Are You Sure You Want to Follow Me?

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

John Bunyan paraphrases:

Following of me is not like following of some other masters. The wind sits always on my face and the foaming rage of the sea of this world, and the proud and lofty waves thereof do continually beat upon the sides of the bark or ship that myself, my cause, and my followers are in; he therefore that will not run hazards, and that is afraid to venture a drowning, let him not set foot into this vessel.

—John Bunyan, The Greatness of the Soul and the Unspeakableness of the Loss Thereof (1682)