It’ll cost you everything you have and everything you are.

This post is for all of those who are not satisfied. 

This post is for those Christians who have been disillusioned with what they have found in Christianity. 

 

This post is for Christians who love their church but feel like they haven’t grown in a while, or they feel like they are still miles away from where God wants them to be. 

This post is for Christians who have been burnt and disillusioned by other Christians and who haven’t set foot in a church for years.

This post is also for people who aren’t Christians – but only if they’re not satisfied with whatever it is that they are holding onto right now.

There really is more. 

There really is something that satisfies. 

There really is a Truth that endures beyond everything and anything that tries to come against it.

There is no way to find it unless you seek it to the abandonment of everything else that you have sought up until this point.

There’s no way to receive it unless you give everything you have. 

There is no way to enter into it until you come out of the things that your conscience and the Bible are telling you are wrong.

There is no way to embrace it without letting go of everything else that you have considered worthwhile up until this point.

Jesus told a brief symbolic story about a man who found a treasure — something that he knew was more valuable than anything else he had ever owned, anything else he had ever heard about, and anything else that he had ever had a chance of owning. 

He found where it was, and he saw a chance and a way to get it. But it was going to cost absolutely everything he had. 

Nevertheless, the man weighed the two options. On one side of this fork in the road was his home, his career, his reputation, his friends, and everything that he had considered valuable up until that point. It included his computer system, his boat, his car, his wardrobe, his safe with all of his most valuable things inside of it, the heirlooms that had been passed down from his parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, and the land that he had worked so hard to build. It included everything that he had put his energy, money, and effort into up until this point in his life. 

On the other side of this fork in the road was a treasure hidden in a field that looked like it had nothing in it. He knew the treasure was there, for he had seen it. But no one else had seen it. It wasn’t obvious from looking at the field.

He weighed the two options carefully, for if he sold everything that he owned, his friends would think he had lost his mind. To suddenly give up everything he had worked so hard to accumulate! He could not explain to them why he needed to buy that field.

His family would not understand, and they might blame him for turning his back on the family heritage. His wife and kids might not understand and might resent him for uprooting them from the only home they had ever known. He would certainly try to explain to them and beg them to come with him, but he knew that they might not believe what he told them he had seen. After all, they had never seen it, and most people didn’t believe it was possible for treasures that great to be just laying around in fields.

And yet, he chose to do exactly that. To sell everything he owned because that was the price required to buy the field with the hidden treasure.

If we want the treasure — that more — everything that Jesus lived, died, and rose again to bring us — we have to surrender absolutely everything else that we have the option of holding onto instead. Everything else we’ve been holding onto and everything else we might ever hold onto. 

We have to realize that nothing else compares. Not even our relationships with our nearest and dearest compare. Jesus said we are not worthy to follow Him unless we leave behind even our father and mother and brothers. He spoke in parables, so he didn’t mean to literally stop talking to your parents and siblings. He was talking about the focus of our heart. For when our heart is focused on other things, it cannot be focused on seeking and following Him. And yet, the Bible says when we seek Him first above all else, He causes other things to follow us and catch up with us and overtake us!

God knows the difference between two people who are both working their jobs, being faithful to their spouse, and doing their best in difficult situations — yet one is focused on doing their best in those things, while the other is focused on finding Him, and knowing Him, and obeying Him, and following Him – and meanwhile trusting Him with their job, their marriage, and their difficult situations.

There is no other way to find what truly satisfies. In Isaiah 55, God asks this:

A promise that you are going to heaven when you die does not satisfy. There are millions around the world that if they were honest, they would testify to that fact. 

A relationship with the Most High God — made possible through Jesus’s death and resurrection — resulting in a life lived through the power of the Holy Spirit — that is the only thing that truly satisfies. That is the treasure. 

But it’s only possible if you are willing to surrender absolutely everything else. 

Surrender your way for His way in every single area of your life. 

Surrender your thoughts about how things should be and ask Him to show you His thoughts so that you can obey. 

Recognize that your efforts are not enough and will never be enough. They can’t even come the tiniest bit close to being enough. 

And yet, He did it all for you. But He didn’t do it all for you to ignore it or throw it away so that you could continue in your own way and your own sin. He did it all for you, so that you can receive it and walk in it. So that you can sell everything you have and give everything you are for the purpose of living for Him and Him alone. 

And in exchange, He will give you righteousness. Holiness. Peace that cannot be explained in a world that is only going to get filled with more turmoil and grief and controversy with every month that passes. Joy that is beyond your wildest imaginations.

But it’s all of you for all of Him. You can’t receive it all unless you surrender it all.

It’s okay if you don’t know how to surrender it all. Surrender is a status of your heart, and God can see your heart. He knows if you are saying, “God I want it,” but still holding back this part of your life or that part of your life that you just don’t think you could live without. But if you want to mean it, then you will go through a process where He will bring things before you and ask you if you are willing to surrender that as well. 

Surrender is not necessarily a one-time choice. It’s something that we must do over and over and over again. I don’t think the man in Jesus’s story found an auction house to just sweep in and take everything at once. He had to take each precious item out of his safe and lay it on the auction block for someone else to buy. He had to take each thing that he had spent his hard-earned money to buy, and bring it out of his house and put a for sale sign on it. He had to keep doing this until his house was empty, and then he had to put the For Sale sign on his house and property. Over and over and over again, he had to take each part of his life and make the choice whether the treasure in the field was worth giving up even that item.

This is what you must do if you really want all of the something more that your heart is desperate for. 

Tell God that those things in your life that you’re holding onto — you are willing to give them up if that’s what He wants. Those hobbies that you love so much — you’re willing to give them up completely if that’s what is required to find Him. You are willing to give up your career that you have worked so hard for if that’s what He wants.  The people you love — if following Him and seeking Him results in them leaving you, then it’s still worth it. 

Because nothing and no one compares to a real, living and breathing relationship with Him. The dreams that you have had so far for your future — you are abandoning the pursuit of them so that you can pursue Him — knowing that if those dreams are from Him and in His plans, then He will bring them to pass. And if they don’t come to pass, then He’s worth far more than anything they could have ever brought.

I tell you, He is worth it. He is worthy!

If you want this relationship with Him, and you don’t know what to pray, here is where you can start: