The Joy of Being Left Behind: Releasing Children to Follow Jesus

A late middle-aged father is standing following to his boat and a pile of partly mended fishing nets, observing his two sons. He has often assumed that his sons would someday choose over his fishing small business and assist provide for him and his wife when they grew also previous to operate. But now he watches them do a thing he never ever envisioned: they walk down the shoreline with a youthful rabbi who has called them to go away their fishing vocation — and their father — in order to adhere to him.

Abruptly, his envisioned potential for him and his sons has turn out to be a swirl of uncertainty. What is he emotion? What are his sons emotion?

You may possibly understand this scene. It will come from Matthew 4:21–22:

Heading on from there [Jesus] noticed two other brothers, James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee their father, mending their nets, and he known as them. Promptly they still left the boat and their father and followed him.

When I browse this story as a younger male, I didn’t give significantly believed to Zebedee. I tended to place myself in the spot of James and John, next Jesus into a long run of fishing for guys. The uncertainty of it all felt adventurous and enjoyable. But now, as a late middle-aged father of adult young children, I can not aid but place myself in Zebedee’s location.

A short while ago, I was speaking about with my twentysomething son and daughter-in-legislation the doable connect with they are discerning to abide by Jesus to yet another country for the sake of the gospel. I do feel psyched for them, but it is noticeably distinct when the charge is not leaving to follow Jesus, but getting remaining as my son follows Jesus. I obtain myself seeking to talk to Zebedee about his experience and get his counsel.

Except if You Hate Your Father

Zebedee’s encounter casts these words and phrases of Jesus in a whole unique gentle:

If any individual comes to me and does not hate his personal father and mother and spouse and little ones and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his have life, he are not able to be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his very own cross and arrive following me are unable to be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–27)

As a younger man, I generally read these text pertaining to my father and mother and siblings and mates. Now, I hear them drastically pertaining to me as a father. In purchase to abide by Jesus faithfully, my small children ought to “hate” me for his sake.

Of class, when Jesus states “hate” listed here, he’s not chatting about the variety of affectional hatred we usually imply when we use that term. He’s chatting about treasuring, as he does in this textual content:

No a single can serve two masters, for both he will detest the one and appreciate the other, or he will be devoted to the just one and despise the other. You are not able to provide God and income. (Matthew 6:24)

Jesus doesn’t signify right here that we should really come to feel revulsive animosity toward funds. He’s stating we cannot treasure God and treasure money, for the reason that “where your treasure is, there your coronary heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21). The hatred Jesus is talking about appears to be like like this:

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a area, which a gentleman discovered and lined up. Then in his pleasure he goes and sells all that he has and purchases that field. (Matthew 13:44)

The gentleman in this parable does not come to feel revulsive animosity towards “all that he has.” He just values the treasure he’s located additional than all that he has. So, he “hates” his previous belongings by selling them. He understands what is most beneficial and significant.

To be a Christian father or mom indicates not only that we ought to treasure Jesus much more than we treasure our earthly liked kinds it signifies we ought to joyfully take remaining the item of our Christian child’s “hatred” in this perception. We are component of the “all” that our kid is inclined to “sell” for the joy of getting the treasure that is Jesus.

Willing to Be ‘Hated’

As you in all probability know, we at Needing God want you (and all people) to be a Christian Hedonist. We consider the Bible clearly teaches that God is most glorified in us when we are most pleased in him. But there is one more side to Christian Hedonism. As we go after our maximum joy in God, we also help other folks pursue their optimum joy in God. Which in a natural way usually means we want them to treasure God much above the way they treasure us.

The rubber meets the road most when it will come to fathers and moms and other expensive beloved ones. There is a authentic felt cost when we actively make complicated, even unpleasant options to treasure Jesus and his phone on our life more than individuals cherished interactions.

But there’s also a actual felt price tag when we are on the passive side of this sort of an equation — when we are the father or mom or beloved 1 whom a Christian have to “hate” (in the treasuring feeling) in order to observe Jesus’s phone on their lives. It is a various working experience to depend ourselves amid the earthly treasures somebody need to “sell” in purchase to pursue the pleasure of the supreme Treasure. It is a different knowledge to be sacrificed than it is to sacrifice.

But it is not any less Christian Hedonistic — not when we truly treasure our children’s pursuit of the greatest Treasure. As Jesus’s disciples, we too will have to “hate” lesser treasures we genuinely love (like our children’s nearness) in buy to have him. Our willingness to be sacrificed is what this paradoxical hatred seems like from the passive aspect of the simply call, when we are not the kinds leaving, but the kinds who are still left. At these a minute, we will have to retain in intellect the total mother nature of Jesus’s call:

If any person comes to me and does not hate . . . even his possess daily life, he can not be my disciple. Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26–27)

Fellowship of the Still left Guiding

Releasing our children to observe Jesus’s kingdom connect with is part of how we, as mom and dad, hate our own life and bear our have cross for Jesus’s sake. And part of what helps make his simply call paradoxical is that this “hating” is not affectional hatred at all. In truth, it is what like appears to be like. For as my good friend John Piper says,

Appreciate is the overflow of pleasure in God that satisfies the desires of other individuals. The overflow is skilled consciously as the pursuit of our pleasure in the joy of one more. (Wanting God, 141)

So, in becoming left by our young children as they go after their greatest pleasure in the finest Treasure, we pursue the identical prize by hating our own life in this earthly age. It’s just one way we be part of Jesus on the Calvary road of self-sacrifice for the pleasure established right before us (Hebrews 12:2).

The Calvary road is not an uncomplicated highway. Jesus told us that “the way is challenging that potential customers to life” (Matthew 7:14). And one particular of the tough moments on this highway is when we’re called to sign up for Zebedee in the fellowship of the still left at the rear of, the lesser treasures who release cherished ones to go after their greatest joy in the finest Treasure.

But as it turns out, becoming still left guiding isn’t simply, or even generally, passive — not when we flip this unpleasant knowledge into an active pursuit of our individual optimum joy in our best Treasure.