Today's Passage: Luke 14

This chapter could be summed up by saying: If you want to be a disciple of Jesus you must humbly and without excuses pay the price and live a radically different life than the rest of this world.  Both of these stories highlight the same action and the consequence if we don't abide in that action.  While reading this it occurred to me that we have somehow separated the terms "Christian" and "disciple" in our modern vocabulary.  We describe a Christian as someone that has prayed to accept Christ where a disciple is  someone who does lots of studying about God.  The truth however is there is no difference.  If you are a Christian you should be acting like a disciple.  In fact "disciple" was the only term used during Jesus' time to describe His followers.  The term "Christians" wasn't used until after His death.

Enough about that though, back to the action and consequence.  The action is to with out reservation put God above all things in our life while humbly lowering ourselves to the level of servants.  God presents us with some difficult words in verse 26 about what His position should be in our lives and the cost of doing so.  The reason behind this is made evident when we stop and look at how people handle power and authority.  We all are guilty of abusing our authority in some way in our lives.  Whether it was at work, with our money, with our kids, or just with our time we all have done it.  To compound this problem of ours, all the power we have ever possessed is actually God's.  God blesses us with power and it's what we do with that power that determines if we receive more or not.

The consequence for the miss use of this blessing is God letting us go at life alone.  God is not in the business of punishing us here on earth.  Instead He just doesn't protect us from the consequences that come from our abuse of power.  Some times it's not even us that end up facing the consequences for our recklessness.  

So be humbly different this week.  Don't excuse away why you are different but give testimony to God's presence in your life.  This is what it means to live life as more than just sinners saved by grace, but to live life as disciples of Jesus Christ our lord and savior.