Series of "Are you a Fan or a Follower?

What are you willing to give up in order to follow Jesus? Your family? Your life?
That is what Kyle Idelman describes is the difference between being a fan or a follower.  I follower is willing to give up their whole life to Jesus.  A fan won't leave behind all they have to give up their life to surrender to Christ.  A follower senses the call to surrender all they have to a relationship with Jesus Christ. A follower is totally committed to Jesus.
In Luke 9:57-62, there are instances where people are faced with the decision to surrender everything to Jesus.  The first man says in verse 57, "I will follow you wherever you go."  Jesus then says in verse 58, "Foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head." We as followers of Christ have to be willing to go wherever Jesus leads us.
While in verse 59, Jesus called another to follow him.  This man said, "Lord first let me go and bury my father." In the next verse Jesus replies to the man, "Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God." We try to make excuses and put off following God.  As sinful people prone to wander to put off surrendering everything to Christ.
In today's culture we have so many things to do and accomplish on a day to day basis.  Following Christ becomes just one of those things we put off on our list of things we need to do.  This can be ongoing process unless we stop making excuses in life and ways to get around giving up everything we have for faith in Christ.
In Matthew 4:18-22 describes how Jesus' disciples first followed him.  In verse 20 it says they at once followed him and in 22 it describes how immediately they gave up everything and followed him.  This is what Jesus wants from those that follow him.  Jesus requires us to give up everything and follow him at once.  As followers, we can't be waiting for life to clear up or make up another excuse to get out of following him at that moment, it has to be right now or we won't do it.
The author of the book tells a story about a teenager girl's funeral that he did who surrendered her life to Christ.  He read her journal on the day of her funeral. In it, she describes how surrendered to God completely she was.  Her dad says she didn't care about grades, college, what car she drove, what house she lived in, or many goals scored, all she cared about was her relationship with Jesus Christ.  That is the only thing that should matter to us.
Are you willing to give up everything for him?
God called me to give up everything for him in the summer of my sophomore year of high school.  Years later, at D-focus at called me to give up all that I have to him and be in a more desperately dependent relationship with him.  During that time, I sensed a call for a total surrender to God.
In the last section of these verses another person says in verse 61, "I will follow you Lord; but first let me say good-by to my family."  Jesus was agitated at this and said in verse 62, "No one who puts his hand to the plow is fit for service in the kingdom of God."
Becoming followers of God requires us to make a decision.  Do we want to give up all of our life for Jesus? There are many instances even in the Bible of people having to give up things for Jesus from Nicodemus unsure of whether to give up his prestige, the rich young ruler unwilling to give up his stuff, and Elisha having to give up his wealth.  In Psalm 106: 19-20, it describes how the people bowed down before a golden calf when Moses received the ten commandments.  19 "At Horeb they made a calf
    and worshiped an idol cast from metal.
20 They exchanged their glorious God
    for an image of a bull, which eats grass".  We have to be willing to surrender everything to God and not hold on to anything.
I want to leave you with this on a true follower of Christ.  William Borden, the son of a dairy billionaire, who did his undergraduate with at Yale and graduate at Princeton left everything to follow Christ.  He left millions to reach an Muslims.  He left these three phrases in his journal that was found before he died.  He wrote down the phrases No regrets, No reserves, and No retreats.    One thing we can learn from him is to say yes to Christ in everything and no to our self and it's desires.