Christianity comes at a high price. In 1 John 2:6 (NIRV) it says that “those who claim to belong to him must live just as Jesus did.” If you want to be a Christian, the Bible tells you that you need to give up your own will and live the same life that Jesus lived. Being a Christian means that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” Galatians 2:20 (NLT). It’s not just something you do in your spare time. It takes your whole life.
Why give up your whole life for this?
What makes Christianity so special that you should give up your whole life for it? Is it really worth the cost to be a Christian?
We read in Matthew 16:25 (GNT), “For if you want to save your own life, you will lose it; but if you lose your life for my sake, you will find it.” What does it mean to lose your life for Jesus’ sake? And what does it mean to find it? To lose your life, is giving up your own will. That is when you say, “Lord, I have decided that my life is yours, do with it what you will.”
And to find it, is when the Lord says back to you, “Thank you, I’m going to take care of you, and I will give you great peace and joy both in this life, and in eternity.”
Greatly blessed
It’s written in Malachi 3:10 (NLT), “’Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,’ says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, ‘I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test!’” Think about that! You will be blessed so much that there will not be enough room to receive it!
But you’ve got to give up your own life first.
“Lord, not my will, but Yours, be done.”
When you let God come into your heart and you do what He says, then you will find that where He’s taking you is far better than where you were going before. It can be hard to entrust everything to Him. But if you don’t, God can never do a work in your life. He can’t help you if you still keep doing things your own way.
Giving everything up for God doesn’t happen by itself. The Bible tells you there will be a battle to fight. For example, when you want to become angry, and God tells you that you must be quiet. If you do what He tells you, then you have given up your own will and can truly say, “Lord, not my will, but Yours, be done.” Maybe you don’t feel like doing God’s will, nothing in yourself wants to do it. But when you still do what God tells you, then you can truly say, “It is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.” Then God gives you the victory!
And you become happier than you ever were before.
What do I gain from it?
Your whole life is filled with opportunities like this. Maybe you see that your human nature rises up again and again within you. You feel that anger, impatience or jealousy that lives so deeply in your nature. Maybe you feel: “I can’t give up my life. I don’t want to live like Jesus. I want to do what I want. Why should I do things God’s way? What do I get out of it for myself?”
What you get out of it is that God makes you happy! You don’t know how to make yourself happy. You think you do, maybe you even think you are happy now, but living according to your own will is a cold, empty happiness that is quickly gone and then you are left feeling emptier than before.
A life of true happiness
A life doing your own will is wasted; you will always be looking for ways to be happy but will find it ends in emptiness.
But if you choose to give up your life to God then your life will be full of happiness. And the short time that you are on earth will be filled with true joy. But there’s more to it than that.
God loves you so much that He wants you to be happy for eternity. When in your life on earth you have been choosing to say, “Yes, I want to do what God wants me to do, instead of what my desires want me to do,” – then you get another life even better than the last and this one is eternal!
So when you ask, “Is it really worth it?” remember you are trading in your old life that is full of uncertainties and empty pleasures, for a completely new life; a life that is so much better that you can’t even compare it!
Isn’t that worth it then? Isn’t it worth it to give up your old life in exchange for an eternal joy and salvation? God is waiting for you to give up your life so that He can give you what He promised. He wants the best for you, too. You’ve just got to go to Him first.