Call to discipleship

Jesus then told the crowd and the disciples to come closer, and he said: If any of you want to be my followers, you must forget about yourself. You must take up your cross and follow me.  If you want to save your life,^[a] you will destroy it. But if you give up your life for me and for the good news, you will save it.  What will you gain, if you own the whole world but destroy yourself?  What could you give to get back your soul? - Mark 8:34-37

The number of economic terms Jesus uses is striking - save, give up, gain, destroy, get back.

As Jesus was walking down a road, a man ran up to him. He knelt down, and asked, “Good teacher, what can I do to have eternal life?”
 Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? Only God is good.  You know the commandments. ‘Do not murder. Be faithful in marriage. Do not steal. Do not tell lies about others. Do not cheat. Respect your father and mother.’”
 The man answered, “Teacher, I have obeyed all these commandments since I was a young man.”
 Jesus looked closely at the man. He liked him and said, “There’s one thing you still need to do. Go sell everything you own. Give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in heaven. Then come with me.”
 When the man heard Jesus say this, he went away gloomy and sad because he was very rich.
 Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “It’s hard for rich people to get into God’s kingdom!”  The disciples were shocked to hear this. So Jesus told them again, “It’s terribly hard^[a] to get into God’s kingdom!  In fact, it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into God’s kingdom.”
 Jesus' disciples were even more amazed. They asked each other, “How can anyone ever be saved?”
 Jesus looked at them and said, “There are some things that people cannot do, but God can do anything.”
 Peter replied, “Remember, we left everything to be your followers!”
 Jesus told him:

You can be sure that anyone who gives up home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or land for me and for the good news  will be rewarded. In this world they will be given a hundred times as many houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and pieces of land, though they will also be mistreated. And in the world to come, they will have eternal life.  But many who are now first will be last, and many who are now last will be first. - Mark 10:17-31

Christ cared about this rich man and He discerned the inner workings of his heart.

 "When actress Lisa Whelchel was eighteen, starring in the popular Fact of Life television show, she heard a Christian speaker talk about thousands of starving children in Haiti.  In her book, The Facts of Life and Other Lessons My Father Taught Me, she writes "My eyes were opened to what a privileged life I lived and how totally unaware I was of what was going on in the rest of the world.  I was profoundly moved and convicted."
When the service was over, she went to the front, sobbing, dropped her Rolex watch and her diamond and emerald ring into the speaker's coat pocket and asked him to sell them and give the money to help the poor.  Whelchel went home full of conviction:
"I could easily live on 10 percent of my salary.  I decided to sell my condominium and rent a nice apartment.  It wasn't necessary for a single girl to live in a three-bedroom, two-story condo.  And I certainly didn't need to be driving around in a Porsche. Selling the car and buying a moderate car would free up thousands of dollars.  I had money invested in real estate across the country.  If I sold it, the money would feed tens of thousands of children.  It was a no-brainer.  My zeal was strong.  I knew I had heard from God and that I was doing the right thing."
Unfortunately, those close to Whelchel thought her response was extreme, the product of fleeting guilt feelings.  They told her it was "irrational."  As clear as God's leading seemed, she says, "My resolve began to break down under the weight of their arguments, which seemed full of logic and wisdom.  Eventually, I abandoned the call, closed my eyes, and returned blindly to living a life that seemed to make sense."
She tells the rest of the story:
Less than ten years later, all that money was gone anyway.  A chunk of it had been invested in a high-rise office building in Pittsburgh that went belly-up.  Another significant portion was in Texas land that dried up during the oil crisis and was eventually foreclosed upon.  When I got married, I sold my condo and bought a house during the California real estate boom in the 1980's, only to give it back to the bank three years later when the bottom fell out of the market.  The Fact of Life was canceled, and I spent all the cash I had making payments on everything for as long as I could.  At twenty-eight, I was broke.  Whelchel concludes, "God was trying to get me to invest my money in heaven, where it would be safe, but I thought it was too risky to take him at his word."