Bible Verses About Self-Denial

Later Yeshua went out and saw a tax-collector named Levi sitting in his tax-collection booth; and he said to him, "Follow me!"

Then to everyone he said, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him say ‘No’ to himself, take up his execution-stake daily and keep following me.

For whoever tries to save his own life will destroy it, but whoever destroys his life on my account will save it.

As they were traveling on the road, a man said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.”

Yeshua answered him, “The foxes have holes, and the birds flying about have nests, but the Son of Man has no home of his own.”

To another he said, “Follow me!” but the man replied, “Sir, first let me go away and bury my father.”

Yeshua said, “Let the dead bury their own dead; you, go and proclaim the Kingdom of God!”

Sell what you own and do tzedakah — make for yourselves purses that don’t wear out, riches in heaven that never fail, where no burglar comes near, where no moth destroys.

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father, his mother, his wife, his children, his brothers and his sisters, yes, and his own life besides, he cannot be my talmid.

Whoever does not carry his own execution-stake and come after me cannot be my talmid.

“Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Don’t you sit down and estimate the cost, to see if you have enough capital to complete it?

If you don’t, then when you have laid the foundation but can’t finish, all the onlookers start making fun of you

and say, ‘This is the man who began to build, but couldn’t finish!’

“Or again, suppose one king is going out to wage war with another king. Doesn’t he first sit down and consider whether he, with his ten thousand troops, has enough strength to meet the other one, who is coming against him with twenty thousand?

If he hasn’t, then while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation to inquire about terms for peace.

“So every one of you who doesn’t renounce all that he has cannot be my talmid.

He said, “What is impossible humanly is possible with God.”

Kefa said, “Look, we have left our homes and followed you.”

Yeshua answered them, “Yes! I tell you that everyone who has left house, wife, brothers, parents or children, for the sake of the kingdom of God,

will receive many times as much in the ‘olam hazeh, and in the ‘olam haba eternal life.”

he also saw a poor widow put in two small coins.

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

For they, out of their wealth, have contributed money they could easily spare; but she, out of her poverty, has given all she had to live on.”

For I have come down from heaven to do not my own will but the will of the One who sent me.

He who loves his life loses it, but he who hates his life in this world will keep it safe right on into eternal life!