I grew up in a family of enthusiastic food-sharers. I learned early that going out to dinner meant getting to sample the dishes everyone else ordered. We passed plates eagerly most of the time, but on the occasions my sister or I were feeling stingy, we’d be met by the same words from my dad: “If we run out, we’ll get more.”

I’m not sure if dad was trying to teach us a bigger lesson or he just wanted some of our fries, but his words changed how we saw what was right in front of us. By assuring us we could trust him to supply more if needed, he freed us to give away what we had without worrying how much would be left. We went from calculating the cost of sharing from a place of scarcity to a place of abundance, and dinner became more enjoyable.

In counting the cost of following Jesus, we have a similar decision. It’s tempting to measure the cost based on what’s in front of us–our time, money, talents, affections. From this view, discipleship is expensive and tiresome; it requires too much.

But we have a Father calling us to shift our focus from our own limited resources onto His abundance; to calculate that cost not based on what we can generate on our own, but on what we’ve been given freely. We see exactly what this means for us in Romans:

“So you have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when He adopted you as His own children. Now we call him, 'Abba, Father.' And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ we are heirs of God’s glory. But if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.” (Romans 8:15, 17-18 NLT)

This is our hope; an inheritance secured through Christ awaiting us in heaven, where nothing can destroy or diminish it. And in the meantime, the same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead, in us. A Spirit that, when we cling to our own treasures for fear of losing them, whispers, “If you run out, I’ll give you more.”

More strength. More endurance. More mercy. More peace. Out of this abundance, we are freed to follow Christ, from His suffering to His glory and every moment in between.

Following Jesus is not convenient or efficient. It may cost us productivity, success, reputation and comfort. Yet, in light of the abundance the Father lavishes on us, we’re able to act in agreement with the Apostle Paul’s words:

“But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ.” (Phillipians 3:7-8 ESV)

Our loss is our gain. The point at which we run out of ourselves is the same point at which we are filled with the immeasurably more of Christ. The math doesn’t add up, but such is the upside-down nature of the Kingdom to which we belong.

Even so, we are fickle and forgetful people. Left on our own, we’ll revert back to our sinful, stingy ways. This is why my dad didn’t utter his dinnertime wisdom once and assume we’d be changed forever. Rather, it was a thing he said every time he noticed selfishness rearing its ugly head. Over time, it began to take root and transform our thinking until I recently found myself repeating it to my own kids.

The same is true of the Gospel. This is not a story we hear once and move past, but one we must continue to rehearse and proclaim, to ourselves and those around us. Just as our hearts are prone to wander away from these truths, so our hands are prone to grip tightly onto the things they can hold. And so, in our longing to be filled, we must return to the One who promises to be everything we need, that we may loosen our grip on the things we’ve deemed “ours”, in favor of sharing in the abundance that is His.

May we be sons and daughters of this holy abundance, happy to spend and be spent on account of the Gospel, confident our Father will turn our losses into glorious gain.