I have come to understand that true discipleship is the repeated work of God to bring us to the end of ourselves—bringing us to an ever deepening knowledge of our very real state before Him, a state of brokenness. In that place all we have is Jesus, His love for us, His all sufficient grace for us—which is enough.

It was Peter's journey—through the three denials then on to where he and the other disciples returned to their old livelihood of fishing; at that point, when Peter knew how fickle and broken a man he really was, Jesus then restored him, gave him a ministry and subsequently filled him with His Spirit. It was the rest of the disciples’ journey too as they took Peter's lead and they too insisted that they would die with Jesus—only hours before all fleeing into the darkness at the arrest of Jesus.

In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve hid themselves in the nakedness of their shame; in the Garden of Gethsemane, a young man dressed only in a bed linen, nearly arrested, wrested free of the bed sheet and ran naked into the darkness—a representative of the whole human race. When Jesus commanded that we count the cost, we mistakenly have thought that He wants us to count the cost in order to see if we have what it takes to be His follower; maybe counting the cost is to see that indeed we do not have what it takes and therefore all need a savior to take up our cross.

After the resurrection, the risen Christ said this repeatedly through Paul, the very thing He had said Himself in John 15:5,

"...for apart from me you can do nothing."

In 2 Corinthians 3,

"Not that we are adequate in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God...."

In chapter 4,

"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, so that the surpassing greatness of the power will be of God and not from ourselves; we are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body."

In chapter 12,

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong."

I have come to believe that the true journey of discipleship is a path that leads into the heart of our brokenness and weakness before Him—where we come to learn to "rest in His unchanging grace." In Galatians Paul puts it this way,

"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."

Jesus, indeed, carried our cross to Golgatha where He gave Himself up, giving up His spirit, giving up His very life, that we might live—all for the love of you and me! In hallowed moments of complete brokenness, when everything has fallen apart, we are left only with Jesus, and He is enough. He is always enough!