If we are serious about what Jesus says: “if anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me”, we need to contemplate what it means to deny himself.
In the webster dictionary, the word deny means: (1) declare untrue, (2) restrain oneself from gratification of desires. Its Chinese translation, “she ji“, is perfect, meaning giving up yourself and making God’s will your will and God’s heart your heart. But still, what does it indicate to “restrain oneself” or to “give up oneself”?
God knows how hard it is for us to understand or to implement this. So He has given us His son, a perfect example to follow. Hebrews 4: 7-10 writes:
During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one of his reverent submission. Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered, and once made perfect, he became the source of etneral salvation for all who obey him and was designated by God to be high priest in the order of Melchizedek.
Did you catch the key words—submission, obedience? What is result?— source of eternal salvation for all and high priest. And yet, what is the process that Jesus has experienced?—“prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears”. What a wonderful example of denying yourself!
The process of denying yourself is an one of placing full trust in God and obeying him. Full trust in God means that you are more than happy to make this decision of denying yourself in that you’ve got faith that God will fulfill His promise for you — providing a way of righteousness and a better country to live, a heavenly one. Obedience, on the other hand, suggests that you can still submit yourself and follow Him when your will is different from God’s will or purpose. This is hard work; it’s even harder when you are in an uneasy situation of suffering and struggling. When such things happen to me, I can only bow down and pray: “God, help me. I am a man of little faith. God, help!”
Now comes the question: how to be a man who obeys God?
Let me use my own example here (btw, it’s a bad example). In my research group, I am often dubbed as “the guy who likes arguing”. This is somewhat true; sometimes myself even don’t understand why I cannot behave like other students just to follow my adviser’s ideas and do what he wants me to do. The independent and critical thinker in me almost always prompts me to propose a different opinion whenever I am in a meeting with my adviser. (In a sense I have realized that I’ve overused my capability of independent and critical thinking due to personal pride.) That sometimes puts me in a difficult situation when I start to argue for my own ideas and he starts to get mad. You can guess what happens afterwards.
I therefore started to question myself: if I belong to God who wants me to fully trust him and obey him, why I cannot even obey my immediate boss? How should I learn from Jesus in every little thing in my life?
This reminds me of Luke 16:10: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.” So the point is to start practice obedience by obeying your earthly boss, parents, teachers every day. This is not to say that we will lose our independent thinking and principles (of course, when they request us to do things against the teachings of the Bible, we should definitely say NO), but we are endeavoring to humble ourselves and practice obedience when we disagree with the ones superior to us in knowledge or authority. Little by little, we are de facto learning how to obey God who is superior to all of us, completely righteous, and unbiased. In this very process, our faith grows and we are willing to trust Him more and more.
Clearly, obedience calls for life-long learning. Although we will be not able to fully submit ourselves to God like what Jesus the Son of God did, we can, by God’s grace, make process day after day until the day we see Him.
A spiritual journey in Minnesota 