Deny Yourself To Follow God

To deny yourself means to disregard or to not be led by your fleshly desires and interests. Jesus knew the potential danger of this because He said, "Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me" (see Mark 8:34). The Message bible says, "Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead". The only way to follow Jesus is to let Him lead.

We must deny ourselves to the things of this world to follow God. Worldly pursuits draw out interest away from God. If we are to please God and do His will, we cannot afford to any distractions.

To consistently accomplish the will of God, we must consistently deny the desires of our flesh. You see, our flesh isn’t going anywhere. It will be there all the time. We have to train ourselves to follow the desires of the inward spiritual man. If we belong to Christ, our inner man has been recreated in the image of God. Denying ourselves means following after the part of us that is made after God.

Denying ourselves to follow God will lead us into the highest quality of life possible on this earth. It will mean putting our whole heart, soul and mind into God’s Word and trusting what it says. It will mean more than lip service; there is enough of that going on in churches already. Lip service won’t get you to what I am talking about. This people draweth nigh unto me their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me Matthew 15: 8.

Give God your whole heart, deny yourself and let Him do a living work within you. Don’t fall into the trap of pleasing your fleshly desires. People that give their energy to gratifying the flesh will never walk in the power of God.

So let’s commit ourselves to honoring God’s Word by denying ourselves to follow God. It is the only way to experience the blessings and power of God to the degree that He desires for us.

By: Lindia Brown