Your Evening Coffee 05/06/2025

Good evening!

Welcome to your evening coffee! May our Heavenly Father remind us how to deny ourselves. Father, our desires and designs are so hard to set aside. But help us to do that. Thy will over my will! We can't. It's too hard. Unless you help us, Father. In the powerful name of Jesus, help us to love each other as you have first loved us, and deny ourselves. By the Spirit may it be done! Amen.

Your Morning Song: "Never Gonna Be As Big As Jesus" by Audio Adrenaline

Your Morning Scripture: Matthew 16:24

Then Jesus told his disciples,

“If anyone would come after me,

let him deny himself

and take up his cross

and follow me.

...

No one else is my problem. Only I am my problem.

No one else is your problem. Only you are your problem.

In order to follow Jesus, we are called to deny only ourselves.

Now Jesus tells us how to love each other well in a rich variety of ways. But deny? Only myself for me, and only yourself for you.

I deny myself. I take up my cross.

But for many of us we are too concerned with the selfs of others, and not enough with our self.

It is a cheap and easy thing to say that we will follow Jesus. But it is a dear and costly thing to truly deny ourselves.

Because it is easier to please ourselves. It is easier to do it our own way. It is too easy to be offended. It is too easy to worry at things we can't control. It is too easy to do it later. Too easy to let someone else carry our cross. Or at least pretend like someone else ought to.

Deny yourself. Carry your cross. May the eyes of our heart not linger too long on what someone else needs to do.

For we do not follow our hearts, or our preferences, or our traditions, or our friends.

We follow Jesus.