Day 21: Don't Forfeit your Crown #21 Day Purity Challenge
I am grateful for these 21 Days of seeking the Lord through worship, prayer, and reading the word before the new year. Today I want to remind us to not forfeit our crown.
Forfeit means to lose or surrender something because of wrongdoing or neglect. Our crown represents our position and place in God. We have Kingdom rights and privileges given to us by God because of His grace that the Kingdom of Darkness wants us to give away. Just as Adam and Eve were deceived by the tempter, we can fall into the same traps if we are not careful on our journey.
Many people say well God made me this way, I can't help it. As we grow in God we have to make a distinction between our fleshly nature versus the nature of the spirit of God, who lives inside of us. We must take responsibility for our part in crucifying our flesh in order to allow the spirit to be stronger above any other thing that tries to rule over us. God told Cain in Genesis 4:7, "If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.” God does not tempt us or send evil on us. Our fleshly desires attract all kinds of evil.
We have to guard our crown and not neglect our birthright like Esau did. Esau despised his birthright and gave it up for a bowl of soup. We have to ask ourselves, how are we valuing our inheritance in God? Are we willing to sacrifice the pleasures of Egypt for the sufferings of Christ?
Moses demonstrated this type of faith, it says in Hebrews 11: 24-27,
"By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible."
This is encouragement to stay the course and a reminder that God sees our faith. We may have to suffer through not being received, letting go of the pleasures of this realm, or face the reproach of following Christ, but we know that it cannot compare to the joy and reward that is waiting for us on the other side of this. And I am not just speaking of Heaven.
The word says, “Truly I tell you,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for My sake and for the gospel will fail to receive a hundredfold in the present age—houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and fields, along with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.” (Mark 10: 29-31)
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