a tall promise. Did he really mean it? Did he fully understand what that entailed? I don’t think so, because Jesus says to him, “Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head,” indicating there is a price, the least of which could mean giving up our creature comforts.

Then to another man Jesus says, “follow me” (Luke 9:59). At once the man makes excuses. “Let me first go and bury my father.” Was his father dying? We don’t know, but more than likely what the man was saying was, “once my father passes away, then I’ll be free to follow you.” That could mean seconds or years. But it certainly means that for this man, it was inconvenient to follow Jesus just then. And what does Jesus say to him? “Let the dead bury their dead, but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.”

Then a third man says to Jesus, “I will follow you, Lord, and become your disciple but let me first say good-bye to those at my home.” Jesus’ response left no room for doubt as to how He felt about this. “No man who puts his hand to the plow and looks back to the thing behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” Oh my! What a smack-down!

What does it all mean? Does it infer that Jesus doesn’t care about what’s going on in our lives? No, of course not. But it does tell us that Jesus understands that following Him is inconvenient, and because it is, we can’t wait for the “right time.” Rather, once we are called, once the Holy Spirit draws us, we are to allow ourselves to be inconvenienced by God. What’s more, we are to understand that the road will probably be hard. Perhaps we’ll even loose the fellowship and love of our family and friends because they won’t understand. It could mean loss of material things, too. 

The Apostle Paul said he counted all the things he had lost for the sake of Christ as “dung” (Philippians 3:8). That’s “poop” in modern day language. And we should look at this the say way. To do less, to hold onto the things of this world, our possessions, our creature comforts, even the people in our lives at the expense of God, makes us, in Jesus’ words, “unfit” for the kingdom of God.

Until next time,

Sylvia