It is so easy for one to say, \"I would give up everything for Christ Jesus\". It is so easy for one to think, \'I would give up everything for Christ Jesus\'. ... and maybe we would. Still, how many Christians, or anybody for that matter, really know what it means to pick up their cross and follow Christ Jesus? Not only that, but how many will actually HAVE to give up everything they own? Sure, they may have to give up some minor conveniences, but how many people actually have to give up everything? Very few people do. It is so much easier to say that we will give up everything for Christ than to actually do it.
When you dedicate your life to the Lord, you are supposed to be just that: dedicated. To be a disciple means to be a follower, and to, \'pick up your cross\', and follow Jesus means that you will suffer as a Christian. This piece is not meant to judge others by the amount of their suffering. It is a fact that some Christians will suffer more and will be persecuted more than other Christians. No one can choose their amount of suffering. I certainly did not write this to try and deter you from receiving Christ\'s salvation. Still, many people want to follow Christ, but few want to go through the pain of doing it. Many only want to follow Him so long as they are able to keep their own comforts, and one cannot serve Christ like that. You cannot serve God and mammon. One cannot serve Christ by choosing what time is convenient for them.
So for those who will never know what it is like, I want you to imagine one day that you actually give up every single thing for Christ. You actually loose EVERYTHING. What would you do? How would you feel? I myself will do the same. I will tell you the truth. Christ Jesus will never give us more than we can bear. He promised us a comforter, the Holy Spirit.
So what if one day you received salvation and dedicated your life to the Lord. That night you went to sleep in a nice house, and the next morning you woke up homeless. You had no money. You had no food, and no possessions. You were wearing dirty old clothes, and you realized you only had a Bible for a pillow. You find out that you are homeless because you lost your job. The board said that your, \'type\', of faith is to culturally insensitive. Yes, All of your friends still knew you. They did not care that you were homeless. However, they did not want to be around you because you were now a Christian. You found out that your loving wife had left you, and had took the three kids because she thought that your new Christian beliefs were, \'toxic\', and although you used to be a very influential person, the same people that had listened to you before had now forgotten about you. You still have an influential voice, but you will have an effect on a new type of people in new ways.
That alone sounds horrible, but for some Christians in this world it is worse. So after taking in everything that has happened, after collecting your thoughts, maybe even when you are done crying, what would you do? As I said, by now as strange as it may sound, Christ will never give his followers more than they can bare. I cannot answer for other people in what they would do or how they would feel. Still, I personally think that the most important thing to do as a Christian, is develop a prayer life, and I think the most important thing to ask the Lord for, is help to remain steadfast to Him, and grow in your Christian faith.
So imagine those Christians who are really picking up their crosses for Jesus and following Him: those men who are being shot in the Middle East for owning a Bible, or those women who are being raped to death for their Christian faith in War torn African nations. Imagine those in China who are being Jailed for having their own in-home Bible study group, or the children who believe in Jesus that are being turned in to the authorities by their own siblings out of fear for their own life in North Korea.
If we are to say that we will dedicate our life to the Lord, then be dedicated. If you are not dedicated then don\'t say that you are. It would be better to not be a Christian at all, then to lie and just look the part.