Greetings all! If you’ve been following along, we’ve been pursuing a theme that life is a journey and our mission is to discover, “What’s the best way to travel?”

We then discussed some strategy-defining “If statements” and evaluated their merit. We’ve concluded that the evidence is overwhelming that there is a Personal Creator of the universe, aka God, Who offers us an eternal life through belief in His Son, Jesus, and that our best strategy for our life’s journey is to adhere to Christ’s simple command to “Follow Him”.

In the business world, there’s a valuable metric to calculate in your decision-making process. It’s called Return-on-Investment or ROI. You put time, effort, and money (cost) into a project and the ROI tells you the value of what you get back. The goal is to maximize the value you receive for your effort–maximize your ROI.

So, what’s the best strategy to employ when following Jesus? What level of effort and commitment should we pursue to optimize our ROI? Let’s consider four methods that cover the full range of possibilities: None, Dying Breath, Hokie Pokie, and All in.

Let’s say you take a pass on Jesus’ command to follow Him. It’s just not for you. He did advise us to consider the cost. There is a price to pay for being His disciple. There is a cross that we must carry (see my first blog dated Feb 14th) as His follower. Jesus foresaw this possibility and posed the ROI question Himself, “For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?” (Mk 8:36)

What indeed?

Consider this for a moment. Even if you were declared Ruler of the World and the whole world served you as their King, the value of that title and the associated wealth and prestige that went with it are still not worth it! The ROI is a big negative! Whatever the cost is to follow Christ, even if it costs you your life, is but a pittance when compared to the cost of rejecting Him. That scenario is a total loss!

What about the other options? The dying breath option is to live however you want with a last moment confession to follow Christ. This is the Russian roulette method and the benchmark or hero is the thief on the cross who in his last hour before death, converted through his confession of “Lord, remember me when You come into Your Kingdom.” (Luke 23:42)

Is this a worthwhile strategy to pursue? Well, he did make it to paradise. However, what if you die before your conversion? Shiver me timbers matey, because you’re toast! Mere words are inadequate to describe the horror of such a mistake. Since that’s too risky, perhaps attempt some Part way/Hokie Pokie strategy where you accept Christ as your Lord, but try to keep your options open? You put your left foot in, you take your left foot out…it’s a follow Christ and the world together–a have your cake and eat it too mindset. That lukewarm approach of compromise is nearly as bad. When does a half-hearted or dual allegiance effort toward anything yield good results? You cannot serve both God and the world.

All of those methods are foolish. There’s only one way to follow Jesus and that’s an “All In” commitment. He expects nothing less. Besides, you have a chance to hang out with the Creator of the universe! Why would you not want that incredible experience 24/7?

Additionally, God has a rewards program for all His followers and it’s a program that’s literally out of this world! In terms of an investment strategy, what is better? Investing in things of this world which will pass away or storing your treasures in heaven which will last for all eternity? You don’t need a finance degree to figure out that answer!

So how does God’s rewards program work? That’s a great question and we’ll discuss that topic in our next blog.