Anything of any worth that you would like to accomplish is going to cost you something. The greater the personal cost to you, the more you will appreciate it, the more it will mean to you. That is, it will be worth more to you. Now, of course, it may not mean anything to anyone else, but who cares.
“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower.
Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see
if you have enough money to complete it?
-- Luke 14:28
When I was a disciple in our mother church about 13 years ago, one of the brothers had the great idea of selling Christmas trees from the church parking lot. [Actually, it was in the lot next to the church, but that's irrelevant.] How cool is that-- make money for the church and be able to share the Gospel with all the customers at the same time. Once the initial obstacle of getting trees at a reasonable enough price to make a profit was dealt with, there were a few potential problems, however. First of all, the guy heading up this whole proposition had no previous Christmas tree selling experience whatsoever. Hey, what some people lack in experience, they make up for in tenacity or salesmanship. So let's just put that aside for now. The other problem was that his two main helpers who he'd be relying on to do a significant share of the work along with him were ex-cons just recently come into the church from homelessness. Now, I have no problem with ex-cons or anyone else for that matter-- that's what the church is for: To redeem the lost. Some of my best friends in the church I pastor are ex-gangbangers and former convicts. What of it? And if the truth be told, we've got three murderers-- Moses, David and Paul writing quite a bit of the Bible. So if God would use men of questionable character as His instruments in the Bible, I'm sure that these two guys were fine to sell trees. But here's the deal: No one else volunteered to help and when the trees arrived, there was no way he was going to leave the Christmas tree lot solely in the hands of these two guys. He couldn't leave. Period. He was bound to it. As polite and full of holiday cheer as these two may have been, our dear brother wasn't about to leave them as the face of the church and he sure as heck wasn't going to leave them with all the cash coming in. Why tempt them unnecessarily? On top of that, the trees that came were sub-par and in an upscale city where people were willing to spend $200 on a tree, they weren't about to settle for some discount evergreen. Even the people in the church weren't too fond of the idea of purchasing one of those trees, but many bit the bullet and did in the name of supporting a brother. As I watched all this unfold from a distance, I learned a valuable lesson at someone else's expense: Don't start anything-- whether it's a street corner tree lot, a family, or a church ministry unless you're personally prepared to see it through. Whether anyone can, should or would help you out or not. It's your baby, bro. Financially, I don't know how it all panned out, but this brother was a very good friend of mine and still is. He's now a pastor in New Mexico. Being a former rodeo clown and coming from a family of cowboys, he was willing to take the initial risk. After pulling 1800 pound bull's tails to distract them from fallen cowboys, selling a couple of trees with ex-cons was nothing, the real challenge came when no one else stepped-up to take shifts at the lot. Not even me. [ I was too busy, just like everybody else!] He had to pay the price personally and do it himself. And this was on top of his own full time job and family responsibilities.
Rarely do we understand the extent of all costs at the start of a serious long-term project-- marriage, parenthood, ministry, or business venture. I can understand it when people say they had no idea it was going to be so expensive. I've been there. I am there.
But ultimately, it comes down to this:
If you start something, are you prepared to pay the price necessary to finish it?
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