Following Christ is not easy. It can be incredibly difficult. In Luke 9, Jesus meets three men who, despite their good intentions, are not ready to follow Him.

Live a Life of Self-Denial

Jesus says that to follow Him, you must live a life of self-denial (vv. 57–58). This doesn’t just mean giving up your weekend plans for Him; it means giving up everything and making Him first in your life. It means cultivating a real relationship with God with the goal of knowing, loving, and enjoying Him. It means investing in others’ lives and discipling them.

Respond Immediately to Jesus

Jesus also says that to follow Him, you must respond immediately to His call (vv. 59–60). When the man asked Jesus to let him go and bury his father first, he was hiding his true hesitations in good intentions. Those hesitations were the problem, not his request. Following Jesus does not eliminate our good responsibilities; it reorders them under His lordship.

We must not let good and precious things keep us from following Jesus. We must not allow the safe and the comfortable to keep us from the mission. Christians are to drift towards need, not comfort.

We are also not to wait until it’s more convenient or until we feel spiritual enough. God is at work now. He has called us to Kingdom work, and that can’t wait.

Give Christ Your Full Devotion

Jesus also says that to follow Him, you must give Him your full devotion (vv. 61–62). The third man asked to say goodbye to his family because he was focused on what he would be leaving behind.

It’s impossible to be a disciple if you’re constantly longing for what you’ve left behind. It’s so easy to be distracted by the world’s alluring offers, but we are commanded not to love worldly things (1 John 2).

Take Heart!

After hearing how hard it is to follow Christ and how dramatically we all fall short, it’s easy to become discouraged, believing you’re a failure who will never be able to follow Him. But consider the disciples. They were so slow to understand, and yet Jesus stuck with them. He spent many long hours encouraging them, teaching them, and helping them.

Although we, too, are slow to understand and slow to obey, Christ stays with us long enough to teach us, change us, and use us. If you know your weaknesses and your frailties and still want Jesus, that’s a good thing. Jesus still wants you too.

Jesus is more than enough to take broken disciples, put them together, and push them in the right direction. His Gospel transforms us from the inside out. And at the end of the book of Matthew, He promises, “Behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”