Counting the Cost // Becoming a Kingdom Builder, Part 4

<p class="p1">Way too many people set out to follow Jesus and then they discover – hang on a minute, this being a disciple thing, this kingdom building thing is a lot harder than I thought. Those people are the ones who forgot to count the cost. Those people are almost always the ones who fall by the wayside.</p> <p> </p> <h4><span style="color: #ff9900;">Are You Building God's Kingdom Or Your Empire? </span></h4> <p>As you can imagine, I get a lot of emails from people who listen to this program and many, many times, they’re struggling with something in their lives. One man the other day emailed me and he was struggling about a lie that he’d told a few years back, and in his heart of hearts he didn’t know whether God would ever forgive him.</p> <p>Another woman recently wrote to me about one of her children who’d gone seriously off the rails. People going through a marriage breakdown, people going through a divorce. People struggling to be accepted in their church. People who have lost their jobs. There are so many issues that we face in life, and I guess sitting where I sit, I get to see a pretty comprehensive cross-section of those.</p> <p>And it doesn’t seem to matter where people live, in a wealthy country, in a poor country; east or west; north or south – the issues are pretty much the same.</p> <p>I even had an email from a woman living on the streets who’d sold her body into prostitution just to be able to afford to buy food. Despite all the growing affluence and all the things that you and I can buy with our hard-earned money. She’s a tough old world out there. Real people struggling with real things.</p> <p>And into all of that, walks Jesus. How relevant is He really? How much of a difference is He really making? Believe it or not, that’s something I often ask of myself, because by sharing the Word of God with you and many others who listen, if it ain’t making a real difference, if it’s not giving real answers, if it’s not touching people’s hearts with the powerful love of God, then frankly, I’m wasting