Luke 9. 

Are you ready?

²³ Then to everyone he said, “If anyone wants to come after me, let him say ‘No’ to himself, take up his execution-stake (cross) daily and keep following me.
²⁴ For whoever tries to save his own life will destroy it, but whoever destroys his life on my account will save it.  source 

Death. 
There are various ways to die and most of those ways will kill you, all but one.

Interested?

What was Yeshua saying in these verses? 
May I give you my KWT paraphrase? My understanding of it?

Verses 23 and 24 tell me that all people, myself included, who want to LIVE must die. We must die to doing this earthly Three Score and Ten our way; our carnal, depraved human nature way. 

If we want to live, really live here on planet earth and in eternity there is a decision that we must make now. 

let him say ‘No’ to himself, take up his execution-stake (cross) daily, and keep following me. 

If we hold on to our lives, if we refuse to surrender our day-to-day breathing in and out to The Messiah, we are going to die, not just once, but for eternity.
GOD does not lie. 
In the natural, we humans like to make our own decisions without any input from GOD.
i.e. We SAVE our lives for ourselves. 

How do we save our lives for ourselves? 
Let me be blunt.

We eat what we want. 
We drink what we want.
We copulate with who we want.
We hate who we want.
We refuse to forgive who we want. 
We take what we want even if we have not earned it.
We withhold truth and we put forth untruths.
And the list goes on  — the list is as long as there are sins to commit. 

Doing our own thing, living this earthly life as we please will, yes indeed, will destroy us.
It will destroy our body and soul in the here and now and march us right into hell when we draw our last breath. 

So what are we to do? 
How do we destroy our lives for JESUS sake? Verse 24

First, when Holy Spirit tells us we are hell-deserving sinners and we need a Saviour, we don’t argue with Him, we agree. We humbly and gratefully give thanks that He would even let us know that we need a Saviour and there is ONE ready, willing, and able to save us! From ourselves, from sin, and from hell.

Does that mean we will never do some of those things listed above and many of those not listed? 

NOPE!
But it does mean we will immensely enjoy saying NO to those things, more and more, day by day as we learn from and follow JESUS.
And one day when we see JESUS Face to face we will never have to fight sin again. 
We will be free for all eternity. 

If that appeals to you — excellent! You are on your way. 
If it doesn’t, I fear you have not yet met this JESUS who loves you enough to live and die and live forever for you.  
Holy Spirit, please favor those who are presently saving their lives for themselves, with conviction, grace, and faith to be saved from self-destruction.  Amen and amen.

We were made for this,

Please know your honest questions are welcome here, via comment or email.