There is a strange paradox in the way we speak today. We live in an age with more freedom than any previous generation — more information, more options, more mobility, more personal expression. Yet even with all this freedom, we are more anxious, more fragmented, more exhausted, and more confused than ever. We have crafted a world that promises liberation but quietly chains the soul. And the deeper irony is that the chains feel self-chosen. We didn’t inherit them; we clicked on them. We downloaded them. We subscribed to them. We curated them. We called them “my truth,” “my identity,” “my journey,” and “my authenticity.” But in the quiet hours — if we’re honest — they have become a burden too heavy to carry.
There is a cultural moment we’re living in where the self has become both the map and the destination. “Follow your heart,” “trust your instincts,” “live your truth,” “find yourself.” These are the mantras of the age. They sound like freedom, but they produce the very opposite. Because the human heart, untethered from God, becomes a compass with a broken needle — spinning, spinning, spinning, but never finding true north. We have been discipled by our desires without ever noticing we were being discipled at all.
And into this landscape, Jesus speaks a word as jarring now as it was the first time He said it:
> “If anyone would come after Me, let him deny himself…” (Matthew 16:24).
Deny myself? This is the one thing our age refuses to do. The modern world says, “Obey yourself.” Jesus says, “Deny yourself.” The modern world says, “Center yourself.” Jesus says, “Lose yourself.” The modern world says, “Define yourself.” Jesus says, “Let Me define you.” And the modern world says, “Follow your own path.” Jesus says, “Follow Me.”
Before Jesus ever calls us to follow Him, He calls us to unfollow — unfollow the voices that form us without our permission, unfollow the inner scripts we have mistaken for identity, unfollow the self that has treated us like a demanding master. Jesus never competes with the idols He intends to overthrow. His first invitation is always subtraction before addition:
> Unfollow yourself. Then you’ll be free to follow Me.
We tend to think the greatest spiritual threats come from outside us — bad influences, toxic environments, cultural confusion. And yes, those are real. But Jesus points inward first: “The problem,” He teaches, “is not primarily the world around you. It’s the world within you.” The disciples thought the danger was Rome. Jesus said the danger was self. Not because the self is worthless or meaningless, but because the self, when enthroned, becomes a tyrant. The heart was never designed to be its own king. It buckles under the weight.
Our generation is drowning in self-focus. Every moment of the day demands our attention to ourselves — our preferences, our mood, our presentation, our image, our needs. Social media isn’t the enemy, but it has trained us to live as if we are the producers, directors, editors, and stars of our own personal documentary. Every click reinforces the illusion that the world is watching us — approving or rejecting us — and we anxiously check our reflections not in a mirror but in the reaction feeds of others. We are never fully off stage.
Jesus sees this, and He loves us enough to tell us the truth:
> You can’t follow Jesus and follow yourself at the same time.
One of those must be unfollowed.
And that is where the tension lies. Because unfollowing ourselves means surrendering the illusion that we know best how to run our own lives. It means confessing that we don’t have all the answers, that our instincts have misled us more than once, that our desires don’t always point toward life. It means admitting that the self is not a savior.
This is deeply countercultural. But it is beautifully liberating.
There is a reason Jesus’ first disciples could walk away from everything so quickly — nets, careers, identities, reputations. It wasn’t because they were reckless. It was because the voice that called them awakened something deeper than their own ambitions. The moment they heard Him, something inside them shifted. They recognized that His voice had authority not because it coerced, but because it was true. Nothing in them wanted to cling to the old life when the new life was calling their name.
What Jesus offered them — and what He offers us — is not merely a new direction. It is a new identity. A new center. A new Self rooted not in ego but in Christ. And that begins not with following but with unfollowing.
Unfollowing means letting go of the lies you’ve believed about who you are. It means surrendering the fear that if you don’t control your life, it will fall apart. It means trusting that the One who knit you together in your mother’s womb knows how to lead you better than the self you’ve been trying to manage. Unfollowing is not loss. It is liberation.
When Jesus says, “deny yourself,” He does not mean despise yourself. He means dethrone yourself. Remove yourself from the position you were never designed to occupy. Let Jesus be the One who defines your worth, directs your path, shapes your character, and fills your soul.
And the miracle of it all?
The moment you unfollow yourself, you begin to breathe again.
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The human soul was made to be led. Every one of us is following something — a voice, a story, a desire, a narrative. Even those who claim to follow no one are usually following themselves more religiously than anybody follows God. The one question Jesus pushes into the center is this: Who is discipling you? Who is shaping your loves, your fears, your values, your worldview, your priorities, your reactions? We are shaped by what we pay attention to. And for most of us, attention has been hijacked.
Our culture has become a machine designed to disciple us into self-absorption. Everything rewards our impulses. Everything caters to our preferences. Everything encourages instant reaction. Before we ever think, we feel. Before we ever discern, we respond. Before we ever pray, we post. And without noticing it, the world has trained us to live at the shallow end of our souls — the thinnest layer where noise replaces wisdom, where impulse replaces discernment, where “how I feel right now” replaces “what is true forever.”
When Jesus calls us to unfollow ourselves, He’s not condemning emotion or personality. He’s reclaiming the depth of the soul. He’s inviting us to step out of the echo chamber of our own minds and step into the infinite spaciousness of His presence. He’s leading us away from the tyranny of the urgent into the peace of the eternal.
But unfollowing is hard because we tend to cling to familiar patterns even when they hurt us. We cling to the identities we’ve constructed because we fear the emptiness that might follow if they’re taken away. We cling to our opinions because they feel like the last line of defense against irrelevance. We cling to our wounds because they’ve become part of our story, and we fear who we might be without them. We cling to the self because it’s the only world we’ve ever known.
Jesus gently pries our hands open. Not to leave us empty, but to fill us with something better.
The early disciples followed Jesus not because they understood everything He taught — far from it — but because they recognized something in Him that cut through their confusion and pulled them toward life. The fishermen heard His call and left their nets. The tax collector closed his booth and walked away. The zealot dropped his political agenda. The woman at the well abandoned her shame. Every one of them unfollowed something in order to follow Him.
We often ask, “What must I do to follow Jesus?” But the better question is, “What must I unfollow to follow Jesus?” What must I lay down? What identity must I loosen my grip on? What narrative must I stop believing? What voice must I stop listening to?
The modern world offers a thousand voices that promise a better self, a truer self, a more fulfilled self. But none of those voices can save. They can encourage, they can entertain, they can distract, but they cannot resurrect. Only Jesus can take a dead self and breathe life into it.
This is why Jesus speaks so directly: “Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.” The world says, “Find yourself.” Jesus says, “Lose yourself — and you will find Me.” And paradoxically, in finding Him, you finally become the self you were created to be.
Unfollowing ourselves also means unfollowing the versions of God we invented in our own image. The God who always agrees with us, always affirms us, never confronts us. The God who is polite, distant, predictable. The God who blesses our plans but never disrupts them. Jesus calls us to unfollow the God of our imagination and follow the God of Scripture — the God who upends our assumptions, overturns our idols, and leads us through death into life.
Every disciple has to face a decision at some point: “Will I follow Jesus as He is, or as I prefer Him to be?” That is the dividing line of discipleship. The greatest danger to the church is not the world outside but the Jesus we’ve created inside — the Jesus who never challenges us, never asks us to repent, never asks us to change. A Jesus who lets us remain the center of our own universe is not the Jesus of the Gospels. He is a projection. And Jesus calls us to unfollow projections.
The Jesus of Scripture speaks with authority, compassion, truth, and fire. He comforts sinners and confronts sin. He lifts up the broken but dismantles the proud. He welcomes the weary but challenges the self-satisfied. He offers grace freely, but grace always leads to transformation. To follow this Jesus — the real Jesus — is to unfollow the self that prefers comfort to surrender.
The more we unfollow ourselves, the more room Jesus has to reshape us. The more we loosen our grip on our old identities, the more He reveals who we truly are. And the miracle of discipleship is this: Jesus doesn’t erase your personality; He redeems it. He doesn’t flatten your uniqueness; He purifies it. He doesn’t diminish your humanity; He restores it.
When you unfollow yourself, you begin to discover that the truest version of you is the one surrendered to Him.
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There comes a moment when every disciple realizes that following Jesus is not an additional layer to life — it is a replacement of life. Jesus doesn’t call us to rearrange the furniture; He calls us to rebuild the house. When He says, “Follow Me,” He is inviting us into a new creation, a new Kingdom, a new way of being human.
But before any of that can happen, we must unfollow the voices that have shaped us. And this is not a one-time decision. It is a daily rhythm. Jesus said, “Take up your cross daily.” In other words, “Unfollow yourself daily.” Every morning we wake up with the old self knocking on the door, asking for control again. Every day the culture whispers its slogans of self-sovereignty. Every day we are tempted to return to the familiar patterns that once gave us comfort even though they never gave us life.
Unfollowing ourselves becomes a spiritual practice — a rhythm of surrender, a habit of release. It’s the discipline of stepping out of the center of the story and putting Jesus back where He belongs.
What does this look like practically?
It means choosing prayer before impulse.
Scripture before social media.
Worship before worry.
Obedience before convenience.
Surrender before control.
It means asking a different set of questions:
Not “What do I want?”
but “What does Christ desire?”
Not “What feels right?”
but “What is true?”
Not “How do I protect myself?”
but “Where is Jesus leading me?”
Not “How do I secure my identity?”
but “Where do I need to trust His?”
Unfollowing ourselves leads to an interior freedom the world cannot match. The moment the self is dethroned, the soul expands. The moment Jesus becomes Lord, peace has somewhere to land. The moment the ego is silenced, the Spirit begins to speak.
And that brings us to the hinge of this entire series: If you unfollow yourself but never learn to hear His voice, you will drift. You will create another version of self as the guide. You will default to old patterns. Unfollowing without listening only creates an empty space. Jesus invites us to fill that space with the sound of His voice.
This sets the stage for Part 2 — Can You Hear Me Now?
Because the Christian life is not merely about silencing the wrong voice; it’s about tuning in to the right One.
But before we can hear Him, we must deal honestly with the truth that following ourselves has not led us to life. It has led us to exhaustion, worry, and fragmentation. It has led us to performance, comparison, and insecurity. It has led us into stories too small to save us.
Jesus offers a different story.
A story with a different center.
A story with a different ending.
A story with a different Savior.
Unfollow yourself —
not because you are worthless,
but because you are worth too much to be ruled by a false king.
Unfollow yourself —
so you can finally follow the One who knows you,
loves you,
and leads you to life.
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Appeal
Today Jesus is calling someone in this room to take the first step. Not the step of following, but the step of unfollowing. The step of saying, “Lord, I am tired of being my own shepherd. I am weary of carrying my own identity. I am exhausted from trying to save myself.” If that is you, the invitation is clear: Lay down the story you’ve been writing, and let Jesus write the next chapter. Let go of the illusion of control and receive the gift of surrender. Unfollow the version of yourself that has kept you small, anxious, and restless. Let Jesus speak a new name over you.
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Prayer
Lord Jesus,
We confess that we have followed many voices — our desires, our fears, our impulses, our culture, our wounds. We confess that we have followed ourselves more faithfully than we have followed You. Today we surrender. Today we unfollow the old life so that we may step into the new. Speak, Lord, into the quiet places of our hearts. Strip away every false identity, every false story, and every false god. Teach us to deny ourselves so that we may find ourselves in You.
In Your holy name, Amen.
