The Cost...


When I was 14 years old, I said yes to a life of following Jesus.  I had no idea what my life would look like and I really don't think I understand the "cost" of following.   I had asked Jesus into my life at a really young age, but at 14, I felt like he was asking something more of me.  That "something" would entail my future, my family, my plans, my life.  At 14 he was calling me to ministry and I had no idea what the "cost" would be.  Fast forward 18 years...

Tomorrow, I will be moving my family to Quincy, MA to follow Jesus to yet another adventure that he has called us to.  I have no idea what that adventure will entail, what obstacles we will face, what friends we will make, what incredible God moments we will experience, or what the journey will look like.  What I do know is...it will cost me.

For the past 11.5 years, I have served as a Youth Pastor in the same church, under the same Senior Pastor, in a land that has not only become insanely familiar, but has also become home to me.  I have had an unbelievable youth staff that I consider to be the best of friends, a church that supports youth ministry, friends that have become family, and I have even lived 2 hours away from my own family.  It's a land of familiarity.  It's a land that feels safe, known, and comfortable.

Over the past 2 months, we have spent a lot of time packing up our stuff and saying goodbye.  We have said goodbye to traditions we've had in Hagerstown, friends that we have spent crazy amounts of hours with creating memories together, a youth group that we have come to love and continually be blown away by, and even our friends at Dunkin Donuts who we see as part of our weekly routine.  

Last night, we had to go back to Hagerstown one more time to get the last few things loaded up to into a moving van (since we couldn't fit everything in the first one), which gave us the opportunity to go to dinner with some friends that we now consider "family."  As we sat across from them, eating sushi and filling each other in on our past week, I realized that this would be the last dinner we would have together for awhile.  We have been having dinner together almost every Monday night for the past year.  Saying goodbye is definitely one of the harder parts of following God's call.

Jesus never said it would be easy to follow Him.  In fact, he told us that sometimes we would have to leave our friends, our family, our stuff, and even our dreams and desires behind.  It's often the cost of following him and sometimes it's really hard.

But here is what I have learned over the past 18 years of doing life with Jesus.  He is worth everything it costs to follow him.  When we are willing to give him everything, he is able to do far more than we could ever imagine.  He challenges and stretches us beyond our own capabilities, he uses us to do things we could never do on our own, he shows up in the most unexpected places and continues to do things that we can only describe as epic.

Saying "yes" no matter the cost is what has allowed us to watch God write some of the most epic stories...like the time we got to baptize the teenager who was doing drugs in our church parking lot the first few years of youth ministry, the time when a teenager's father showed up at church for the first time after praying for him for 2 years, the time when one of our kids was called to the mission field and another to be a youth pastor, the time when a youth worker stepped onto the mission field for the very first time and we watched God captivate her heart, the time when that youth worker who thought she didn't have anything to offer found out she did, or the time when that senior in high school committed his life to Christ two months before graduation and it changed everything.

At 14 I didn't understand the cost, but at 36, I am sure of one thing...Jesus is worth it and he is not done writing epic stories in this world.  So as we officially close out this chapter and begin a new one tomorrow, my prayer is this:

Jesus Take My All
Take My Everything
I've Counted Up the Cost
And YOU ARE WORTH IT.
(Rend Collective)


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