“Then said Jesus…If any man will come after me, let him deny himself.”~ Lk. 9:23
This is not a call to deny one’s humanity. It has to do more with renunciation than recognition. It has to do with “self-rights.” J.I. Packer said, “It seems clear to me now that when Jesus called for self-denial, He meant the negating of carnal self— that is to say, self-will, self-assertion, the Adamic syndrome, the sinful, egotistical behavior pattern which one has been developing from birth, the reoccurring, irrational impulse to do anything rather than to obey God and embrace what one knows to be right.”
The best way to forget self is to lose yourself in someone or something outside yourself. I find the times when I am desperately miserable are those times when I am intensely concerned with myself. It seems at such times that I am a solid little lump of ego, weighing a ton.
by an Aged Saint