In 2014 I had the chance to spend a week with a group of leaders from the underground church in Iran. The Americans were assigned to be their teachers at a weeklong training, but we found quickly that these amazing Christians were far more equipped to teach us than we were to teach them.

I loved hearing their stories about how they learned of Jesus and decided to follow him. In a country that punishes by death conversion and baptism to the Christian faith, those who had shared Christianity with each of them had risked their lives in order to do so. In some cases, God had revealed Godself to them in dreams and visions that sounded as though they came straight out of the biblical story.

Because every one of these Iranian Christians was a first-generation convert to Christianity, each had to make a hard decision about what and when to tell their family of their decision. In one case, after an adult son told his father that he was now a follower of Isa Masih (Jesus Christ), the father called all the family together and announced that the son and his wife and children were no longer part of their family and that no one would speak to them again. Without hesitation, the son pulled his key chain out of his pocket and removed the key to his parents’ home (where he and his family lived) and the key to his father’s shop (where he and his wife worked) and placed them on the table, saying, “No home or job or even family is as valuable to me as Jesus the Messiah.”

In this passage in Luke, Jesus does not praise family quarrels, but he does say that there should be no force on earth stronger than our loyalty to him. Is there anything that stands between you and a life fully devoted to following Jesus?