In Luke 14, Jesus says you must be willing to hate your birth family, your married family and even your own life to be a disciple of Jesus
What this means is you must become aloof to the passions of your married and birth family and to your own passions as well so that no desire or rejection by them or by your own desires and wants will interfere with your allowance of God and integration into your spiritual purpose.
Jesus said you must be willing to take up you cross. This means doing the bodily and physical work God requires in your service to him whether that means doing house chores when your tired or not slacking off in your manual labour job when the boss is not watching you.
Jesus said if you want to build a tower you must count the cost. This means you must think, not only about what you want but also what steps you will have to take to get there and maintain your gains once they’ve been achieved. If heaven or medical practice is your goal, it might mean you have to abandon some of your hobbies so you will have time to study. If marriage is your goal, you might have to work on building your career to accommodate it.
When Jesus talks about not fighting a king who is stronger than you but submitting to him instead, It means to give up the goals in your life that serve only your earthly desires and trade them for new goals that will serve both your earthly life and also your life after death such as a psychological or medical job where you are both saving lives and also supporting yourself and your family financially.
The reference to salt is a signal both for sacrifice and accountability and responsibility and knowledge; It means you must always make the emotional and spiritual and experiential sacrifices that you need to grow and improve and heal and change and help and bless and curtail. To to be hungry for righteousness is to be hungry for self improvement and to thirst for righteousness is to long for the goodness of God by aligning your spirit through sin expulsion so that you can have the emotional capacity to receive it.
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