Fully Committed - Luke 9-10

Luke 9:57-62 (ESV)

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, let me first go and bury my father.” And Jesus said to him, “Leave the dead to bury their own dead. But as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Yet another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

To comprehend more fully what Jesus meant about the above we have to recall what He already said earlier in this chapter:

Luke 9:23-25 (ESV)

And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

In our society today we do know what it is like to be fully committed.  There is not a question that we know what that means.  High performing athletes demonstrate to us the concept of being fully committed to something.   High performing sales executives are fully committed.   They are all in when it comes to their work.   We know what it looks like for a parent to be fully committed to their children.  They literally sacrifice their how lives for another: There own flesh and blood.   However, it is amazing that with all these examples of being fully committed, we fall so short in our own walk with Jesus.   In the above passages He is calling upon us to be fully in, when it comes to loving Him and serving Him.   A parent will often get up early just to make sure their children are prepared for the world.   But how many of us are committed to be fully in and getting up early to prepare ourselves for the world by working on our relationship with God through Christ.   We can find a lot of reasons to not work on our relationship with God through the Savior and the Spirit.  But in the above lines Jesus tells us what He thinks of that type of thought process.  Jesus demands that we are all in.  If we are not all in then we are fully out.   That is what Jesus is teaching us in these passages.