Have we ever wondered what Jesus meant when He said this? "And He said to them all, if any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me". (Luke 9:23)
How can one even deny himself? We may wonder.
Denying oneself simply means denying ourselves of certain things that gives us pleasure just to follow Him.
But many of us Christians today are not ready to deny ourselves of anything. Self denial involves a lot of things:
Self denial means we must be ready to deny ourselves of that delicious food and listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit urging us to wait on the Lord in fasting.
We must be ready to deny ourselves the pleasure of sleep and the comfort of our beds sometimes in order to wrestle on the altar of prayer, both for ourselves and for others.
As youths, we must be ready to deny ourselves the pleasure of premarital sex and go through the pain of waiting till the right time just to obey God.
Even when we are being given a mouth-watering reward to do something we know it's against the will of God, we must be ready and willing to deny ourselves of the pleasure we would have derived from accepting such reward. We must be ready to deny ourselves the pleasure of keeping friends or people around us and go through the shame or pain of rejection just because we stand for the truth. We must be ready to deny ourselves of some pleasures just to make others happy. The list goes on and on.
Jesus denied Himself of the pleasures of heaven and came down to bear our sins on the cross. The cross signifies the suffering, pain, rejection and shame which He bore, and as His followers, we must deny ourselves of some pleasures too, take up our own cross daily, no matter what the cross is and follow Him. The cross cannot be compared to the crown that awaits us.