What is the cost?

Activate Students, this morning as I am thinking of how great and completely awesome our God is. I am reminded of the cost. Yeah you know what I'm talking about right? Everything worth while has a price tag attached to it, you know what I mean? Life around us goes by so quickly, at times it drags however all in all it goes by super quick. Have you ever considered that it is probably a good idea to think of the things that you are spending your time on? Your time is valuable, you only have 24 hours a day and you want to make sure you are getting the best out of your time right? Well that is the kind of thing I am talking about, we need to realize that there is always a price tag on everything we do and are about. Yesterday is gone, those 24 hours you can never re-claim. It would be interesting if you could rewind, pause or maybe even fast-forward somethings and yet that is not something that is possible in our reality. I know I'm probably going on a tangent here, so keep reading it will make sense in a bit. I am talking about how every thing we do has a cost attached to it, I will give you some examples...

Brad decides to go to a Friday night party that some friends are putting together, the one thing he did not realize was that some of the people at the party belonged to a gang. As the evening progressed some rival gang members drive by and perform a drive by shooting. It just happens that Brad "In the wrong place at the wrong time" is leaving the party and is shoot in the head and dies on the scene. I know this is a drastic story, however one that is true and happens. Brad payed a steep price that was not worth paying, wouldn't you agree?

Next...

Stephanie is a very beautiful and highly intelligent girl, she has had a boyfriend for a couple of years and now she is a sophomore in high school. Life is good, she participates in sports, has good grades and her life seems to be going in the right direction. One night as she and her boyfriend come out of the theater he suggests going for a drive before he takes her home, one thing leads to another and she gives in to his request for sex. You know where this is going, yes she ends up pregnant, her life has abruptly changed. She decides that she is not going to give up her baby to adoption, she wants to raise this child and yes she ends up losing her boyfriend and she is now carrying the waite of a mother and a father. Again a drastic story, yet one that happens frequently.

So the next story is a dozy, check it... read it, read it and read it again and see what God tells you through it.

Joshua 5:1-9

5 When all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and the Canaanite kings along the seacoast heard how God had stopped the Jordan River before the People of Israel until they had crossed over, their hearts sank; the courage drained out of them just thinking about the People of Israel.

^2–3 At that time God said to Joshua, "Make stone knives and circumcise the People of Israel a second time." So Joshua made stone knives and circumcised the People of Israel at Foreskins Hill.

^4–7 This is why Joshua conducted the circumcision. All the males who had left Egypt, the soldiers, had died in the wilderness on the journey out of Egypt. All the people who had come out of Egypt, of course, had been circumcised, but all those born in the wilderness along the way since leaving Egypt had not been. The fact is that the People of Israel had walked through that wilderness for forty years until the entire nation died out, all the men of military age who had come out of Egypt but had disobeyed the call of God. God vowed that these would never lay eyes on the land God had solemnly promised their ancestors to give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. But their children had replaced them. These are the ones Joshua circumcised. They had never been circumcised; no one had circumcised them along the way.

⁸ When they had completed the circumcising of the whole nation, they stayed where they were in camp until they were healed.

⁹God said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled a way the reproach of Egypt." That’s why the place is called The Gilgal. It’s still called that.

So...there is always a price to pay, the question, what is the cost? And is the reward or what you will reap?, worth the Cost? Something to think about.