25 Days of Denying

You can’t follow after Jesus without denying yourself. Jesus puts it quite simply: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves” (Luke 9:23).
To deny yourself isn’t just the idea of saying no to yourself — or even resisting yourself. It’s not simply giving up something you really, really want. It’s so much more than putting something off for the delayed gratification of receiving it at a later date. The idea of denying yourself is that you don’t look in your own direction. It’s saying, “I choose Jesus. I choose Jesus over my family. I choose Jesus over career goals. I am His completely. I choose Jesus over getting drunk. I choose Jesus over looking at porn. I choose Jesus over a redecorated house. I choose Jesus over my freedom. I choose Jesus over what other people may think of me.”
A follower makes a decision every day to deny self and choose Jesus, even if it costs everything.
25 days of denying starts right now…

Pull the Plug

Jesus said . . . “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.” . . .
Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. (John 11:25-26, 43-44)

Lazarus did not have a near-death experience. He was completely, undeniably dead. First, he was miserably sick, and then he passed away. He expired. He kicked the bucket. He bought the farm. He bit the dust. However you want to say it, make no mistake about it: Lazarus DIED! His sisters washed his body and wrapped it in linen. Weeping, they laid his corpse in a cave-tomb and leaned a flat stone across the opening.
We like to read this story because it ends so well, with Jesus arriving apparently too late — 4 days later — only to dramatically raise Lazarus from the dead and give him back to his family.
I wonder, though, if we devote enough time to thinking about the implications for our own lives. In our excitement about the resurrection part, do we forget that you can’t raise a person from the dead unless he or she is actually DEAD? Do we really get it — that we need to be dead people ourselves before Jesus can infuse us with His life?
2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” Colossians 3:3 says it even more clearly: “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” The expectation is obvious: When Jesus invites us to follow Him, it’s an invitation to die. Only when we die to ourselves can we truly live for Him. That kind of surrender goes against every instinct we have. We want to hang on. We can’t seem to let go. We refuse to pull the plug. But it is only when we die to ourselves that we can finally experience the resurrection power of Christ.

Denying Today
Someone has said that the hardest part of dying to ourselves is that we have to do it daily. Write out a prayer for today, laying your life at the feet of Jesus. Reaffirm that He is not just your Savior, but your Lord as well. Don’t hurry through this, and prayerfully write only what you mean. For today, list what attitudes, priorities, or sins — what part of you — you will allow to die.