Hmm…Sometimes wisdom comes from the most unexpected places 🙂

Yesterday morning, I lamented to my husband as I was *again* saying NO to myself about having more food than my body needed. You see, I had enjoyed my breakfast. I knew that I was done and I had chosen beneficial foods. However, there were donuts and I wanted one. So there. (Said with an attitude!)

I walked away, but as I did, I griped to Bob, “I wish that I wasn’t always having to say ‘NO’ to myself. I just wish that I didn’t WANT what I shouldn’t have any more.”

He replied, simply…

“I guess that is what life is about–denying self.”

Jesus said this very thing in Matthew 16:24 when he said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”

To be a follower of Christ, we will have to deny ourselves. Not just food we don’t need, but the self-indulgence of griping about something, or spending what we don’t have, or going faster than the law allows, or shooting back a quick deadly comment that would flatten the family member or co-worker who just wounded us.

Life is about denying self. My attachment to food gives me a truckload of opportunities to deny self and take up my cross and follow Jesus. If he chooses to heal me completely of my fleshly desire for more than I need, I am sure, like the layer of the onion I mentioned yesterday, there will be a “peeling away,” exposing just another way I need his healing touch…