Saying No

No is a powerful word; one none of us want to hear but also one that can save our lives. We often think that the world would be a much happier place without it because of how it makes us feel when we hear it. However, the opposite is often true. Hearing “no '' makes us frustrated and sad in the moment but when we look back and see where a yes would have led us, we often begin to feel grateful for the answer having been no. Hearing “no'' from other people is an important part of life and heeding them is essential to building healthy relationships. If we don’t listen to others when they tell us “no,” we can damage our relationship with them. However, even though hearing “no'' from others is an essential part of our lives, being able to say “no” to ourselves is even more important. I’ve often thought that self-denial was my least favorite part of the Christian calling. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus said to his disciples, 

“Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done,” (Matthew 16: 24 - 27, NIV). 

This is a passage that I heard and read a lot growing up in the Church but never truly felt like I understood what Jesus meant. How can someone save their life by giving it up? I didn’t understand how a loving God could ask me to “deny” myself. Wouldn’t our Heavenly Father want us to just live however we wanted so that we could be happy? Because I didn’t have answers to these questions, or rather I didn’t have ones that I liked, I chose to brush over this passage until God began to show me the importance of self-denial. During my first few years of college I became a person who lived off of the word “yes.” I loved the way it  made me feel to hear it and tell it to myself so I turned it into a lifestyle that I thought would make me happy, but instead it left me broken and humiliated. The very word that I thought would give me freedom and happiness became my enslaver and the author of my deepest misery. I said it more and more until I no longer was able to tell myself “no.” It was only then that I began to understand why a God who loved me would command me to say “no” to myself and I returned to those difficult words of Jesus that I had so long ignored. When I cried out to him for help he showed me that there was a better way of living and he freed me from my favorite word that had imprisoned me. 

King David, who is often described in the Bible as being “a man after God’s own heart” (1 Samuel 13: 14), like me, had to learn the hard way the importance of self-denial. At a very low point in his life he gave up on trying to tell himself “no” and it led him to some very painful consequences. He was a great warrior and usually fought alongside his soldiers whenever Israel went to war, but one spring he decided to stay home, (2 Samuel 11: 1). The Bible doesn’t specifically say why he chose to not go off to war with the rest of his army this time, but I imagine at least part of it was he just didn’t feel like going and, being the king, he decided to just do what he wanted rather than follow through with his responsibilities as he had always tried to do in the past. Now sitting at home waiting to get news on how the war was fairing on the front lines, he had a lot more free time on his hands and so he took an afternoon nap. Then, when he woke up, he took a leisurely stroll about his palace. When he was walking along the roof he spotted a beautiful woman bathing. He sent a servant to find out who she was and when he was told that she was Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah, he asked to have her brought to the palace where he slept with her. Then, when she discovered that she was pregnant, she sent word to the palace to tell David. Realizing that he was not going to get away with what he had done he sent word to the army to have Uriah, who was a soldier, leave the battlefield to come home so he could spend a night with his wife. However, Uriah refused the offer not wanting to enjoy the comforts of sleeping in his own bed while the ark of the covenant and the rest of the army were off at war and so he slept in the street outside the palace gates, (2 Samuel 11: 6 - 11, NIV). The next night David invited Uriah to dine with him at the palace to get him drunk hoping then he will finally be able to convince him to go home and sleep with his wife but Uriah still refused. David, seeing that his plan to discreetly cover up all his mistakes was not going to work, sent word to the army again asking his commanding general to put Uriah on the front lines of the battlefield where the enemy’s troops were most powerful so that he would be killed. Then, after Uriah was killed and Bathsheba finished her proper mourning period according to the Jewish law, he sent for her to come back to the palace and made her his wife. 

At this point, he must have thought himself pretty clever and that surely he had covered his tracks enough that no one would be able to figure out that he had gotten Bathsheba pregnant while she was still married to Uriah and was also responsible for her husband’s death. However, even if he had fooled most of his people, God had seen everything that he had done and was not going to let him run from his mistakes and responsibilities for much longer. God sent the prophet Nathan to the palace after Bathsheba and David’s baby was born to confront him. Only then did David confess and turn from his sin, (2 Samuel 12: 1 - 13, NIV). 

Like David, I ran from taking responsibility for my sin and poor choices until they finally caught up with me and I had nowhere else to go except to turn back to God and allow Him to forgive and redeem me. I got to the point where I was enslaved to my desires and no longer even had the ability to say no to myself on my own strength. Luckily for me, God never asked us to do anything on our own strength. The Apostle Paul wrote, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires,” (Galatians 5: 24, NIV). The only way for us to find freedom from your flesh and all of its sinful desires and behaviors is through the cross of Christ. It was only when I gave up on trying to make my own rules and on my own way of life and realized that without Christ, I could never truly live that I found true freedom. I have learned the hard way that self-indulgence leads to pain and slavery while self-denial leads to freedom and a meaningful, satisfying life. We will never truly live until we are willing to give up our lives. 

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about The C.A.N Sisters’ Ministry, leave a comment below, check out my website, or email me at cansistersminisry@gmail.com.