Prices of following Jesus -Matt 8

Matt5:1 "When Jesus saw the crowds, He went up on the mountain; and after He sat down, His disciples came to Him. 2He opened His mouth and began o teach them...
Matt8:1 "When Jesus came down from the mountain, large crowds followed him."

It seems that when Jesus was with the crowd, He performed lots of miracles. But when He's with His disciples, He did a lot of teachings. Some people from the crowd came up to Him wanting to follow Him, but Jesus confronted them with the price that's involved.(8:18-22)
The disciples were required and trained to stretch their faith. They experienced miracles after turmoil and testing. (23-27) The crowd, however, received miracles upon requesting.
Often we're mostly interested in having our prayers answered, but Jesus is more interested in the changes in ourselves. That's why He said,"seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you."

Matt8:28-34 speaks to me the key to the revival or salvation of an entire city, nation or region. Often there are dominating spirits over a region. And after dealing with the spirits of that particular area, there will be breakthrough in evangelism. But then again, people will be challenged with the price of following Jesus: to change their sinful lifestyle and take up their own crosses.

Followers of Jesus --Matthew 4

Matt 4 :18-25
Two different kinds of following: one followed by the call. It's a private, individual thing. The follower sees Jesus Himself and leaves everything behind. The follower is a leader and he can handle any challenges that will come his way. He follows who Jesus is.
The other kind of following is after what Jesus does. It's following the trend. There's a crowd. It's public, it's exciting, it's fun. It doesn't really require any challenges or sacrifice. Although the miracles were big, a lot of the followers fell away when the heat of challenges come into scene.

Three challenges in the desert -- Matthew 4

A lot of the Christians are in some kind of the desert. And I've been thinking of what kind of challenges Jesus faced in His desert.

1. Turning stones into bread
With that Jesus said,"Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God."
This reminds me of Abraham's experience. He was hungry, for a child. He turned a stone into bread by producing Ishmail. This was not a word that proceeded out of the mouth of God. He was hungry and he couldn't wait any longer and he made it happen in his own way.

2. Throw yourself down
With that Jesus replied, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test."
There's a big difference between having faith in God and testing God.
To have faith means that God says something, and we simply believe and accept that this is gonna happen, no matter what it takes. Test on the other hand means, that God hasn't said anything, and we make up something and tell God to do it the way we want. "test" simply means I give you a task and see if your good enough to do it. It's like, I want something happen in my life, and I want God to do it how, when I want it.

3. You can have all things
Jesus said,"Go, Satan! For it is written, You shall worship the Lord your God, and serve Him only."
This is an ultimate challenge. It's like Abraham facing the demand of God to sacrifice Isaac on the altar. He can have what he wanted -- Isaac, which he held so dear to his heart. He could choose to have and keep his dream. Anyway, it's God's promise to him, isn't it? It's all he wanted. But, would he choose to live without Isaac? Would his life be complete without God's promise? Would he worship the Lord and serve Him only?
Sometimes we're allowed to have something, but not in His perfect will. Would we sacrifice His perfect will and perfect timing in order to have what we want and dream? Would we allow just a little bit of sin and ourselves? Just a little bit of something that's outside of God Himself?

I believe these are the challenges we all gonna face at some point of time.