What a Normal Disciple of Jesus Looks Like
- Pastor Dick Warner
- Jun 2
- 3 min read
What a Normal Disciple of Jesus Looks Like
Somewhere along the way we turned disciples into spectators. We hand them a seat, a service, and a song. Jesus hands them a cross.
The crowds were huge. The momentum was building. And Jesus turned around and raised the bar.
That move would get a person fired from most ministries today.
He looked at the eager faces and told them what following Him would cost. He wouldn’t trick anybody into it.
Not once did He hide the cost of following Him.
I love Him for that.
What He Asked
We like a Jesus who fits between Sunday lunch and Monday morning. A little faith on the side. Nothing we can’t earn back with interest.
Then we open the Gospels. All four. And we keep meeting a Jesus who asks for everything.
Give up self-rule. “Deny yourself,” He said. Take up a cross—and in His day a cross wasn’t jewelry. It was where you went to die. The old self-directed life has to go.
Give up comfort. A man offered to follow Him anywhere. Jesus didn’t roll out the welcome mat. Foxes have holes, He said, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head.
Then He said the hard thing. Love Him more than father, mother, son, daughter—more than your own life.
He wasn’t telling anybody to abandon their family. The same Jesus scolded the religious crowd for ducking their duty to their parents. He was saying something simpler. Nothing sits on the throne but Him. Not even the people you love most.
Put Him first and everything else finds its place.
It Doesn’t Stop at Yes
Saying yes isn’t the finish line. It’s the starting gate.
A disciple keeps following. “If you love me, keep my word.” Not a one-time signature. A way of walking. Day after day, choice after choice.
And it shows. “By this everyone will know you’re my disciples—if you love one another.” Not by our bumper stickers. By love that costs us something.
Fruit comes too. A branch joined to the vine produces. You can’t fake it and you can’t force it. It comes the way apples come on a tree that’s alive and rooted.
Then He points outward. “Go and make disciples.” The life He pours in isn’t meant to stop with us. It spills into somebody else—the way one lit candle lights another and loses nothing.
The Other Half
Stop there and I’ve told you the truth. But only half of it. And half the truth about Jesus can crush a person.
The same Jesus who never hid the cost never hid the reward.
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” Not survival. Life. Full and overflowing.
Freedom. “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” His yoke is easy. His burden is light. In Him your soul finds rest.
Joy. The night He was betrayed, hours from the cross, He handed His friends His own joy and said He wanted it complete in them.
And His presence. “I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” We don’t pay the cost and then get sent off alone to carry it. He walks with us. Closer than a heartbeat.
The Trade That Isn’t a Trade
Years ago I read a book by Earl Jabay called The God Players. One line has never let go of me:
“No one interests us more than ourselves… we are all egoists at heart. And that’s a problem, the world’s biggest. God has shown us how this problem is solved. God is Himself the solution.”
The world’s biggest problem isn’t out there. It’s the self on the throne.
That’s what “deny yourself” is about. And we can’t fix it by studying ourselves harder. The studying is just the self admiring the self in the mirror.
So discipleship runs the other way. The world says look in. Jesus says look up. The world says find yourself. Jesus says lose yourself, and you’ll find what you were after all along.
When He asks for everything, He isn’t robbing you. He’s like a parent lifting a cheap, breakable toy out of a child’s hand—to fill it with something better the child couldn’t have held any other way.
He asks for the life you can’t keep. He gives back a life nobody can take.
That’s the best news a human being has ever heard.
The cost is real. He’ll never lie to you about it. But the One asking walked the road first. He counted you worth dying for. And He promised never to leave you walking it alone.
Count the cost.
He wants you to.
Then look at the other side—life, freedom, joy, and Him.
Then come.
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