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Choose to Deny Yourself

We read in Mark 8:34 that “When He had called the people to Himself, with His disciples also, He said to them, ‘Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul? For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him the Son of Man also will be ashamed when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels’” (Mark 8:34-38).

If obedience is hard, self-denial is next to impossible. Saying “no” to our legitimate needs, desires, and interests does not resonate with us. We struggle to imagine that anything sufficiently beneficial could come from that to warrant our engaging in it.

While we might be able to obey with a bad attitude, we’ll only choose self-denial when we are convinced that it is right. Only when we know what is right will we be able to turn away from our natural inclinations, (pursuing pleasure, comfort, benefits, the advantage) to engage in serving others.

Self denial requires us to internalize God’s purpose and standards so that, even though they seem to conflict with what we might think are our personal best interests, we behave as they call us to. I have known people whose personal interests seemed to be taking them in a particular direction, but because of a desire to be more useful for God, they have pursued other academic and career options. Admittedly, more people change direction when they are forced to through failure or job loss, but some choose to deny themselves to follow their vision of what God wants to do with their lives.

This isn’t always a matter of obedience in the strictest sense of that word. It is broader than that, encompassing not a choice to do or not do a particular thing, but a general acceptance of God’s ways. It is a good thing when we arrive at this point because it represents a step forward in faith when we align ourselves with God’s purposes, not just for the fear of punishment or the inducement of some kind of benefit, but because we believe that God has our best interest at heart. Even though the final outcome is not readily apparent to us, we trust Him.

Self denial involves saying no to our natural impulses and refusing to give ourselves permission to sin. That is a phrase I have started to use lately because I think it lies at the root of a lot of bad behaviour. You get into a situation where you feel weak or hard done by and you think you deserve some kind of reward. So you do whatever it is that takes God’s place in your life. You spend money you don’t have, drink too much, engage in illicit sex of some kind, express rage by belittling someone else - there are as many different sinful expressions as there are people. We recognize that this behaviour does not conform to what God wants for us, but somehow we feel we deserve this. Do you ever give yourself permission to sin?

In Ravi Zacharias’ book “Jesus Among Other Gods,” he wrote of a man who fell into the habit of “balancing the scales with a bit of ‘personal viewing.’” (Jesus Among Other Gods, p 104) After dealing with any kind of stressful situation, he refreshed himself by looking at pornographic images on his computer. A growing sense that this was wrong climaxed in a “discussion” between him and God as he drove home from work one day. He tried to bully God and mocked His power to stop him. That evening, he learned that his son had been killed in an aviation accident. My point in mentioning this is to underscore the concept of giving yourself permission to sin and the challenge of later dealing with guilt as you question the relationship between your sin and bad things that happen to you.

Sometimes we give ourselves permission to sin in the sense of being weak, giving up, quitting, or caving into temptation - perhaps nothing more than the temptation to trample over others to get what we want. We justify it by thinking “I’ve made enough sacrifices in this family, this church, this workplace, now it is time for them to sacrifice for me. So I am going to go ahead and do this. If someone gets hurt, that would be his problem. I deserve this.”

Perhaps you’re shocked to think that a Christian would ever behave this way. Perhaps you are too humble, too self effacing, too timid. Perhaps you content yourself with feeling sorry for yourself. You give yourself permission to consider yourself a martyr - one who has laid down his or her life for others. Unfortunately, you’re a self-righteous, proud, resentful martyr and that rather deflates the value of being one.

Self denial is learning to say “no” to self because you have internalized God’s standard and you have moved beyond pleasing yourself for the short term. You truly trust God to work things out for your blessing so you stop trying. You don’t give yourself permission to sin. You don’t trample over others. You don’t play the martyr. You simply rest in God. You do what is right to do because it is right to do. You don’t seek earthly rewards. You choose to seek God’s righteousness before anything and everything else and let Him bless you in His own good time.

Like all the rest of the choices that lead us into a deeper relationship with God, this one certainly doesn’t come naturally. None of us gets it right all of the time. Even Paul struggled with doing what he didn’t want to do and not doing what he knew he should do. But that’s no reason to give up. Each time we choose to deny ourselves, we move forward in our spiritual development. We deepen our trust in God. We open ourselves to experience the privilege of seeing Him do beyond what we can ask or think.

Ron Hughes
© May 2009