Though unconditional love is free, it is a costly business. Accepting God’s gracious gift and dwelling in intimacy will cost you everything, especially your pride. God’s nature is one of love and light; He will love you unconditionally, but because He is light, it will be very difficult for you to choose to walk in darkness and maintain intimacy in relationships with God and others.
Cost
Elisabeth Elliot
Speaking of the 5 missionaries, including her husband, Jim, who were martyred this day in 1956:
Each had made a personal transaction with God, recognising that he belonged to God, first of all by creation, and secondly by redemption through the death of His Son, Jesus Christ. This double claim on his life settled once and for all the question of allegiance. It was not a matter of striving to follow the example of a great Teacher. To conform to the perfect life of Jesus was impossible for a human being. To these men, Jesus Christ was God, and had actually taken upon Himself human form, in order that He might die, and, by His death, provide not only escape from the punishment which their sin merited, but also a new kind of life, eternal both in length and in quality. This meant simply that Christ was to be obeyed, and more than that, that. He would provide the power to obey.
Bill Johnson
He makes the Promised Land possible, and we pay the price to live there. He’ll give us His baptism of fire if we’ll give Him something worth burning.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
The cross is laid on every Christian… When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. It may be a death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work to follow Him, or it may be a death like Luther’s, who had to leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death every time – death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man at His call. Jesus’ summons to the rich young man was calling him to die, because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die, and therefore Jesus Christ and his call are necessarily our death as well as our life.
N.T. Wright
The church is often called a killjoy for protesting against sexual license. But the real killing of joy comes with the grabbing of pleasure. As with credit card usage. the price tag is hidden at the start, but the physical and emotional debt incurred will take a long time to pay off.
Lord Shaftesbury
The great and final Garden of Paradise is only to be approached through the Garden of Gethsemane