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SELF-DENIAL AND HUMILITY
Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
—MATTHEW 16:24
Something powerful happens when we deny ourselves and receive God’s embrace. We can hear the voice of the Lord more when we humble ourselves. Many people don’t understand how vital self-denial is. One of the most sobering things that God will require out of us is a daily sacrifice that will cause us to come to a place of self-denial. This is a place like the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus understood that it was not His own will but the will of the Father for Him to go to the Cross. Gethsemane was a place of great agony and pressure, but Jesus understood it was His purpose to go the Cross.
As modern-day disciples of Christ we are to humble ourselves and follow after Christ. God will speak to us as a reminder to remain humble and stay focused on the course that He has outline for us. I hear God speaking to me the most when I get a little ahead of myself. God often has to speak to me in a loving tone for me to tone it down and hide myself in Him.
The most powerful people are those who have learned the art of self-denial. I believe its spiritual maturity and discipline when a believer knows how to put their flesh and their own will, agenda, and emotions under control. Yielding to the Holy Spirit and walking in humility is self-denial. Leaders and believers have to learn this great biblical principle. Jesus is that self-denial model for us as children of God.
Whenever I sense pride or haughtiness grip by heart, I immediately repent, renounce, and discard it. God exalts the humble and makes base the ones who exalt themselves. Self-denial is a great reminder to live like Christ did and follow His example:
Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?” (Matthew 16:24-26 ESV)
Personally, this can be a painful place to be, but it has glorious incentives and benefits of a multiplied life. Jesus, our example and model, chose to yield His own will and lay His life down as a righteous seed for the sake of multiplying that seed to all who will believe on His name. We must understand that He denied Himself so that we may not be denied and may be given full access to eternal life. His death on the Cross produced a seed of righteousness for the entire human race (1 Cor. 3:6-9).
Moreover, like Jesus, when we go through death to self, Daddy-God selects what fruit our yieldedness will ultimately produce. I believe every Spirit-filled believer will produce a different harvest that will be based off of their obedience, submission, and yieldedness to die to self and their own will to fulfill the will of the Father in their lives. The Father chose that Jesus’ physical death would be multiplied beyond the tomb and grave by producing the harvest fruit of eternal salvation for anyone who partakes of that fruit. Jesus is the righteous seed that produces a righteous harvest. As we draw near to God, he will draw near to us (James 4:8).
The closer we draw to God and give up our own desires, the more we will see the blessing of God manifest. God speaks clearly to us as we die to our own purposes to fulfill His purpose no matter what. Death to self will not be a first priority for everyone. But those who want the Lord more than the world and mammon (material things) and are willing to follow Jesus Christ even to the cross or even unto death will hear God on earth and inherit the earth in the greatest available harvest ever. We have to be like Jesus and say, “Not my will, Father, but Your will be done in my life.”
There is nothing wrong with denying your own appetites. I am reminded of a car that has to yield to oncoming traffic. Sometimes God speaks to us by the Holy Spirit so that we don’t launch out into oncoming traffic. In our yielding we allow others to go before us, which makes a clear path to our own purpose and destiny without any collisions, accidents, or even premature deaths.
Jesus was all human and all God at the same time. But at Gethsemane, you could say Jesus’s human side kicked in with the reality of death on the Cross approaching, and He asked God that the cup would pass from Him. After that natural moment of human emotions, suddenly the quickening power of God and the reality of His purpose for humanity transcended it. Jesus came to Himself as God in the flesh and yielded to the will of the Father through self-denial. His self-denial gave us a corporate purpose of destiny and eternal life in Christ. Jesus’s natural human emotions didn’t want to die for that moment, but the God-given quickening the soul and flesh. God’s will for our lives far transcends our own will and plans.