As a Christian, do you deny yourself as Jesus said in Luke 9;23?

What does it mean to you to take up your cross and follow him.... ?

Very good questions, ONLY by the power of His true Love is this Possible....

For as He said and demonstrated to the whole world, "Greater Love has no man than this, that a man LAY DOWN his life for his friends..."

What is so great about love? It is the power to deny self, and selfishish interests and die to the natural course of the old nature and the old man which became susceptible to the error of sin in departing from the ultimate cause and good and perfect will of the Father of Life and Light and True Eterna; Love....

So YES...By the Grace of God, I will seek to take up my cross and follow His lead, lean upon His everlasting arms which hold me up....for when I confess my weakness and my inability in myself to anything good or right...THEN HIS Grace is freshly bestowed, his anointing flows, and His Strength comes to be made perfect in my weakness !....

Apart from Him I can do nothing anyway....so taking up the cross is the smartest option also in the sense that it extinguishes the failure nature which always seeks its OWN, and therefore always loses, even though it appears to win its own way !

"Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it." Luke 17:33

"For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him.,,, " 2Chronicles 16:9

Galatians 2:20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Galatians 5:24 And they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts.

By Faith we accept His death as ours and the "old man of sin" loses.....and it also LOSE ITS ABILITY to SIN and Serve the lie and the error.....Therefore the TRUE and NEW man which IS HIDDEN in Christ WINS Ultimately and we become the sons of God living for a new and higher cause and become One with God and eachother...Born from Above....Jesus is the firstborn from the dead, and we who follow in his way will also PASS from DEATH unto TRUE RESURRECTION LIFE !

John 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

1John 3:14 We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

Thanks for asking : )

self denial is denying ourselves the evil things our flesh naturally desires. The Bible says that we are all inherently evil, and that our flesh will long for sinful things. We must deny these desires. Jesus said in John 14 or 15 "If you love me, you will obey my commands." We don't obey because we are slaves to Jesus, but rather because we love him so much that we want nothing other than to please Him. this is why Self-denial is positive. Picking up our cross then, is submitting to the will of God, and humbling ourselves before him. He actually carried the physical cross for our sins, meaning that we no longer have a debt to pay, but we still need to understand our place. we are sinners, Forgiven, but sinners. Picking up our cross is acknowledging this fact; saying that we will face our continual failures with humility, and an attitude of repentance. Only through God's perfect strength can we prevail over the sin in our lives.

If you have any more questions, feel free to email me at Jtommyk@yahoo.com

Hope this helps.

I have no idea what your saying. I don't even know a Luke.

Anyway, you have any sugar I can borrow? I seem to be out.

Oh yea, and about the cross thingy, I think it means that your supposed to nail yourself to a cross, but I'm not sure.

But hey, before you do that, I really need like a cup of sugar.

To a point yes i do but being a Spiritualist i bear my cross at all times and carry out my duties with responsibilities, to accept God`s teachings in practise at all times, to the benefit to His people.

That's really in chapter 9? *boggles* I thought it was much later.

I don't do much denying, to be honest.

We all suffer a lot in life. It's important to offer those sufferings up to God for his Glory.. or some such.

the flesh is selfish

this must be quenched