The Demonstration Of Discipleship

Salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless.
–Luke 14:34-35

I read about a Christian who spent decades building his business, sometimes to the neglect of his family and even his relationship with God. It was all he thought about morning, noon, and night. He realized it was strangling out his love for Christ. So one afternoon, he knelt beside his desk and prayed, “God, I am giving this business to You. It is Yours to do whatever You choose to do with it.” That night, he was awakened by the telephone, and the person on the other end of the line told him that his business was on fire. He went and saw everything he had spent his life building engulfed in flames. A person standing next to him as he watched the fire said, “How can you be so calm?” He replied, “Yesterday I gave my business to God. It belongs to Him. And if He wants to burn it up, that is His business.”

Jesus said in Luke 14:33, “None of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.” He was not just talking about money; He was talking about anything important to us. If you are going to be a follower of Christ, it means giving up everything important to you. That is the demonstration of discipleship–saying, “God, You are in control. These things belong to You, and You are free to do with them whatever You choose.”

Jesus continued in verses 34-35: “Salt is good; but if even salt has become tasteless, with what will it be seasoned? It is useless.” Remember, in Matthew 5:13, Jesus said to His disciples, “You are the salt of the earth.” In Jesus’s day, salt was used as a preservative. The reason God has left us here is to prevent the premature decay of our world, to make people thirst after God.

Most people in Jesus’s day could not afford to buy pure salt, so they would buy a mixture of salt and sand. If there was too much sand in the mixture, then the salt would lose its effectiveness. It could not do its job. Jesus said, “It is useless.” He was not saying you can lose your salvation. But if you say, “I am going to follow God,” and then you dilute that commitment to God with a commitment to other things in life, there comes a point at which you are useless to God.

To be a disciple of Jesus Christ means an unconditional allegiance to Him above anyone and anything else. It means a willingness to give everything important to you up to God. Only when you are willing to make that kind of commitment will you be of any use to God.

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Today’s devotion is excerpted from “Becoming Salty Saints” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2008.

Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org

 

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