What it costs to follow Christ

Let's go to Luke chapter 14 verses from 25 to 33, I'm not going to read them all but from 25 to 27 and then to 33. In my Bible the title of this passage is: "What it costs to follow Christ", what it costs to follow to Christ.

Did you know that being a legitimate, trustworthy Christian has a cost, has a price? well, we can say: evidently it cost the Father His only begotten Son. It cost Christ his life, he cost the greatest suffering that a man, a human being could ever experience. His salvation, his identity as the Son of God has cost infinity, but does it also cost us something to be Christians? What is the cost of discipleship, what is the cost of following Jesus, of being able to enjoy the benefits and privileges of being an authentic, legitimate child of God?

The Lord Jesus Christ spoke in this way, says Luke chapter 14 that, verse 25: "Great crowds went with Him, and turning around He said to them" that is, He was walking, there were people, many people, that was the time of the popularity of the Ministry of Jesus Christ. There was a time in the Ministry of Jesus when he was extremely popular and many people followed him because they did not know the cost, they believed: this is the liberator we are waiting for, he is going to put us in the first place of all nations, we He is going to restore all the glory that Israel had when King David was, he is going to remove the boot of the Roman Empire from us, he gives us food, multiplies the loaves and fish, performs healing miracles, releases demons; wow who doesn't like that? as the Dominican merengue says.

Then large crowds followed him: "And turning towards them" turning towards them "he said: If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, and even his own life will not can be My disciple." Hey, it's like it seems that the Lord didn't want anyone to follow him, huh?

What motivated the Lord to turn around, stop the people for a moment and turn around? It's like he was bothered in a sense and I think so, but I'm going to say why it bothered him, it's like he was bothered by all that amount of people who were following him and he wanted to reduce that number of people? because? Because He knew what was in their hearts, they were seeking Him for the loaves and fishes as He once told them: You seek Me because you want the food I give, not because You seek Me, what I represent. , what I truly have to offer you: the bread of life.

And I think the Lord discerned that these people were looking for him simply because he was the political candidate that was going to put them in power, not because they truly wanted part of the Kingdom of Heaven with its identity and its claims and its distinctives. . So the Lord, discerning what was in their hearts, discerning that their mind and spirit had not been dealt with by God, and that those who were there were simply carnally looking for their own benefit, he resented that and turned to them because He knew the hearts; He didn't need to be told what they were thinking, he discerned it.

He turned to them and said: you know what? if you do not hate your whole family and even your own life you cannot be my disciples, stop following me if you are not going to follow me for the right reasons "And he who does not carry his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple."

Know what? This morning I was thinking about that verse again and it had never occurred to me before because we have said it so many times, I know that verse by heart. But when the Lord said "And he who does not carry his cross" He was there implicitly pointing out the fact that He was going to die on the cross and that He was the one who was going to carry the main, primordial cross. Isn't the text sorry up there? I just dropped a button forgive me, if someone wants to help me with that later so as not to lose the "fashion sense" here from the Pastor. Please leave the text there, okay?

So "He who does not carry his cross and come after Me" He was saying there: I am going to die on the cross", I had never seen it that way. And then He is saying: you know what? if I am going to carry My cross. Notice that He already knew what was going to happen to Him, one of the things that says that when He was going to the cross they made him carry, to carry his own cross. So He is saying: if you you are not willing to go through a process similar to the one I am going to go through, you do not deserve to be My disciple and so I think we are going to need a long time to see: ok, what is the cross that we have to bear?

It does not necessarily refer to walking around like a, I don't know, a martyr all my life with his cross: oh Lord help me to carry this cross like so many people, no, but it does refer to the yoke of Christ. There is a cross that we have to, there is a death that we have to experience. There is a death to the self, to a number of things that we love, that we like. There is a cross that we have to experience in our life.

The Son of God took a literal cross, we are touched by a personal, intimate cross and that is, I was looking at something over here. By the way, what do you think of my new toy here? I'm similar to Michael Jackson with this question here, the only thing I can't do is the moon dance that he does but this, we're experimenting with this new microphone to see how it works because it's less obtrusive sometimes when he taps that one talk too close to him. I already forgot what I was saying and you too.

The case is brothers that there is something that has to happen in our own life as well as it also happened in the life of Jesus Christ and note that He is saying that if you do not go through those things, you cannot be His disciple, the one who does not take His own cross and comes after Him. Then verse 33 says, "Therefore, any of you who does not renounce all that he possesses cannot be My disciple." Think about that for a moment.

It says: "Any of you" who is any of you? all. I yes or no? me, you, the one next to you, your husband, your partner, any member of this Congregation. Because there is something sometimes brothers that we believe like, yes, that style of life so consecrated, so dedicated is only for a small group.

Someone asked me about that who is holy? a person who comes from the catholic tradition some time ago, who is a saint? and I told him: well, every Christian is a saint because holy means: separated and consecrated and delivered, and that is why the Bible always refers to the saints who are.

If Paul were writing a letter here to the Boston Church it would say, "To the saints in the city of Boston." Being a disciple is not for a chosen and select and small group of people, it is for every person who considers himself a Christian, there is a level of total dedication. So Christ is saying that any of us who do not give up everything we possess simply cannot be His disciple.

In these coming months from time to time we will be revisiting the main values of our Congregation, as we said at the beginning of the year: this is a year of consolidation where we want to emphasize the things we believe, the things we preach, the things we have said through of the years and one of the hallmarks of our Congregation, one of the goals that we have as a Church, one of the objectives is to produce people who are radically committed to the Kingdom of God. That is written in our mission as a Church.

The mission of León de Judá if you look for it anywhere, for example, look for it on our website, the mission of the León de Judá Congregation is, listen to this: "To promote the formation of disciples who are radically committed to the Kingdom of God , filled with the Holy Spirit, trained to evangelize, disciple and serve others through a Church of excellence based on the principles of the Word of God." But note that at the beginning it is: to promote the formation of disciples radically committed to the Kingdom of God.

That is why one of the things that we have to do as a Church is: help each one of you, all of us, to acquire a disciple mentality. A mentality of a radical commitment, that is to say: fundamental, from the roots. Not Sunday people, not merely evangelical people with an evangelical card but people totally colored and saturated with the mentality of a disciple because less than that is self-deception and pretending to deceive God. It's being something we're not supposed to be.

So we want to create a Church of people truly committed to the Kingdom of God who understand what it means to be a true disciple, a true Christian. That is why we give these classes that we call Discipleship, because through that process one of the things that is supposed to happen is that you acquire knowledge of what the identity of a true believer is, what does a true believer believe? how does a true believer live? What is the level of commitment of a true disciple of Jesus Christ?

The vision that the Scriptures present to us of a true, a true follower of Jesus is a person who has left everything, write that in your Bible: you have left everything to follow Jesus throughout your life. I have to ask myself: Lord, have I given up everything for You? Am I willing to leave everything for You? ask yourself that question one day and spend a couple of hours thinking about the implications of that question. Have I left everything for Jesus? Am I willing to give up everything? Have I divorced everything from everything I love and everything I consider important and valuable for the love of my Christ and to have a true identity as a disciple?

This vision of leaving everything to follow Jesus is very different from the vision that has been projected on many occasions about the Gospel and throughout history, very different from the vision that Jesus Christ projects us. The Gospel has sometimes been presented as a mere religion that prepares us to go to heaven and that is all. With all due respect to my Catholic brothers, have you noticed, for example, when I pass by a Catholic Church? again: it is not a criticism of the Catholic Church because we evangelicals have many things to learn and to improve on our own, don't worry that we have many skeletons in our own closet but, it is something interesting.

I pass by a fairly large church there in Summerville on my way home, we always pass there. And when I see during the day, for example, almost exclusively the people who leave that place are elderly, elderly couples, elderly people and I imagine that what they are thinking is: I have little time left so I better fix all things with God where are the young, where are the young couples taking time to go? And so it happens with many churches, believe it or not, evangelical full of elderly; glory to God for the elderly, amen for them, how beautiful but wow, where are the young people, where are the middle-aged or young adult couples, etc?

It is that we believe that like the Gospel, the Church is a factory of souls that go to heaven when they have nothing left, where the lazy person is, then I start looking for God. That idea is terrible, the Lord rebuke the devil as Yiye Ávila would say, it doesn't say much right now here on this Earth, in heaven. But people believe that the Church is a place to prepare ourselves to go to heaven, so that when the time comes we will have all the cards struck out and go to heaven.

Another view that people sometimes have of the Gospel is: a religion that is an appendage to life, a part of the whole of life along with career, marriage, trips to Europe on vacation, parties, everything. the rest; well, we also go to church from time to time especially on Easter Sunday, Christmas, when we get married and when we are buried and the baptism of a family member, a baby or something like that.

So in that case religion, the Christian life is like an appendage but it is not the totality, it is not the center, it is not the foundation, it is not the whole; it is not the frame that frames everything we do and think and feel. It is not the point of reference for all of life, it is simply one more object or one more essence within many other things that have the same importance or even more importance than other things.

Or what do you think of this vision of the Gospel? an easy Gospel of cheap grace as this German theologian would say, I don't remember his name right now. A Gospel of cheap grace, from a God who simply wants us to live the best life possible and is solely committed to our having successful and happy lives but demands nothing in return. There is a lot of that Gospel that you see on television and you see it in other places today and there are Pastors who have adopted that theology and that way of preaching, and that ethics because we think that in that way people are going to listen to us. They are going to see us or they are going to come to our Church because if we present many demands to people, they are going to leave us, they are going to say: oh no, that is a negative Gospel, a Gospel of works, a Pharisaic Gospel or whatever be.

So the idea is to present people with a Gospel where God is the Sugar Daddy, the one who gives you everything you need; He wants you to be happy, to be successful, to have a great house, a handsome husband, cute children, two cars in the driveway, a chicken always on Friday night and Sunday after church, chicken to eat. sister not the other chicken (laughs) right? And that's it.

The God who wants you to be happy and to be successful and all the sermons are about success, successful life, good life, powerful life, health, prosperity, power to have; a God who is too loving to deny us anything we want or need or a God unable to allow us to go to hell for our unrecognized or confessed sins because what loving God is going to allow anyone to go to hell? that is a truncated Gospel, a false Gospel, a Gospel hacked, partial. It is a distorted and grotesque Gospel indeed. It is not the Gospel of the Christ who turned to the crowd and said: Hey, anyone who does not despise mother, father, son or daughter, brother or sister, husband or wife for My sake does not deserve it, so if you want to continue, know what that they are getting into

Brothers: I hope that I can somehow disturb you and myself this morning. There are many good things, you know that we also preach the God of love, mercy, grace, provision, power, authority, victory, abundant life; We will talk about all those things but there are times when you have to preach about a God who demands a radical commitment.

The first disciples had to make a great sacrifice. They had to leave their jobs, their families, and their homes to follow Jesus in His itinerant Ministry and to be trained by Him as He ministered wherever He went. That is what they had to do that you see continuously, for example you see the passage of the calling of Levi and others. For example, look at Matthew I think it is, Luke, or Mark 8:34 I think it is, don't worry; The fact is that I put the different passages here but I forgot to put the specific quote.

But those who wanted to follow Jesus say the following: "And as they went, one said to him on the road: Lord, I will follow you wherever you go, and the Lord said to him: foxes have dens, birds of the sky have nests, but The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. And he said to another, Follow me, and he said to him, Lord, let me first go and bury my father."

Hear me what a legitimate request. My dad just died Lord, you are asking me to follow you, you know what? give me three hours, give me half a day and I'm going to follow you for the rest of my life but first let me bury my dad and then I'm going to follow you. Do you know what the answer of the Lord Jesus Christ was? He said: look, let the dead bury their dead and you go and announce the Kingdom of God.

The Lord was being there as an exaggeration in a sense but he was saying to him: Look there is nothing more important than My claim. This is linked to what He told them: If you do not despise your father and your mother, you cannot be my disciple. "And then another also said to him: I will follow you Lord but let me say goodbye first to those who are in my house. And Jesus said to him: no one who putting his hand to the plow and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God."

The Lord was an accomplished teacher and He always took opportunities to say outrageous things, things that would provoke, intrigue people, make them think. So what He wanted to point out there was not so much that this man could not go and say goodbye to his family correctly, no; what He wanted was to oppose a truth even higher than that and remind all of us that we commit our lives to the Lord, we cannot look back at what we left behind.

Oh if I had done this, oh if I had gone on with that promising career. No, when you give your life to Jesus you look ahead, towards the high calling as the Bible says, "Leaving what is behind" said Paul "and looking ahead I press on towards the goal." One cannot be looking back or looking to the sides how the world lives, what people who do not know the Lord enjoy, oh look how he has everything, a house, two cars, a big job and I am here serving the Lord and I have nothing, no.

You have to look to the high calling of Christ Jesus. You have to look at what God has called you to be and to do. You can't be looking back, you can't be thinking: oh I'm going to do this first, I'm going to do that, when I've already reached all my goals, I've paid all the bills, I've already got the husband or the wife, then I I will consecrate to the Lord, no. You have to receive Christ, His call wherever you are and not look back, you have to leave everything behind and move on.

So this is what these first disciples did, they had to leave their jobs, families, homes to follow Jesus in His itinerant Ministry and to be ministered by Him while He ministered everywhere He went, that is what we continually see in the Gospels. The disciples following Him, these relatives that He was going to use to serve the Kingdom of God later, wherever He went, they went, they had left behind their places of belonging and so they were watching how He healed a sick person, how he freed a demoniac, how he performed a miracle, how he answered the trick questions of the Pharisees they were watching with an eagle eye to learn from the Master and they had left everything.

And we have to do the same, although not necessarily in the literal way that these men and women had to, but there are some elements that we do have to reproduce from those early disciples if you want to be a true follower, a true follower of Jesus Christ. .

Many of you are new to the faith, you are visiting the Church to learn more about the Gospel. I call you now that you are in that young and fresh stage of the Christian life to enter fully. Don't settle for that easy Gospel that comes to the Church as if it were just a transfer from one membership to another, come to a life, come to a lifestyle, come to an immersion, come to a baptism; do not come to a membership in an organization.

What does a disciple want to be and how can we reproduce the same habits that they exemplified? Number one, we have to accept Christ as Lord of our lives.

You say: Sir, say Sir. What does that word mean? kurios was the word of the owner of a house, of a family. Kurios translated into Spanish: Lord, he was the boss, he was the owner of the slaves, he was the head of the family, he was the one who had the right of life or death over the slaves, he was the person who commanded the entire home and in all the house and that means that when we say: Jesus is my Lord, it means that He owns everything we have, nothing is ours. Jesus commands totally in all dimensions of our life.

As brother Isaías said, right? When you serve Christ you cannot be thinking about convenience, you owe it to an ethic, a commitment, a pact that you have made with the Lord. You are not there choosing, no; you do not have the right to choose. You have to do what the Word of the Lord says. Jesus Christ is your Lord, he is your owner, you have to obey him in all areas of life. We cannot deny the Lord any area of our inner being, it is a radical surrender.

Do you remember the case of Abram and Isaac when God told Abram: Sacrifice to me your son, your only son, that son that he had waited a hundred years to have and when he was a teenager God told him: now kill him and sacrifice to me? ? You see that the call for a radical commitment is not only for these times or for the times of Jesus, God has always chosen and demanded a radical commitment and when He asked Abram to sacrifice his only son he was testing him to see if Abram had gone through the internal process of accepting God as his Lord and his owner, and of not denying him anything or questioning anything that He asked of him. And so Abram had to choose: what do I love more, my son or this outrageous God who is asking me for something truly grotesque and terrible? and Abram had to go through that experience.

That's how radical you have to be, I have to be for delivery. We as a Church want to produce an even Church in the sense that we do not have hot and cold areas in the Congregation. My desire is that all of us embrace Christ's radical call to that life of total surrender.

We have to leave everything, that is, first to receive Christ as Lord, second, we have to leave everything to follow Him. A radical operation has to take place in our hearts. In the light of our surrender and loyalty to Him, everything else will have to seem insignificant.

That is why He said: If you do not hate your father and your mother you do not deserve to be, it is not that you now start to hate your father and your mother or that you hate your children and your wife, no. That is not the idea. What the Lord wanted to say was: Look, your commitment to Me, your dedication to the Kingdom, your loyalty to Me, your appreciation of the claims and values of the Kingdom of God and of My life as the Son of God, your Lord, must be so big, so radical, so powerful, so intense that compared to how you look to your dad and your mom, your wife and your children, the difference is so big that it seems as if you hate them, do you understand? that's what He meant. The one who does not deny them.

Because if you look at Jesus you always see that the Lord minimized Mary, His mother and His brothers. It is not that He did not value them but it is that, in the light of the Kingdom of God they were, well when they told him: Your mother and your brothers are looking for you, what did He say? Well: who are My mother and My brothers? My mother and My brothers are the ones who listen to My Father's Will and do it; these are My mother and My brothers. Because when you are in the Kingdom of God now the values are different. It's not even your blood family anymore, it's your family of faith that matters most, honestly.

Now, yes, your blood family, you are going to love them, you are going to be very responsible with them, you are going to take care of them, of course, you are going to value them. The Bible talks a lot about that too, widows for example and children, it says: take care of your family first before throwing the burden on the Church and also the family of faith. But the idea is that first, first and foremost your number one loyalty is to the family of faith, to the Kingdom of God, to the values of the Kingdom of God. Listen to me: I know that right now you are moving uncomfortably in your seats because it is something very, very difficult to understand, but it is what the Word of the Lord says.

We have to be disciples and not merely affiliated with a Church. What is a disciple? he's a resident trainee, a resident trainee. What does a disciple do, what did the disciples of Jesus Christ do? or a disciple for example who is being mentored by someone. Number one: a disciple is someone who is being mentored by someone.

Number one: a disciple is someone who lives in his mentor's house and has left his own house. In the Middle Ages, for example, there were apprentices in a trade and when a person became an apprentice, he left home and went to live in his teacher's house. If he wanted to be an apprentice to an artist or something, he would leave his house and moved to his mentor's house, he lived there. And we have to do something like that too, we have to leave our own house, our own culture, even our own physical house, personal to our emotions and we have to move to the House of the Kingdom of God, there has to be a mental transfer.

Secondly, a disciple, an apprentice, acquired and continues to acquire the DNA of his mentor and imitates him in everything. A person who is being trained in a discipline or in a profession or in a trade in the Middle Ages and through all times, another thing is that at the end of his apprenticeship the life of his mentor is supposed to have come to pass. he. The style, the way of seeing things, the way of processing the world, everything is through his mentor. And in the same way, through our Christian life we are supposed to be more like Christ, to have more of the values of the Kingdom of God within us.

Thirdly: a disciple obeys in everything that is ordered to him. It is not a matter of some things selectively like many people today. There are many people who are selectively searching for a Gospel. And today people have options that perhaps were nowhere to be found before: look, if you believe something, you go find a Church that believes what you believe; If you don't like what your Church preaches, don't worry, there are many churches in the city and you will find one that preaches what you want. One that is softer, lighter, if you don't like what they preach about morality, sexuality, money, whatever, people find the people who are best for them. Today there is, it's like tremendous marketing.

But what the Word says is that we obey. If the Word says so, I have to obey. If Christ says so, if the Word of the Lord says so, I simply greet and obey the Lord, I am not looking for convenience.

Fourth place: a person who is a disciple always carefully observes what his mentor would do, he is always looking: how would Christ do it, what did Jesus do at this moment? read the Word and examine: what does the Word say in this situation, in such a case? and then one learns how the Word conjugates life and the question is: how would Jesus behave in this situation? Every time you are in a situation in your life, when you observe it you have to ask yourself: ok what did Jesus do in such a situation and what would he do? and then you imitate him, right?

Fifthly: a disciple, an apprentice treats his mentor with the utmost reverence, with the utmost reverence. Many of us have lost that sense of holy fear towards Jesus Christ and we see Jesus more as a little friend, there is the proverbial Lord of pious pictures, generally blond, with blue eyes, tender with a little sheep in his hand, right? That is the Jesus that many of us have in mind, but what about that severe Jesus that I sometimes see in Scripture?

The Jesus Christ who told the rich young man: Look, do you want to be happy? Well, okay, do you want to enter eternal life? sell everything you own, give it to the poor and then come and follow me. He preferred for this boy to leave sad than to tell him: No, you know what? look it's fine, if you don't want to do that keep everything and then come and follow me, it's fine. No, the Lord said: This is what it is, if you want it, that's fine. That severe Christ that we see in the Book of Revelation with eyes of fire, tongue like a sword, resplendent white hair like burnished bronze with a voice like many waters, that Christ who comes on a white horse, His mantle says covered in blood reflecting His battles with the powers of hell. That powerful Christ, that is the Jesus that I follow, that is the Jesus that I know is the true and the definitive one and I have to be in reverent fear of him, because if he doesn't break my head too, you know? He loves me but He is also a Christ of discipline and we have to see Christ with reverence, with holy fear.

Another thing: a disciple is in a perpetual state of training, perpetual state of training, there is no free time. Everything that happens in your life you have to examine in the light of the God who is training you and is teaching you things. How many of us see our lives as a continuous learning process? I don't know about you but I am always reading and interpreting all the events of my life in the light of: what does God want to teach me through this and what lesson can I learn and how can I improve in my life? and to be more powerful, wiser, more understood, more effective in my service to the Lord, everything must be seen as a learning process.

If you look at how the Lord treated His disciples in the pages of the Gospels, you see that He was always taking every opportunity to teach them a lesson, right? Right there he stood before the crowd and said: you know what? Don't follow me for the loaves and fishes, follow me for this and this reason. The disciples said: oh Lord You commanded us and we saw, the demons were still subject to us; oh! opportunity, here I see a little pride in him, dazzled by the power he has and all this.

Know what? He told them: Do not rejoice so much with power, rejoice that your names are written in the Book of Life, that is more important. How many are dazzled by someone's power? No? There are many Christians who say: oh so-and-so, all that, oh so-and-so performs those miracles, oh let's follow them, but what about character, what about teaching, what about the solidity of the Gospel that is being preached? So the Bible says: No, don't be dazzled, don't fight so much because God uses you, fight because God is pleased with your life, yes, strive for that. So the Lord always used every opportunity.

I invite you to see your life as a process of continuous training. When you are in the factory, when you are where you work, your business, your company, at school, washing dishes, there are always opportunities and the Lord will want to take the opportunity to teach you something. If you see your life as a perpetual learning process, God is going to continually educate you and the Holy Spirit is always working to make us more and more like Christ Jesus, God does not waste a single opportunity to do that.

And finally: a disciple is preparing for the day when he has to put into practice everything he has learned. That learning through which God puts you is to prepare you to serve Him. The Gospel and discipleship is to serve and do the works of the Master, works of power, works of service, it is not mere theory. That is why the Lord is always preparing you, he is teaching you.

And before I finish I want to invite the musicians to come over here please and prepare that chorus that they sang: Give me your life because I want us to sing in light of what we just said right now, I'm going to end this meditation here and I'm going to to continue next Sunday. But I want to invite you, my brothers, to see yourself as people who are in perpetual training and formation to be prepared to serve the Lord and do His Works.

If you are a disciple the Lord expects you to do the Works of your Master and again, there are many different works. There are works of justice, which means: works of holiness, works that show that the fruit that we bear is different from the fruit of the world, I would call that: works of justice, there are works of power as well, which are the works that are supposed to we do when praying for a sick person, when praying for a demon possessed person. If you have the Power of Christ in your life, it is supposed that in the Name of Jesus you can do the Works that He also did, works of power and that is why God is training you so that you can do those works.

There are also works of Evangelism, that you share the Word of God with others and bring others to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. And there are also works, I would say of generosity in your life, that you share your goods with others and that you be generous and that you give a word of advice to someone, a word of strengthening to a person, but for all that you have to be training and allow the Holy Spirit to form you, to break you, to crucify you, he has to put the yoke of Jesus Christ on your shoulders. Learn from Me that I am meek and humble, he says, take My yoke upon you and you will find rest for your souls.

My brothers: the Lord calls us this morning to assume a genuine identity, thank you brothers, a genuine identity of disciples. Read that while we're singing, while we're listening to the music. The Lord wants to form us, the Lord wants to form the León de Judá Congregation as a Congregation radically committed to the Kingdom of God, ask the Lord this morning to make you truly one of His.

I want to invite if there is anyone who has not yet made their profession of faith to the Lord, has not given their life to Jesus and feels the call of the Holy Spirit this morning, while we are singing I want to open an opportunity to anyone who is here who wants to give his life to Jesus, who wants to start the path of a disciple, the journey of a disciple.

If you feel that God is touching you, he has called you in these last weeks or this very morning I invite you to raise your hand, you can do it right now or you can come forward here while we sing that chorus and we will be attentive to pray for you, put your life in the hands of Jesus, bless you and start you in that process of following the Lord so this altar is open to anyone.

Or if you simply want to say: you know what Lord? I now understand what it means to be a disciple and I want to consecrate myself to You. I also invite you to come forward here or stand up as a sign of emphasizing what you have heard and to accept it and make it part of your heart and life because those facts also they have importance.

But let us lower our heads for a moment, then: Father, we say amen to the claim of Your Word and renounce a mediocre life. We renounce an average life and listen to the call of Jesus to give ourselves completely to Him and to walk a true discipleship, we consecrate ourselves Lord to that life of radical surrender. Give us truly Your life Lord, give us Your DNA, Your identity. May this Church never compromise Lord or dilute the radical content of Your Word. We know that this is Your Word, Lord, and we will never pretend to diminish it in any way. Thank you for Your Presence in our midst in Jesus Name amen.