Yes Jesus meant everything he said. Jesus wants to be #1 in our lives. We have to love him MORE than anyone. He is our Master! He is our everything! Paul and the apostles referred to themselves as “slaves” of Christ!
Jesus must come first. We have to love him more our own parents, our own children!
This will be the last youtube video I’ll link you to LoL:
“You need to way in on the cost factor and count the cost of being a disciple of Jesus Christ.”
What does it cost you to follow Christ? Everything. Steve Lawson preaches on Luke 14 on the Cost of Discipleship. The sad reality is that many people are just part of a crowd, many are in the crowd of those who listen to Piper, Washer, Conway, MacArthur, yet they themselves have not truly submitted to the Lordship of Christ. Search yourself out this very day... have you come to saving faith? Or do you just wish you had the reality of Christ that you see others have? Don’t be part of the wrong crowd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JQOBMi4QS8
Amen to everything you said in this last post.
But who is it that follows the evangelical counsels?
Remember the rich young man who obeyed all of the commandments, yet could not part from his riches and follow Christ?
How many protestants follow the example of the Franciscans, the Poor Clares, the Carmelites, the Dominicans, taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience?
Once when I was early for a latin mass at the Poor Clare convent in Santa Barbara, CA, I got to see a nun in full habit, head completely covered, hurrying around lighting all the candles, laying out the altar linens, in her bare feet on the stone floor! It reminded me of the scripture that is captured so well in Handel’s Messiah, “how beautiful are the feet that preach the Gospel of peace”.