I want it difficult

Why do we continue to try to make Christianity easy for people?

I've heard Christians I well respect make comments that we should not glorify being poor. I just have a hard time listening to Jesus' many words about devotion to him and think we can be anything but poor.

My sister recently quoted verses on her facebook. "Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, '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. 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 aboe to finish, all who see it begin to mock him, saying, "'This man began to build and was not able to finish."' Or what king, going out to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and deliberate whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? And if not, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends a delegation and asks for terms of peace. So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. Salt is good, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is of no use either for the soil or for the manure pile. It is thrown away. Ge who has ears to hear, let him hear.'"

Off the top of my head there are some others, also. Jesus tells the crowds if anyone wants to be his disciple they must first go, and sell everything they have, and give it to the poor, then come and follow him. He tries to discourage those trying to follow him by saying birds have nests and foxes have holes but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. The rich young ruler wants to know what he must do to be saved and Jesus replies go and sell everything you have and then come and follow me. He adds on to the laws these people already have. He tells them they cannot divorce, if they divorce they've made their wife and adulterer, and if anyone marries a divorced woman he is also an adulterer. Go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, if someone asks, give. Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Be more righteous than the hypermoral. When someone asks for your coat, give them your shirt also. Whatever bodypart causes you to sin, cut it off, for it's better to enter God's kingdom without a bodypart than to be cast out because of it.

Basically, what Jesus has to say is hard. Hard to do, hard to hear. I've heard to many people explain away whatever commands they don't want to follow. Jesus warns us early on, and over and over.

"I'm not calling you to a life of luxury. I'm calling you to die with me. Take up your cross. Your torture device. Come love people even though it hurts. Throw off all that hinders. Money, pride, possessions. It turns out you can only have one master. I died so you could choose what that master would be. I want you to choose me, but I'm warning you. It ain't easy. I'll ask more from you than you have to give. Just when you think you've given all you can and can't make it any further, I'll ask you to keep giving and keep following. You can't do it. period. You aren't capable. I am. That's why I ask this. I'm capable, therefore I can get you there. Submit. Become a slave willingly to me, so you don't have to be enslaved in sin anymore."

I'm tired of easy. I'm tired of doing it myself. I'm tired of people trying to make this easy.

When it's easy we don't need Jesus. He didn't come for the healthy, but for the sick. Guess what. We're all sick. We're all dying. Some of us are just willing to admit it and admit we need help.

I'm choosing to die with you, Jesus. This Lent will remind me to die daily. I will die daily so the impossible is possible. I will die to my will so that I may follow yours. I will kill all the self to allow you control.

Make me a servant. Humble and meek.