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SearchConsider What You Do Not Want to Give Up
"If you are not willing to pay the full price, you can hardly be my disciple. Before you go further,
you should each sit down and count the cost of being my disciple. Which one of you would
undertake to build a watchtower on your lands without first sitting down to count up the cost to
see whether you had money enough to complete it? If you fail thus to reckon the cost, after you
have laid the foundation, you may discover that you are unable to finish that which you have
begun, and therefore will all your neighbors mock you, saying, `Behold, this man began to build
but was unable to finish his work.' Again, what king, when he prepares to make war upon
another king, does not first sit down and take counsel as to whether he will be able, with ten
thousand men, to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? If the king cannot
afford to meet his enemy because he is unprepared, he sends an embassy to this other king, even
when he is yet a great way off, asking for terms of peace.
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"Now, then, must each of you sit down and count the cost of being my disciple. From now on
you will not be able to follow after us, listening to the teaching and beholding the works; you
will be required to face bitter persecutions and to bear witness for this gospel in the face of
crushing disappointment. If you are unwilling to renounce all that you are and to dedicate all that
you have, then are you unworthy to be my disciple. If you have already conquered yourself
within your own heart, you need have no fear of that outward victory which you must presently
gain when the Son of Man is rejected by the chief priests and the Sadducees and is given into the
hands of mocking unbelievers.