I am not sure of a passage from the Bible that has taken on more meaning in my life this past year then Luke 9:23-26, "Then He said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. "For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it. "For what profit is is to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost? "For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy angels. But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God."
      I realized that one must truly lose their life for the sake of Christ in order to find it life in Him. This means my identity is no longer in myself, but it is now found in Christ. My value should be found in Christ alone as well not in the things that I did or am trying to do but in Christ. Before I was spending most of my time doing things for myself and at my best I was trying to somehow devote the end result of my "great name" to exalt Christ. I was trying to make my own name great and find my identity inside myself. I also was trying to exalt Christ after I myself was exalted. I was in a sense trying to live for Christ while I was simultaneously living for myself, but we see in this verse that one must deny himself and take up his cross daily, and follow Christ. Follow him where with what on our backs? Follow him unto death. This death is the death of our flesh. Our desires, for people to know our name and to make our own Kingdom here on this Earth.
     The denying of ourself is a part that goes hand in hand with making Christ your Lord and not just your Savior. I have thankfully by the Grace of God come to understand that when we are rescued from the punishment of our sins we receive a home in Heaven. This home in Heaven makes us Ambassadors here on this Earth. We represent our new home as we die to the mindset that we live for our time here on this Earth. Therefore since Salvation represents a transfer of Kingdoms, one that will pass away and is defiled by sin to an eternal one in which we will be in the presence of God, which will be our greatest joy. I don't think we as Christians get this. We may have heard this before but the way in which we live and spend our time and resources, do not reflect that we are no longer living for our time here on this Earth. The devil has led us to believe that blessings from the Lord are meant to be spent to make our lives better. That we have been blessed with these nice things and that we are to bask in this blessing. We are totally missing the boat. I will continue the rest of this in my next blog because I wish to look at some more scripture and do not wish to make anything too long. We will look at some more scripture in Luke 9  I encourage you to let the message in the scripture speak to you as you read it. With Love and Thanksgiving to our Reedeemer. If this can be of help to anyone please share.