3 Words…
Suffering
Striving
Struggling

I. The Cost of prioritizing and proclaiming Christ can be Suffering

“In the sense Paul intends here, Christ continues to suffer in His members. This truth was impressed on Paul’s mind in the very moment of his conversion when he heard the voice of Christ say [to him as Saul, a persecutor of Christians in Acts 9:16], “Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” Christ would tell Ananias, “I will show Paul how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake”.

-- E.K. Simpson & F.F. Bruce
Commentary on Colossians

“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I do know. The only ones among you who will truly be happy are those who have sought and found how to serve others.”

-Albert Schweitzer

“The word ‘disciple’ occurs 269 times in the New Testament. The title ‘Christian’ is found only three times, and even then, it was first introduced to prefer precisely to disciples.”

-- Dallas Willard
The Divine Conspiracy

“Christianity is not a series of truths in the plural,
but rather ‘truth’ spelled with a capital ‘T.’ Truth about total reality, not just about religious things. Biblical Christianity is Truth concerning total reality— and the intellectual holding of that Truth and then living in the light of that Truth.”

-- Francis Schaeffer