With Great Love Comes Great Risk

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“Count the cost,” Jesus warned those who were thinking about becoming his disciples. In blunt terms he demanded, Anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. And then a little later he repeated the demand, Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple
(Luke 14:27-33).

When we set out to love someone exactly the way Christ has commanded us to love them – by identifying with them, committing to them and sacrificing for them – we are setting out on a journey that is very similar to the journey the disciples found themselves on when they began to follow Christ. They didn’t have a clue where their journey would take them. They only knew that they had been taken captive by this man Jesus and that they were willing to do anything to be near him.

Loving the way Christ has loved us is very much like the journey the Twelve set out on two thousand years ago. We cannot know in advance where such a love is going to take us. We cannot predict the outcome of following this kind of love to the very end, just as Ruth couldn’t predict the outcome of her love for Naomi, and Jonathan couldn’t predict the outcome of his love for David. All we know is that our greatest fulfillment and destiny is to see Christs love through to completion, and that the process of doing so may cost us everything we have, including our own lives.

In short, Christ-like love requires faith, obedience and sacrifice. It is unsettling not to know where you are going to wind up in life when you are being asked to lay it down for someone else. Insecurity is the main culprit that keeps us from loving like Jesus. With great love comes great risk.

You have set out to love like Jesus Christ. In this ministry, you are directing that love to a widow, a widower, a single mom, a single dad. But in all of life we would hope that you have set out to love as Christ has loved us the others God has given you as well – your wife, your kids, your neighbor, your fellow worker, your friend, even your enemy. That overwhelming love which has been given to you in Christ is calling you to do things you would never have dreamed of doing otherwise.

And you know you wouldn’t trade it for anything.

This post first appeared online at NewCommandment.org and is reprinted from Doing Good Well: Thirty Daily Meditations on Developing a Biblical and Focused Discipline of Good Works by Herb Reese.

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Learn how to form teams of men for every widow, single mom

and fatherless child in your church at NewCommandment.org.

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