Thor Magnus

“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” – Winston Churchill

There is but one God in heaven, and He sees all things…but oh how He loves us!

in its most innocent form is in the end more harmful to the soul than in its most obvious form.  Live in the light!

Cost is a relative term.  It is constantly changing based on markets, perception and interest.  When I buy something I don’t think about its effect on my life, only that I want or need it.  However, I find that the more it costs me, the more committed I am to it.  In some ways, what I choose to own comes to own me as much as I own it.  What I mean is that the more I own, the more of a consideration it becomes for me and the more time I have to and/or want to give to it.

I have a family and I am interested in providing for them, both their immediate and non-immediate needs.  My kids, like me, are very interested in things.   The new and shiny, popular, useful and most of the time just a short term fascination.  They are constantly collecting materials to satisfy their interests and I can’t seem to keep up with all the things they want my wife and I to get for them.  The more it costs the more they want it.  In this I notice a pattern that comes naturally to all human beings, the desire to gain.  Christ touched on this as well, relating it back to the most important “thing”, a personal relationship with Him as your leader and friend.  Most would be familiar with the statement “count the cost” but  do we really know what it means and why Jesus said it?

To start, I don’t think He was talking about the cost of a new TV or car.  I personally have not overcome my desire to have new and expensive things, even after 11 years in full time field ministry.  However, I feel I understand a little bit more about what this means.  Spend some time reading Luke 14:25-35.  In its context Jesus isn’t saying that there is a variation of cost to living as a true disciple, depending on the person, he is saying there is one cost, everything you have.  By counting the cost, Christ is outlining that you can’t be a true disciple without being willing to pay with everything you have because without all you are you will never be able to own it.  Not just your material possessions.  It may cost you your family, your home, your job, your friends, you future expectations of what your life may look like, your education, least of all your money and maybe your life.  He is saying there is no predicting what may happen to you if you choose to be his disciple.  You may be imprisoned or worse yet, called an extreme Christian by your western culture church friends.  I don’t want to over dramatize this but I can’t help but think of some applicable modern stories.  I heard of a European missionary couple recently who went on the field, in a third world country about 15 years ago…..They were there for several years and lost their walking, talking, beautiful child to malaria.  They still have no regrets, looking back on the hundreds who came to Christ in those years.   I think of Elizabeth Elliot and her husband George, who went into the jungle in the ‘50s to share the gospel with a distant tribe.  In turn the tribe murdered her husband, only for Elizabeth to go back to them in forgiveness and win a hearing for the greatest story ever told.

In the west we seldom need to face these life and death struggles of sharing the Gospel.  Most of the time we just let the comfort and/or justified busyness of this world wash over us without a second thought and break to attend church on Sunday.  Most believers live their lives with an occasional interaction with idea of suffering in a churchsermon or if by chance on television, and I find many treat it as a necessary inconvenience of being a Christian.  I can’t deny the inconvenient nature of following Jesus in a western cultural context, who has turned Christianity into the next great speaker, mega-church, worship song and Christian author, an Osteen style Christianity for the masses.  A culture oriented towards comfort and experien

I can relate, how does the term “Jesus bids you come and die” fit in the world of drive-through and instant coffee?   I won’t even deny that as a missionary in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, I have everything I could ever need. But what I am trying to say is that Jesus is asking for a radical abandonment to a life where you are pointing people to Him with everything you have. That you would knowing Him more in the process of following Him, regardless of wealth categories.  Without abandoning what the world has to offer, giving up all you have, and adhering to Christ, you will never know what it is to be His disciple.  Whether you are called to Tanzanian orphans, Norwegian teenagers or the families across the street, Jesus is asking the question, “Will you do what it takes to reach them, even if it costs you all you have.”

My struggle for the last two years has been trying to stay in Norway and continue to share the Gospel, and simultaneously afford a home for my now large family of 6, whom I love dearly.  It would have been easy to move back to the US 2 years ago when our housing situation got very difficult, and no one would have blamed us if we had packed up after 9 years.  In the US we have lots of family and friends.  It’s where Kate and I grew up and house prices are a fraction of what they cost in Stavanger, Norway.  Instead, knowing that by leaving country the ministry might fall apart, and lost kids who number in the 100s of thousands in Norway might never get the opportunity to hear and process the Gospel, we stayed.  It has been very hard but I don’t regret what we’ve given up to stay.  We chose to buy what we could afford and what God provided, a fixer upper, in a very needy community with plans to start reaching kids and parents.

In the end, my kids aren’t getting sick, I haven’t had to lose an arm, or been ostracized from the rest of my family but I have felt what it means to give up what you have, only to see the Lord bless us in return with full life and an adventure only He could have provided.  I still feel the discomfort of following Jesus when I am forced to rebuild a house myself and spend countless hours away from Kate and kids on ministry trips, or the strain we feel by living in one of the most expensive and secular places on earth, but I have come to know and am growing in the understanding that He is really all I have and all I want.  I want to own that and I know he wants this for all of His creation.

If you follow Christ, it has to cost you something.  Someone has to go to “them” and tell them that “they were beautifully and wonderfully made” by a God who died for them.  However, it comes as a comfort to me, that in light of what Jesus paid, I am not paying much at all.

“He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”