Listen to the story of a rich man who asked Jesus what price he needed to pay in order to be saved in today's Scripture Reading from Mark 9-10 (ESV) 

Jesus said to the rich man, "You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."  Why would Jesus command this man to sell all that he had?  Was it because Jesus hates it when we have possessions, and so He only wants the non-Christians of this world to own stuff?  That is what it looks like at first glance!

But we know that's not how Jesus feels about possessions from other parts of the Scriptures, such as "The Parable of the Dishonest Manager" in Luke 16:1-13, where Jesus tells His disciples to be wise in the ways that they use worldly wealth to further the cause of the Kingdom of God.  What Jesus is really concerned with here in Mark 10 is the question of just how much this man would be willing to give-up to follow Him!  In other words, the "price" that this rich man puts on the value of following Jesus.  This rich man was willing to pay the price of obeying God's Law, but he wasn't willing to pay the price of giving-up everything he owned to follow Jesus.  And that was the real problem; to this rich man, Jesus wasn't "priceless".  There was a limit to how much he was willing to pay to follow him.

Ask yourself this: can I honestly say that I would be willing to give up everything that I have if I knew that Jesus wanted me to for His sake?  How about the things that I own?  How about my life?

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