Discipleship

During the years I taught undergraduate ministry students, I encountered what I consider to be a common misunderstanding of an essential component of imitating Christ. Nothing is more basic to following Jesus Christ than obeying his demand for self-denial and cross carrying.  But What exactly did Jesus mean when he instructed his disciples to deny themselves? What, in truth, did Jesus have in mind when he established this seemingly counter-intuitve prerequisite for discpleship? Perhaps by default, the frequent interpretation communicated to young people in our churches is that self-denial equates to self-rejection. Somehow we confuse denying self with ignoring or at least avoiding self-understanding.  The difference is colossal, since knowing one's self is paramount to obeying Christ's command in Mark 8:34.  Daily denying of self invokes an ongoing process of self-discovery, for only by embracing the way God has fashioned me am I then ready to relinquish all that I am to Christ.  To pose this as a question, how can I offer to Christ what I'm unaware is mine to give? Such a scenario would be more akin to hypnosis rather than surrender. In other words, 'DNA' does not stand for "Do not ask." The more that I acknowledge my God-granted uniqueness, the better able I am to parlay that uniqueness into Christ-honoring service.