Let me state the obvious: following Jesus is hard. If you think following Jesus is easy, my bet is you aren’t following Him in the manner His Word prescribes. It’s easy to say you follow Jesus. It’s even easy to place your faith in Him. None of that requires anything on your part, and you can take it back whenever that decision becomes inconvenient.
The difficult work comes in living for Christ every waking moment of your life. As people born into sin, we all have an innate and outsized portion of selfishness that dominates our motives and desires (Romans 7:18). Keeping that alone in check often takes what feels like a Herculean effort. There’s nothing easy about living a holy life, so there’s nothing easy about following Jesus.
Jesus tells us that anyone wishing to follow Him must sacrifice their life (Luke 9:23). Anything we seek to save from our old life, we will lose (Luke 17:33). When we recognize Jesus as the Lord He is, we also must recognize that we owe every moment of our lives to be lived for His purposes. We surrender complete control and all autonomy.
Our lives are no longer ours to govern (Galatians 2:19-20). We are slaves of Jesus, bought at a price too high to comprehend (1 Corinthians 6:19-20), and destined for works God alone gives us to do (Ephesians 2:10). Our time is no longer ours; our dreams are no longer ours; and our motivation is no longer ours. It all belongs to Jesus. Can you understand why following Jesus is hard?
When following Jesus, the needs of others are more important than our own, which I confess can feel inconvenient. We all get tired and need to recharge from time to time. But often someone interrupts that time, asking something from us that is even more urgent than our need to revive. In those instances, our response must always be to sacrifice our need for theirs (Philippians 2:3-4).
Christ-followers have no inherent rights other than the promise of eternal life with our King (Romans 8:16-17). We sacrifice our needs and rights at the foot of the cross (Luke 14:27). Every desire and ambition is expendable for the sake of Jesus and serving our brothers and sisters in Him (Mark 10:42-45).
You come to understand following Jesus is hard every time sin comes calling. Our nature is to give in and indulge, but we know we must resist, and thus, bring glory to God. Jesus lived His entire human life rejecting sin and being faithful to the holiness of God (Hebrews 4:15). Our desire should be no less. How can we who are dead to sin live any longer within its clutches (Romans 6:1-2)?
No matter how hard following Jesus becomes, He assures it is all worth it (Romans 8:18). We are surrendering our indulgence in the temporary pleasures of this world, so we might gain the incomparable and eternal riches of Heaven (2 Corinthians 4:17-18). It’s the deal of a lifetime and we’d be fools to reject it.
Still, as long as we live in the physical world in our sinful bodies, living the life God intends us to live is an enormous challenge. We must reject sin every time it pops up, and we must put the needs of others before our own (Romans 12:10). This is the calling for every disciple. Following Jesus is hard, so make sure you know what you’re getting into. But for those willing to endure the cost, the reward is worth all this and more (Matthew 19:29). We get Jesus forever. What more could you ever want or need?