I don't know what to put here.

is not ours to mangle, bend, soften, or twist. Jesus explicitly told us time and time again to count the cost of following him. He told us that it would be dangerous, the hardest thing we have ever done. That most people wouldn’t even consider it because in its fullness, we are guaranteed to be uncomfortable, in pain, hated, in constant danger of death. The gospel is not a warm fuzzy blanket or a band-aid that we slip into to comfort ourselves when our selfish desires lead us into unhappiness. The gospel does not exist to make us feel better about ourselves. If we truly comprehend what is presented in the Bible, we should hate who we are without Christ. If we hold ourselves up to the mirror of the Gospel, the only acceptable response is that of the prophet Isaiah, “…Woe is me! For I am lost, I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips… (Isaiah 6:5 ESV)”. We. Are. Nothing. Without the promise of Jesus and His crazy love for us. He promises us nothing but Himself and He doesn’t need to. He does not say that we will be happy, or beautiful, or safe, or rich, or in a perfect marriage or relationship, or in a perfect family, or healthy if we follow Him. If we surrender to become the kinds of disciples He expects us to be, these things are almost certainly never going to happen. He offers Himself as the reward for our discipleship, and that is mind-blowing. The massive Creator Father God of this whole universe, who considers our whole earth to be a speck and yet counted all of the cells in your body before even your great-great-great grandparents were thought of, offers Himself up to be in a relationship with you because he loves you madly. He warns that nothing will be easy in bearing His Gospel, but He promises that we will never be without Him. In the midst of sickness, and poverty, and ugliness, and danger, and threats, and hatred, He is with us. If we never let ourselves get thrown headfirst into the Gospel and we never experience the danger and hardships that are sure to follow, we will never truly know the power of the Holy Spirit. Count the cost. Being a disciple of God is so much more than quoting verses on Facebook and regulating your missional intentions to the internet. It is so much deeper than occupying a pew on Sundays and cracking your Bible once a week, if that. He can be so much closer than a half-awake, sloppy, second-hand prayer two minutes before sleep at the end of another self-filled day. He died for us and we are missing it because we are too afraid to be even momentarily uncomfortable. That is garbage, who are we to deflect our duties to His Gospel to other people that are just as messy as us in hopes that maybe they will tell our hell-bound loved ones the truth that might be awkward for us to say? God wants and clearly deserves so much more than that from us. We should be pleading with Him to lead us deep into His will, even with the knowledge that we will most certainly not be happy. Who needs the fragility of happiness when we have the promise of unshakable joy in relationship with an all-powerful and compassionate God? The Bible isn’t easy, and the Gospel isn’t nice. It is brutal and tragic, magnificent and holy, holy, holy. There is nothing tame or condensable in a truth so consuming. Count the cost.