Choose Life

Mark 8:34-36 (NIV)
³⁴ Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.
³⁵ For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me and for the gospel will save it.
³⁶ What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?

Another word that can be substituted for life in the above passage is self. When we are able to leave behind the focus on self and look beyond our own definition of who we are, we are in a position will truly find ourselves. Our true being is revealed in the Word of God. We are not creatures of our own imagination. Nor are we to find ourselves in the latest theories of man, or the expectations of those around us. The wisdom of the world is like a tree that is rotten in the center, seemingly healthy on the outside but destined to fall in the slightest wind of close examination.

But if we put away false ideas of self, ego, and the world, and follow Jesus, we gain freedom and life without end. We lose the things which only serve to bind us in the clutches of deception. Either way our old life is lost. It is up to us to decide. I choose life.