Count The Cost by Jewels From The Word

Mrs. Irene Mitchell my home economic teacher would be so proud, but she would insist I go back through the section of the Home Ec textbook on baking cakes. Even though this cake is turning out perfectly, I didn’t follow procedure.

Step One — Gather ingredients. Make sure you have everything you need to make the cake before you start assembling the ingredients.

When I shopped, without a shopping list, I tried to buy the ingredients for the cake recipe from memory, and forgot the most important two items—powdered sugar and cream cheese for the icing. This problem is easy to fix since it is only the icing and not an ingredient for the cake itself.

Mrs. Mitchell drilled into us that we gather all our ingredients around us and check them against our recipe before we begin to mix them in our bowl. We were not to mix the sugar with the butter and eggs, and then run over to get the flour. No, we must assemble all the ingredients around the mixing bowl, so we can see if we are missing something necessary for a good cake before we started.

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not sit down first and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it—lest, after he has laid the foundation, and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, ‘this man began to build and was not able to finish.’” Luke 14:28-30 NKJV

 “So, likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.”Luke 14:33

Some of us need to go back to school and learn to start at Step One. In our spiritual life, Step One is “Count the Cost.” Becoming a Christian and accepting Jesus as your Savior is the easy part. Letting Jesus become your Lord and Master is harder. Becoming a disciple means listening to His voice and learning to follow the steps Jesus has given us.

Are you willing to give up everything to follow Jesus and become His disciple?