Unless you HATE your Father and Mother...

Mary and I were looking through our lesson plan for the second week and asking the Lord what the scripture means  "Unless we hate mother, father, brother, son etc and even our own life we cannot be his disciple." and we were not settled on the typical approach of "love less"
....late in the night about 2:00 am I realized that he meant what he said...He didn't just mean "love less". He actually meant hate! And then he ended the story with if salt isn't salty it is isn't worth keeping, throw it out.

In other words he lifted the bar so high that it was impossible to jump. "What would it take to be a disciple of God? It would look like love to the max and hate to the max.... in other words it is impossible on human terms!

Kind of like when he said "It's easier to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom" The disciples looked and said "That's impossible" And they were right.

Or when he told the rich young ruler that the way to become an "insider" was to sell all and give everything away, then he could pull it off.
Or when he said "eat my flesh and drink my blood."
He was always raising the bar.

Discipleship with God is unattainable by "muster".
You can't make salt salty. It is or it isn't.
You can't muster trust. You either trust or you don't trust.

Trust is not the fruit of muster. And you can't follow someone you can't trust.
Trust is the fruit of love. If I KNOW beyond a shadow of doubt that I am loved I can then begin to trust.

Discipleship didn't initiate with the disciples. Jesus initiated it. "I saw you Philip when you were under the tree."
"What? You saw me? You must be the Messiah."

How can I prioritize my love for God over my family?
Spend more time in prayer with him than I spend with her?
Serve at church more than at home?
Bible reading?
Tell God I am willing to not marry her on our wedding day? LOL.
Strap a bomb to my chest?
What does it look like and when is it enough?

Loving God and discipleship is impossible! The terms are too high!

You can't become a disciple by muster or performance.
Loving God is unattainable without first being loved by him.
And discipleship is unattainable without being first loved by him.

Jesus said "Your all going to fall away and leave me alone. None of you has the muster and it's OK, Don't worry about it. I'm going to fix the problem"
"Not I" they all said as they all fled and left him alone.

In Fact after this failure Peter said "I'm going back to fishing for fish" so they fished all night and caught nothing.
Jesus appeared on the shore and didn't chide them for unbelief or for messed up priorities. He said "Cast your net on the other side and they caught a mess of fish.

Thankfully God is the initiator of discipleship.
Peter's immediate response was to leave the fish, jump into the water and swim to Jesus.

Prioritizing Jesus isn't the result of muster it is the natural response to super natural love.
And that's what happened on the cross!