Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it?
-Luke 14:28, NIV
Everything has a cost. It seems obvious, but sometimes it bears repeating. Everything has a cost. Austrian economists who follow the Kantian principles of von Mises understand economics to be the science of human action and human action to be predicated on choice. Choice is transactional by nature: in selecting one option, one must forego another, even if only temporarily. The cost of doing one thing involves the expenditure of energy and resources to achieve it, but also the loss of doing something else instead.
Sacrifice can be understood in these terms. The pain one endures in order to achieve some noble end is the price paid for it. Such pain can be physical, psychological, or spiritual. In many circumstances there is no clear party to whom the pain is given; it is simply a facet of acquiring the desired end. Many pagan religions, however, saw their gods as the parties to whom payment was rendered in order to obtain supernatural aid. “Do ut des” was the terse Latin expression of this sentiment: “I give so that you may give.”
Grace, defined as unmerited favour, is not a part of this picture. In its purest form, it is selfless giving with no thought of recompense, no obligation attached to the gift in and of itself. Giving that responds to such grace can come from a number of motivations: a desire to acknowledge and show gratitude or a desire to be in no man’s debt. The latter view does not accept grace for what it is, but sees it as an obligation, a chain from which release cannot be gained except by repayment.
Pondering on where we as individuals are and where the Church is as a whole, I find myself seeing both grace and cost as parts of the journey from where we are to where we need to be. God sheds grace on us in order to empower us to do His will on earth, the centre of which is the preach the good news of Jesus Christ to those who have not heard. But answering God’s call involves a cost, if only from the perspective of our old, fleshly selves. One such cost is this: the Gospel is offensive; in preaching it we may lose friends and make enemies. We may lose the respect of those to whom it is the odour of death, even as we gain the love of those to whom it is the pleasant aroma of salvation.
All Along the Watchtower 
Quite true and Jesus saw fit to give us two parables to understand the “cost” of that which is more valuable than all worldly wealth, esteem, or any other ‘worldly good’. The parable of the Pearl of Great Price and the parable concerning the man who found a treasure chest in a field and in both cases the men were of proper understanding as to what they would endure or pay for the Pearl or for the land where lies buried the Treasure Chest.
Every convert, I have ever encountered has had some psychological or rational objections which they grappled with before deciding on their course of action. As you mentioned, a big one is loss of friendships, familial relations and at times jobs one’s spouse or career. It can be rather overwhelming at first but this is the evil spirits who make one think that the gain is not worth the pain involved in the endeavor. Yet in every successful venture, of those who are fully committed to the new life upon which they have embarked, the worst part is the pondering of the decision that they is set before them, not the decision that they ultimately make.
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Scrupulosity is a factor in making certain kinds of decision. The conscience is an important part of our makeup and one which the Apostle Paul spends some time discussing.
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. . . as does the Catholic Church. It is a sin to think one can be perfect and that each detail must be worked out before one can free their conscience though they have received Baptism as an adult or made a good Confession. Scrupulosity in the sense of the Pearl of Great Price is to think one has found a flaw in the Peal which must be resolved before I endure any discomfort before embarking upon a quest to purchase this unmerited Treasure which they stumbled upon. The answers to all the scrupulous ‘stains’ that are imagined by the intellect may indeed stop one in their tracks if they haven’t the faith that ‘what it is’ is precisely what it claims to be. One can then imagine the torturous conscience of a man spending his whole life looking for the proof texts for each imagined flaw whilst examining the world’s arguments against the proof texts. Seems a sad life to me; sort of like watching a battle between the World and the Kingdom of God and not quite sure which is which and thereby not enlisting on a side but content to evaluate both endlessly.
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Pondering on where we as individuals are and where the Church is as a whole, I find myself seeing both grace and cost as parts of the journey from where we are to where we need to be.
Yes, that is the problem for the unsaved who think they are saved. For the saved, the holy ghost takes care of where we need to be. For the saved, the Lord is their shepherd.
As you mentioned, a big one is loss of friendships, familial relations and at times jobs one’s spouse or career.
The saved count is as all joy when we are reviled and hated, because they treated the Lord the same way.
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