Quotes About Self-denial

God is looking for men and women who will never be content with mere experiences and "blessings," but who will take up the cross daily and follow Jesus and thus manifest in their lives and in their service the reality of those words, "It is no longer I, but Christ that lives in me." This, and this alone is the Spirit-filled life.

Holiness is an unselfing of ourselves.

Naturally, men are prone to spin themselves a web of opinions out of their own brain, and to have a religion that may be called their own. They are far readier to make themselves a faith, than to receive that which God hath formed to their hands; are far readier to receive a doctrine that tends to their carnal commodity, or honor, or delight, than one that tends to self-denial.

If our life is not a course of humility, self-denial, renunciation of the world, poverty of spirit, and heavenly affection, we do not live the lives of Christians.

The most important qualification for a servant of God is that he does not seek his own.

The first lesson in Christ's school is self-denial.

At each stage of [spiritual] growth, more self-denial is required, more painful blows to self, more reckless decision to serve the Lord Christ with consequent abandonment of one's own life.

Those who determine not to put self to death will never see the will of God fulfilled in their lives. Those who ought to become the light of the world must necessarily burn and become less and less. By denying self, we are able to win others.

I bless God for this retirement: I never was more thankful for anything than I have been of late for the necessity I am under of self-denial in many respects.

I have now concentrated all my prayers into one, and that one prayer is this, that I may die to self, and live wholly to Him.

One secret act of self-denial, one sacrifice of inclination to duty, is worth all the mere good thoughts, warm feelings, passionate prayers in which idle people indulge themselves.

If a man could make himself humble to order, it might simplify matters, but we do not find that this happens. Hence we must all go through the mill. Hence death, death to the lower self, is the nearest gate and the quickest road to life.

Bearing a cross is an elaboration of Christ's demand for self-denial. Bearing a cross is every Christian's daily, conscious selection of those options which will please Christ, pain self, and aim at putting self to death.

If we do not die to ourselves, we cannot live to God, and he that does not live to God, is dead.

Truth with self-denial is a better pennyworth, than error with all its flesh-pleasing.

Self-denial is a practice which lies very near to the heart of true religion. Without its exercise there can be no conversion to Christ. Qualities most basic to a Christian frame of heart - notably humility and meekness - would dissolve without its active expression.

To abandon all, to strip one's self of all, in order to seek and to follow Jesus Christ naked to Bethlehem, where he was born; naked to the hall where he was scourged; and naked to Calvary, where he died on the cross, is so great a mercy, that neither the thing, nor the knowledge of it is given to any, but through faith in the Son of God.

I take the love of God and self-denial to be the sum of all saving grace and religion.

We should be continually laboring to cut off all the useless things that surround us; and God usually retrenches the superfluities of our souls in the same proportion as we do those of our bodies.

Self-denial is the test and definition of self-government.

Self-denial corrects two evil tendencies ever attacking Christian ethics. There is a tendency to give more attention to outward standards than to the inward state of the heart. And there is a tendency to be strict with others and lenient with oneself... These two dragons are slain by the sword of self-denial when their heads appear in the land of Christian liberty.

Self must be denied as to time and attention for prayer. All-prayer cannot be wielded without the expenditure of time. "A minute with God" seldom lays hold of Him. Sustained prayer is necessary. Such time may only be found by snatching it from personal pursuits, however legitimate they may be.