Week 30 Step Out of Prison
MK 8:34-36

I think I am stuck. I need to move forward. But I am ..stuck.. fast at this spot in the road, a road I had once successfully been traveling. Why?

Once, Jesus called the crowd over to Him and said, “Whoever desires to follow after me on My road must CONTINUALLY be forgetting his connection to himself: his old broken identity and life. Instead, continually take up your Cross and join Me on the Way as My sibling under the banner of My Name. You see whoever desires to save and protect his own identity will end up destroying it anyway, but whoever gives up his identity for Mine and My good message shall actually heal and restore his original identity also. After all, what advantage is there for a person to acquire every earthly desire but damage your spirit. (My paraphrase of Mark 8:34-36)

Things I forgot while traveling this road:

I need only LISTEN to the Lord’s voice.
I am now in God’s family, my old family name and prisons are NOT my identifers. 
I am a new creature in Christ, I DENY the old and take on the new. 
I follow the Way that has been blazed before me FORGETTING old paths that lie behind. 
No looking back; see ONLY the author and finisher of my faith.
Forget my old identity… press towards His Identity 

Mark 8:34-36 
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”