Costly obedience?

Right now I am chewing on this passage from My Utmost for His Highest...

"If we obey God, it is going to cost other people more than it costs us, and that is where the pain begins. If we are in love with our Lord, obedience does not cost us anything— it is a delight. But to those who do not love Him, our obedience does cost a great deal. If we obey God, it will mean that other people’s plans are upset. They will ridicule us as if to say, “You call this Christianity?” We could prevent the suffering, but not if we are obedient to God. We must let the cost be paid...A lack of progress in our spiritual life results when we try to bear all the costs ourselves. And actually, we cannot. Because we are so involved in the universal purposes of God, others are immediately affected by our obedience to Him. Will we remain faithful in our obedience to God and be willing to suffer the humiliation of refusing to be independent? Or will we do just the opposite and say, “I will not cause other people to suffer”? We can disobey God if we choose, and it will bring immediate relief to the situation, but it will grieve our Lord. If, however, we obey God, He will care for those who have suffered the consequences of our obedience. We must simply obey and leave all the consequences with Him." (January 11)

This counter-intuitive idea of the cost of obedience brings up hard questions for me.  First of all, it is far easier for me to consider how my obedience affects me than how it might affect others.  Jesus talks about counting the cost of our obedience in Luke 14 where He reminds us that we must be willing to give up everything to follow Him.  I think in many ways the decision He requires is both a one-time and an every-day decision.  When we first choose to follow Christ, we are making a choice that He is worth any cost, but it is our day-to-day lives which reveal exactly how much we must be willing to sacrifice for Him.  We must daily be willing to continue to choose Jesus above all.

However, it seems that what Chambers is suggesting is that our love for the Lord should cause us to always delight in obedience rather than focusing on what trivial things we must sacrifice.  I have certainly not reached that level of obedience yet in my life, and I pray that I will continue to grow in this area.  I draw a parallel here to how I love Jonathan--when I focus on my love for him, doing any task, however unpleasant, is something to be enjoyed rather than dreaded.  However, when I choose to focus on myself, doing unpleasant tasks seems much more difficult.

Moving on to Chambers' second point, I don't remember ever purposefully pondering the effects of my submission on the people around me.  There have certainly been times in my life when my decisions to obey the Lord did hurt other people, but I don't think that I specifically "count the cost" to someone else when I make decisions.  In general, I do try to be fair to others in decision making when it is not an issue of right or wrong, obedience or disobedience; the idea of considering others as more important than oneself is a lesson I have learned both early and often.

Thankfully, I can't remember a time when I allowed the cost to someone else to change the decision that the Lord was calling me to make.  On the other hand, I know that people in general (including myself specifically!) are often blinded by pride and selfishness to seeing the truth of our own motives.  I pray that the Lord will reveal to me if there are places in my life where I am allowing my desire to please others to negatively influence my willingness to respond to Him.  I am thankful to know that in every choice that He calls me to make, He is looking out not only for my best interest, but also the interest of those around me, for whom His love extends just as far and deep as it does for me.