Proverbs 24.27
“Prepare your work outside; get everything ready for yourself in the field, and after that build your house.”
It is a timeless truth. It is fundamental to the way God has designed the world he created: Plan and get your resources together first, then execute. If you don’t plan and prepare, if you don’t think ahead and consider the resources required, if you don’t understand the work that is required, you will not be in a position to build anything of lasting value.
Disciplined work is God’s plan for accomplishing things. We must resist the culture’s mindset of buy now, pay later. Incurring debt to buy what you don’t need and can’t afford is a path to disaster. Necessities should come before comforts. Production should come before spending. Prepare before building. We will have more to say on this topic later this week.
Jesus referenced the principle of “count the cost” in reference to what it means to be a disciple.
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a 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 14.25-30)
God calls us to repentance and offers us salvation as a gift of grace. Grace is the Greek word charis, and it means unmerited favor. Grace is God’s love and kindness toward those who are undeserving of his favor. Grace means that God does not give us what we deserve and instead gives us gifts and blessings that we don’t deserve.
Keep in mind that grace is free, but at the same time very costly. It is free to us in the sense that we cannot earn it, but costly to God because of the sacrifice of his Son. We must understand this. To talk about grace as just the kindness of God is to miss something profoundly important to the Christian faith. Embedded deeply within the word “grace” is what it cost God to offer it to us.
Paul gives us a sense of this in 2 Corinthians 5.21. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
In responding to his call, Jesus tells us to count the cost. He warns us not to fall for a cheap form of grace.
More tomorrow …
