The "go" of unconditional indentification

"One thing thou lackest..come take up the cross and follow Me."

Mark 10:21

The rich young ruler had the Master passion to be perfect. When he saw Jesus Christ, he wanted to be like Him. Our LORD never puts personal holiness to the fore when He calls a disciple, He puts absolute anihilation of my right to myself and idnetification with Himself  - a relationship with Himself ub which there is no other relationship. 

Luke 14:26 has nothing to do with salvationor sanctification, but unconditional identification with Jesus Christ. Very few of us know the absolute "go" of abandonment to Jesus. 

" then Jesus behold him and loved him." The look of Jesus will mean aheart broken forever from alleginance to any other person or thing, Has Jesus ever looked at you? The look of Jesus transforms and transfixes. Where you are "soft" with GOD is where the LORD has looked at you. If you are hard and vindicative, insistent on your own way, certain that the other person is more likely to be in the wrong than you are, it is an indication that there are whole tracts of your nature that have never been transformed by His gaze.

" One thing thou lackest..." The only "good thing" from Jesus Christ's point of view is union with Himself abd nothing in between. " Sell whatsoever thou hast..." I must reduce myself until I am a mere consious man. U must fundamentally renounce possesions of all kinds, not to save my soul ( only one thing saves a man - absolute reliance upon Jesus) - but in order to follow Jesus.

" Come and follow Me." And the road us the way He went.

Excerpt from My Utmost for His highest  by Oswald Chamber