As a disciple of Jesus Christ I must come to terms with my family, my loved ones. My natural tendency is to become dependent upon them—upon my wife for physical comfort, my children for companionship. If I do this, I am going against everything that characterizes the discipled man. The key word is dependence. God has graciously given me a wife and children, but they must not be my dependence.
I must relate to my loved ones as Abraham related to his son Isaac. On Moriah, Abraham was willing to sacrifice his dearest possession. So I must consign my loved ones to the altar, I must sacrifice them, I must give them up. I must cut clean the lines of dependency forever.
To be dependent means to be vulnerable to tragedy. I have seen many of God’s children devastated because they built their lives on their loved ones, and then God called the loved ones home! I must always live, in a sense, as if God had already called my loved ones home. I must always place the shadow of the cross over their fair faces.
This does not mean loving my dear ones less, or enjoying them less. It simply means I cannot love them without putting Jesus between us. And it reserves the right for Him as the third party to control the relationship.
I think that is what Jesus meant when He said that unless I hated my loved ones, I could not be His disciple (Luke 14:26). If I consign my dear ones to Moriah it seems like hatred, but it really isn’t; rather, it is the deepest kind of love, both to my Savior and my dearest earthly treasures. That is the inseparable kind of love Paul refers to in Romans 8, and it is born in a Calvary relationship with those who are very close and very precious to me.
“‘Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?’ He said to Him, ‘Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.’ He said to him, ‘Tend My lambs’” (John 21:15).
Daily with the King 