18 And when Jesus saw great multitudes of people about him, he commanded them to go over the water.
19 Then came there a certain Scribe, and said unto him, Master, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. 20 But Jesus said unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests, but the Son of man hath not whereon to rest his head.
21 ¶ And another of his disciples said unto him, Master, suffer me first to go, and bury my father.
22 But Jesus said unto him, Follow me, and let the dead bury the dead. Matthew 8:18-22 (1599 Geneva Bible)
For the Christian, this life is a test as well as a proving ground in which God grows and matures those who belong to Him through pruning and removing what is not of Him in order that the believer will be humbled and, therefore, enter deeper into the process of becoming more Christlike….
There is a cost of following Jesus, but if you listen to certain preachers and teachers in our time, this is not true at all. Instead, what they teach is that repentance is not a part of one’s salvation at all. Instead, repentance is a marker of Christian authentication. On the other hand, in the visible Church in our time there are many voices which seek to normalize homosexuality. However, to make this claim they must ignore what the Bible clearly teaches about what constitutes marriage (Genesis 2:24;1 Corinthians 7:8-9). Those who truly follow Jesus must do so on His terms, not the terms of this lost and dying world. <Continue reading post>