Self-denial sucks

Our Daily Bread
I have a silly joke with some friends when one of them says something is just not true about himself.  "Dee-Nile is not just a river in Egypt!"  ha!  Yes, I am a silly bear at times!

Let's all admit it.  Self-denial sucks!  ha!  You know what I mean.  Wanting that pint of Jeni's Splendid ice cream.  The big steak at Mitchells.  That beautiful dress that you can't really afford.  We all have our "thing" that we like a lot and have trouble denying ourselves.  For me, it is shoes, pens and technology items.  What is (are) yours?

I really liked the explanation of the Luke 9 passage where Jesus spoke about denying yourself.  Many times we are taught to deny our self completely, including our basic needs.  Wrong!  Here is a great summary from the devotional:
true self-denial means “we must see things as [Christ] saw them, regard them as He regarded them; we must take the will of God as the very life of our being . . . . We are no more to think, ‘What should I like to do?’ but ‘What would the Living One have me do?’”

Let's all think about this today.  What does it mean to us?

Lord, thank you for teaching us about your ways.  Your ways are not our ways.  Please help us take up thy cross and follow you. 

Foodie Friday
You will have to turn on the oven to bake the "cake" part of this recipe, however the end result is a cool summer treat!

Chocolate Eclair Cake
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour
4 large eggs
1 (8 ounce) package Philadelphia Cream Cheese cream cheese, softened
1 large box (5.1 ounces) vanilla instant pudding
3 cups milk
1 8 oz. container cool whip (you won’t use the whole container) or one batch of homemade whipped cream
chocolate syrup or homemade chocolate sauce

Instructions:
Preheat oven to 400. Lightly grease a 9″X13″ glass baking pan.
Eclair Crust: In a medium saucepan, melt butter in water and bring to a boil. Remove from heat. Stir in flour. Mix in one egg at a time, mixing completely before adding another egg. Spread mixture into pan, covering the bottom and sides evenly. *If the sides of your pan are too greased you won’t be able to get the mixture to stay up the sides so make sure to just lightly grease.
Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown (Mine only took 25 minutes.) You may want to check it occasionally-you don’t want to overcook the crust, it will ruin the cake! Remove from oven and let cool (don’t touch or push bubbles down).
Filling: Whip cream cheese in a medium bowl. In separate bowl make vanilla pudding. Make sure pudding is thick before mixing in with cream cheese. Slowly add pudding to cream cheese, mixing until there are no lumps. Let cool in fridge.When the crust is completely cooled, pour filling in. Top with layer of cool whip however thick you want it and serve with chocolate syrup. *If you want to make this even better use homemade whipped cream.

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Trusting God’s faithfulness dispels our fearfulness. - Our Daily Bread web site