Bible Verses About Self-Denial

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi sitting at the tax booth. “Follow Me,” He told him,

Then Jesus said to all of them, “If anyone wants to come after Me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me.

For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.

As they were walking along the road, someone said to Jesus, “I will follow You wherever You go.”

Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head.”

Then He said to another man, “Follow Me.” The man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

But Jesus told him, “Let the dead bury their own dead. You, however, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide yourselves with purses that will not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.

“If anyone comes to Me and does not hate his father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be My disciple.

And whoever does not carry his cross and follow Me cannot be My disciple.

Which of you, wishing to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost to see if he has the resources to complete it?

Otherwise, if he lays the foundation and is unable to finish the work, everyone who sees it will ridicule him,

saying, ‘This man could not finish what he started to build.’

Or what king on his way to war with another king will not first sit down and consider whether he can engage with ten thousand men the one coming against him with twenty thousand?

And if he is unable, he will send a delegation while the other king is still far off, to ask for terms of peace.

In the same way, any one of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be My disciple.

But Jesus said, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.”

“Look,” said Peter, “we have left all we had to follow You.”

“Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God

will fail to receive many times more in this age—and in the age to come, eternal life.”

and He saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins.

“Truly I tell you,” He said, “this poor widow has put in more than all the others.

For they all contributed out of their surplus, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”

For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but to do the will of Him who sent Me.

Whoever loves his life will lose it, but whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.