What Jesus has to say about getting what you want

If you’re an eagle eyed Theophilus reader you might notice one Bible verse I quote often:

And He was saying to them all, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me.

This is Luke 9v23 (also found in Matthew 16v24 and Mark 8v34).

I like this verse so much because it concisely and expertly sums up what it means to be a follower of Jesus.

Rivers of ink could be expounded (and they have!) talking about the implications of this simple sentence.

And with our weekly topic of happiness in mind, I’d like to focus on one part of the verse:

Deny yourself.

What Does it Mean to “Deny Yourself”

To follow Jesus you need to deny yourself.

What does this mean?

Basically, it means you don’t live for yourself anymore.

This is easily one of the most controversial things Jesus ever said. We talked about that controversy in an earlier post, so if you want to explore that more, click here.

Today, we’ll instead explore what this means when it comes to happiness and following Jesus.

Who’s Happy?

On Monday, we framed the common, Western understanding of happiness as the pursuit of pleasure.

Following Jesus’ command to deny ourselves can get in the way of that.

Like I said, what Jesus is effectively saying is that we are to trade our way of life for His.

And that means saying no to certain things.

Two great examples come from two previous series we’ve done this year:

Getting drunk and having sex outside of consensual, heterosexual marriage.

These actions are incompatible with Jesus’ Way of life.

But they give many of us pleasure and, dare I say it, happiness.

So what gives? Is Jesus a puritanical buzzkill who wants us to be boring, bitter, and repressed people?

I don’t think so.

Just look at Jesus’ life. 

He certainly wasn’t bitter (Luke 23v34), nor would I say repression was one of His goals (John 10v10), and the fact that He brought wine to parties (John 2v1-11) and was accused of eating and drinking too much (Matthew 11v19) suggests that He knew how to have a good time. 

Perhaps Jesus abstained from drunkenness and premarital sex because, even though they bring temporary “happiness,” they’re actually not good for us.

(After all, I don’t know many people who are happy to have a hangover.)

What if following Jesus wasn’t about getting what instantly feels good?

What if it was about being transformed into the kind of person harmonized with life and its Creator?

What would happiness be then?

We’ll see you tomorrow.

For now, be blessed.

Jon,

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