God's Highest Purpose for His People — Zac Poonen

The New Covenant and the Believer’s Birthright

And as you all know, the main emphasis in my ministry the last half a century has been to lead Christians into the new covenant. Because I find that so many, many Christians, though they have accepted Christ as their savior and their sins are forgiven, they live such an up and down life.

Okay, that's not bad, but they're satisfied with that. That's the bad part of it. And they have been cheated of their birthright. The devil has stolen from Christians their birthright. And their birthright is what Jesus purchased on the cross in his resurrection, and his ascension to heaven, and sending the Holy Spirit.

Counterfeit Spirituality and the Fullness of the Holy Spirit

I find through the years, the ministry of the Holy Spirit has also been tremendously counterfeited. There's so much of counterfeiting, and I can imagine why the devil does that. What are the things that are made counterfeit in the world?

I mean, nobody counterfeits toilet paper or brown paper. They counterfeit currency notes. They counterfeit gold. They counterfeit diamonds. What does that teach us? Nobody counterfeits cheap, worthless things.

It's only valuable things. So there are so many things in the Christian life which are not counterfeited. But when it comes to the new covenant and the fullness of the Holy Spirit, that's been counterfeited so much, which proves to me that these are some of the most valuable things in the Christian life.

From Spiritual Defeat to Being Filled with the Spirit

I know that from my own experience, because I accepted Christ as my Savior exactly 64 years ago, 1959, when I was still working in the Navy. And for 16 years after that, I thought I was filled with the Spirit, but I was not.

Because my life was up and down, up and down, and up and down, and defeated, and then coming up, and then also I would be so frequently discouraged and gloomy. I knew that was not God's will, but I didn't know how to get out of it.

I was like in a trap. But I read my Bible every day. I had even quit my job in the Navy to serve the Lord full-time, but I was defeated. But the interesting thing was that I had a gift to speak, even in those days.

I mean, God gave me a gift to speak when I was 24 years old, and I was speaking to 5 ,000 people at that age. And it continued like that. But inwardly, I was a defeated person. My thought life was not pure.

I'd get angry, even at home. And my attitude towards others was not always loving and good. I thought, well, that's normal Christian life. You sin, and you ask the Lord to forgive you, and you sin, and you ask the Lord to forgive you, and you just go round and round and round and round, and never get out of that circle.

The devil deceived me. But I got so fed up that at one time in my life, I said, Lord, if it's going to go on like this, that I'm going to be a hypocrite, preaching things that are not true in my inner life, preaching things that are not true of me 24 hours a day, seven days of the week, and preaching things which are very clever, that impress people, but not real in my life.

I'm sure I'm not pleasing to you. And so, Lord, I will quit full-time Christian work. I'll still be a Christian. I'll attend some church, but I'll never preach again. I'll just sit at the back and pay my tithes and just go along, try my best to live whatever Christian life I know, which is just up and down and up and down.

But I cannot continue like this if there is no better way. And I got so desperate. Remember, I had hit rock bottom, and then God did an amazing thing. One day, just like that, He filled me with the Holy Spirit.

I was praying with another brother that was filled with the Holy Spirit, and it changed my life. All of a sudden, from that day, I hit rock bottom. I couldn't go any lower. The graph of my life started going up and up and up.

It's not a sudden shoot up to the mountaintop. I haven't reached the mountaintop yet. The mountaintop is to be perfectly like Jesus Christ. That's a long way. But I had started the Christian race. It's a marathon race, and I started it.

And when I look back over the last 48 years, 48 and a half years actually, from that day in January 12, 1975, and God met with me and filled me with the Holy Spirit, my life has been just going upwards with the greater revelation of God and consistent growth in the Christian life.

Rejecting Condemnation and Seeking Genuine Fullness

I want to ask you, dear brothers and sisters, I don't want to condemn anybody. God's word never condemns. Please remember this. If you hear a message that condemns you, either that guy who's preaching does not know the Lord, or you have got the message in a wrong way, one of the two, because Romans 8, 1 is very clear.

There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. So you need to ask yourself whether you condemn yourself when you listen to a message. I hope you won't do that today. Please reject it. Reject all condemnation.

Reject all discouragement and say, Lord, I'm going to seek you. I don't care how long it takes, but I want you to meet with me in a new way. I want to experience a genuine fullness of the Holy Spirit, not to be able to testify to it about somewhere.

No, I'm not bothered whether people think I'm filled with the Spirit or not. I want to be genuinely filled with the Spirit, and God must know that's truth. That's enough for me. It doesn't matter what other people think.

In fact, what happened to me was, I was quite a popular preacher way back then, before that experience, because I had a gift, and nobody knew about my inner defeated life, and mostly my thought, my external testimony was perfect, but my thoughts and my attitudes at home, particularly the way I lived, that was not consistent with what I was preaching.

But I carried on like that. But when this change took place in my life, it, as I said, it was completely different. And one of the main things that gradually disappeared from my life is discouragement.

As I said, I used to be frequently discouraged. And I began to study the scriptures afresh. That's one of the things I did from the very next day onwards, from that day God first filled me. I said, Lord, if this is really the fullness of the Holy Spirit, the New Testament will become a new book for me, because the Holy Spirit wrote it, and I'll get revelation on it, not just understanding.

Please note, there's a difference between understanding and revelation. Many people go to Bible school and get understanding. I thank God I never went to a Bible school. The preachers and the books that have blessed me the most in my life were written and spoken by men who never went to a Bible school.

And I thank God I didn't go. Jesus never sent any of his apostles to the Bible school. Paul had gone to a Bible school before he was converted, when he was a Jew. He had spent three years under a professor called Gamaliel.

And so what did God do when Paul was converted? We read in Galatians 1, God took him to Arabia for three years to get all that chaff out of his head, what he had learned in Bible school, and God could teach him something new.

So I saw all these things, and I said, Lord, I want revelation. Revelation is something which, when you get revelation on the Word, it changes your life. Understanding only fills your head with knowledge, and it may make you proud that you know so much, and you can impress others with what you know.

But revelation, it does exactly the opposite. It makes you humble. It makes you more God-fearing. And that's what began to happen when I started reading the Bible. It was the same book that I've read and studied for years, but I was getting revelation.

Salvation from Sin, Not Merely from Hell

Now I'll tell you one of the first things I saw. I started, you know, I started after God met with me that day in January 75. I said, I'm going to read the New Testament all over again. And I started in Matthew chapter 1.

And here's one of the first things I got revelation on. In the first page of the New Testament, please turn with me to Matthew chapter 1 and verse 21. Here we read, this is the angel of the Lord coming to Joseph and telling him that Mary has been, has conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit and not through any other man.

And then he tells Joseph to call this baby Jesus. The son that will be born is Jesus. And the meaning of Jesus, the reason why he's called Jesus, that's his name, means Matthew 1 .21, he will save his people from their sins.

Now I never, I mean, I read that for years, but it never struck me like it did that day. Revelation. I knew I was saved from hell. And most Christians know that they are saved from hell. In fact, they only want to be saved from hell.

I tell you, the average Christian does not want to be saved from his sins. He wants to be saved from hell. He wants to go to heaven when he dies. But here it says he'd save him from his sins. Now there's a lot of difference between being forgiven our sins and being saved from our sins.

Forgiven is something even in the Old Testament. What was distinctive about this promise? In Psalm 103, you know the well-known psalm of David, bless the Lord O my soul and forget not all of his benefits.

And who forgives all your sins. That's in Psalm 103, 1 ,000 years before Jesus came, David could say, bless the Lord who forgives all my sins. But Jesus was going to come not to forgive alone, but to save, to deliver us from the sin we are being defeated by, and to bring us into a consistent Christian life.

Grace as Power over Sin

I began to understand the meaning of grace in a new way. That's another thing that God opened my eyes to. I always thought grace is, you know, we keep saying, well, I do this by God's grace, and God keeps me healthy by his grace, and God's given me enough for my earthly needs by his grace.

And my understanding of grace was God's goodness and his mercy, giving me things that I don't deserve. Like some people say, God's riches at Christ's expense. It's a nice way of saying G-R-A-C-E stands for God's riches at Christ's expense.

I knew all that. But when I read the Bible, I found that grace was much more than that. Very much more than that. I got revelation on Romans chapter 6. Please turn with me to Romans chapter 6 and verse 14.

Romans 6, 14, where it says, again, relating to sin. Sin is the main subject in the New Testament. Sin will not be master over you. Sin will not rule over you. That's not in the old covenant. God never gave a promise to the Jews that sin would not reign over them.

In the old covenant, the only promise was, he told the Jewish people, if you obey me, your enemies will not rule over you. That is the Amorites and the Philistines and all those other heights there were in those days, they would not rule over them.

And when Israel disobeyed God, then those enemies ruled over them. But that entire Old Testament is a picture of the new covenant. In the new covenant, our number one enemies are Satan and sin. Or like they say, the world, the flesh, and the devil.

By flesh, we mean our self-will. Those are our main enemies. And none of them will rule over us. We don't have any enemies on earth now. No human being should be your enemy. I mean, they may consider you an enemy, but you must love your enemies.

I don't have any enemies. I mean, a lot of people hate me because of what I preach, because I preach the truth, and a lot of Christians hate me. But I don't hate any of them. I can stand before God and say that I don't hate a single human being in the whole world, even though a lot of them have tried to trouble me, especially for my Christian faith in India.

But it hasn't made me hate them. But that was not possible before I entered into this new covenant. So here, sin will not rule over you because you're under grace. Aha. So this is the meaning of grace.

If I really come under grace, evidence will be sin will not rule over you. You see, it's like you're under this roof now, this building. No matter if there's rain or hail outside, it won't touch you. Not one bit of that rain or hail or anything outside is going to touch you because you're under a roof that protects you.

You go outside the door of this building and that hail and rain will hit you. So grace is like that. As long as you stay under grace, sin cannot rule over you. I mean, we understand that in terms of a roof protecting us from the hail and snow and rain, etc.

But grace is like that. It's God's amazing power that protects you and delivers you from sin. Sin cannot rule over you. Sin will not be the master over you. Now, there was no such promise in the old covenant.

This is a distinctively new covenant. Jesus will save you from your sin. And how does he do it? By giving you grace. Grace is not a word found in the Old Testament. Mercy is the word found in the Old Testament.

There's a lot of difference between mercy and grace. And I never knew the difference for 16 years of my Christian life. I thought it was the same thing. Mercy is God's forgiveness. It deals with the past.

Grace deals with the future. Let's put it in that simple way. Mercy deals with all the miserable, wretched things I've done in my past, blotted out by the blood of Jesus Christ. And as the Lord says, I will not even remember that.

Hebrews 8, verse 12. I will not remember your sins and your iniquities anymore. Praise God. I don't want to be happy with that. I don't want to sin again tomorrow and ask the Lord to forgive me again.

And again, claim Hebrews 8, 12. Yeah, the Lord will not remember it. Yeah, I can live with a clear conscience. Living with a clear conscience is not enough. That's excellent. Because a lot of people don't even have a clear conscience.

But the Christian life is more than that. I picture it like this. If, for example, your father was a very rich man and he left you a fantastic amount of wealth in different banks and properties around the country, and he got a record of it, and you get that file after your father's death, and there's a huge amount of money, and you're not so well-versed in all those details about bank and property and all.

You give it to a lawyer, an attorney, and he cheats you of 95 of it. And you get 5 of it and live in a little hut, thankful that your dad gave you a little hut to live in. And you're happy. My father gave me a little hut to live in.

Thank God I never even had that. But, brother, sister, your dad gave much more to you than that. Some crooked attorney has cheated you of 95 of what your dad left for you. That's exactly what has happened with Christendom.

Christendom has been cheated of more than 95 of what Jesus died and rose again and ascended and sent the Holy Spirit to give to his people. Claim your inheritance. That's what I'm saying. And who's the crooked attorney?

It's the devil. He's no attorney. He's an accuser. And his main aim is he's a liar and a thief. Jesus said that in John 10. The thief comes to steal. That's the devil. And what has he stolen? He's stolen from Christians their birthright.

What Jesus died, rose again, and paid such a heavy price to purchase for us. For three hours on the cross, when Jesus died on the cross, he actually went to hell. That's another thing that the Lord opened my eyes to see.

Christ’s Forsakenness on the Cross

That for the first three hours on the cross, Jesus was not bearing my sins. It was the last three hours on the cross that he bore my sins. How do I say that? Because the moment a person has sin upon him, God forsakes him.

God has got nothing to do with sin, even if that sin is on his beloved son. And there was Jesus hanging on the cross. He could talk to people. He could talk to his father. He called his God, Father. Don't lay the sin to that child.

They don't know what they're doing. Forgive them. He took care of his mother because his four brothers and two sisters didn't believe in him. So he wanted to hand his brother over to his mother's sister's son, John.

So you take care of him. He was alert enough to forgive a dying thief who asked for forgiveness. So those first three hours, he did a lot of things, but he was talking to his father in heaven. But from noon on that day till three o 'clock in the afternoon, Jesus experienced hell.

How do we know that? Well, first of all, he stopped calling his father, Father. It's a very significant difference, which I never realized. He said, my God, my God, not my father. No, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

I learned two things from that simple sentence as God gave me a revelation. One, that at that moment, he was not standing before his father. He was standing before the judge of the universe. He was his father, but now he was standing before him as the judge of the universe.

That's why he called him my God. And why was he standing there guilty? Because he was bearing my sin. How that broke me when I realized that revelation after 16 years of being a Christian, I wept and I wept and I wept.

I said, Lord, I never realized I had to solve such a light thing for me to sing, that you forgave my sin. But now I realize what you went through. Forsaken by God, that is hell. Another definition for hell is a place where God has forsaken you completely.

No contact with God. And now here's another proof of that. First that he called him my God and not my father. That means the relationship, the old relationship was broken. And why was it broken? Because of my sin, my sin.

That's why his relationship with the father was broken. And the other thing I see there is, he doesn't seem to know why. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I say, Lord Jesus, I can tell you why.

God has forsaken you because of my sin. How is it Jesus, whose mind is a million times sharper than mine, did not know the answer to that? I'll tell you. Because when you're in hell, your mind doesn't work right.

Your mind does not work right when you're in hell. You don't even know the answer to a simple question like that, that when you sin, you're forsaken by God. And he asked the question, why? Why? Never did Jesus have to ask the father why in his entire life, except that time.

That is another proof that he was really forsaken. And I don't believe that we can understand the full agony of what Jesus went through at that time. But I hope you all see there's something for you. And I remember it came home to me as personal for me.

I remember when I asked the Lord for one day for revelation on the cup, which he kept saying in Gethsemane, please take this cup away from me, take this cup away from me. What was that cup? It was this being forsaken on the cross.

That is the only thing Jesus did not want. He'd be willing to suffer any amount of physical punishment or rebuke or insult or anything from man, but he didn't, never wanted to be forsaken by the father because that was what he had fellowshiped with all eternity.

He'd been in fellowship with the father and he never wanted that broken even for one second. And I used to think of an imaginary conversation going on between Christ and the father in the garden of Gethsemane when he was pleading with the father to not let him be forsaken.

Don't take this cup away from me. And I can imagine that it was not a real conversation. I'm imagining the conversation like this, that the father tells Jesus, there's no need for you to go to the cross.

You can come straight up from Gethsemane to heaven because you'll live the perfect life for 33 and a half years, but Zach will go to hell. And Jesus, this is my imaginary conversation, Jesus says, oh, Zach will go to hell.

Okay, father, I'll go to the cross. And I remember that day when that revelation hit me. Boy, I don't know how long I wept. Every time I remember it, it moves my heart that therefore, Jesus said, he'd go to the cross and put your name there, my brother, sister, put your name there.

It'll become personal. He need not have gone to Calvary. He could have gone straight up from Gethsemane to heaven, but then you would have gone to hell. And because he thought of you personally, put your name there.

He said, father, I'll go. That made me love Jesus like anything. I said, Lord, I'll never again live for myself. And I decided from that day, I would never live for myself. I would never live to make money.

I would never live for man's honor. No, if Jesus was willing to pay this tremendous price to save me from any term, not just to save me from an eternal hell, but so that I could be with him for all eternity.

Continuous Fullness and the Presence of Christ

To me, heaven is not just a comfortable place with golden streets and mansions and glory and all that. I'll tell you what heaven is to me, since I've experienced a genuine fullness of the Holy Spirit, is the presence of Jesus Christ.

To me, the fullness of the Holy Spirit is not in speaking in tongues. No, I've spoken in tongues for 48 years and it has delivered me from discouragement. One of the main things the gift of tongues did for me was that I never use it in public because I do what I stand with what Paul said, five words in English or a known language is better than 10 ,000 words in an unknown tongue in a meeting.

That's in 1 Corinthians 14. But he says when a man speaks in tongues, he speaks to God. So that I do, but I never use it in public. But that's not the main thing to me in the Christian, the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

To me, the main thing that happened in the fullness of the Holy Spirit is the presence of Jesus with me and awareness of the presence of Christ. And if that hasn't happened to you, my brother, sister, seek for a genuine, not only a genuine, but a continuous fullness of the Holy Spirit.

The word in Ephesians 5, 18, which says, be filled with the Spirit, really means be being filled, be being filled. It means be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit all the time. And that is God's will for us, all the time to be continuously filled with the Holy Spirit so that rivers of living water never stop flowing, rivers of joy and peace, continuous fullness.

That is God's will for us. Nobody could experience it in the Old Covenant. In the Old Covenant, whenever it speaks about Gideon being filled with the Spirit or even John the Baptist being filled with the Spirit, it is always the Holy Spirit upon them, never in them, never, not even one person in the Old Covenant had the Holy Spirit within.

Jesus was the first person who walked on earth as a man with the Spirit of God inside him. And that is what he gives us today, the presence of Jesus. Now, let me read to you something from Psalm 16. Turn with me to Psalm 16.

Here we read, how do I know I'm in God's presence? It's very easy to think I'm in God's presence, but it says here in Psalm 16, you have made known, verse 11, Psalm 16 and verse 11, you have made known to me the path of life.

In your presence is fullness of joy. That's the mark of God's presence, fullness of joy in God's presence. So from that, I deduce something, I understand something. When I don't have fullness of joy, I'm not in God's presence.

It's as simple as that, two plus two is four. If you get two plus two is three, something is wrong. Two plus two is always four at all times in every part of the world. In God's presence, there is always fullness of joy, always.

And whenever I made that a law for myself now for 48 years, if I at any moment lack fullness of joy, I'm not in God's presence. Something has happened and I've sort of drifted away. I'm not talking about a conscious thinking.

No, I'm not talking about the mind. I'm talking about the spirit. The spirit is deeper than the soul. The mind is a part of the soul. The spirit is where God dwells. The spirit is the most holy place where God dwells, which they could not access in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament, why was the most holy place blocked off? You know, 1 Thessalonians 5, 23 says, man is spirit, soul, and body, three parts, just like the three parts of the tabernacle in the Old Testament.

Most holy place, holy place, outer court. The outer court is a body. The holy place refers to the soul, my mind, and my feelings. But the spirit is the most holy place, and God dwelt in the spirit. He dwelt in the most holy place.

The fire of God was on the most holy place of the tabernacle, not in the outer court of the holy place. That teaches me that in the new covenant, God wants to dwell in my spirit, not in my feelings. Today there's such a lot of emotional working up of people in Sunday morning meetings, and they get all worked up with all these strobe lights and emotional singing, and imagine that God is there.

God is not there through strobe lights and emotional singing and beating drums. No, it's through the Holy Spirit. So many people think of God as in their feelings. No, I don't have to feel God all the time, but the presence of God, one proof of it is fullness of joy, and joy is not just clapping hands and shouting and screaming.

There are a lot of people who go to Sunday morning meetings in their church where they shout and yell and scream and clap their hands, and they come home and shout at their wives or their husbands. What happened to that joy they're supposed to have on Sunday morning?

It's a deception. It's a counterfeit that the devil fooled them with. Don't let the devil ever fool you with that. I'm called through the Holy Spirit to experience the presence of Christ, not just on a Sunday morning, but all the time.

Christ’s Commandments and the Spirit’s Help

In thy presence is fullness of joy, and the Holy Spirit has come to bring the presence of God to me, to you. Remember what Jesus said in John chapter 14. Please turn with me there. John's Gospel chapter 14.

I will ask... John 14 and verse 16. I will ask the Father, and he tells his disciples. So let's read the previous verse and see that it's always in its context. Read the verse in its context. John 14 verse 15.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments. Okay, let's pause for a moment there. What were the commandments that Jesus gave? You will keep my commandments. That important word there is my, M-wise.

You will keep my commandments, not the 10 commandments that God gave from heaven to Moses. The commandments God gave to Moses were all external mostly. Don't kill, don't murder, don't steal, and things like that.

Don't commit adultery. But in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew chapter 5, Jesus internalized all of them. He said, now I'm telling you what Moses said was don't commit murder, but I say anger is equal to murder.

Can you read that in Matthew 5? Anger is the seed from which murder comes. So he said, don't get angry. That can lead you to hell. Now it's amazing that Jesus taught that anger can finally lead a person to hell.

Have you ever heard anybody preach on that? I never heard it in 60 years of my Christian life, but it's written there so plainly in Matthew chapter 5, verse 22, 23, 24, 21, 21 onwards, that this is the new covenant equivalent of murder in the Old Testament.

If you love me, you will keep my commandments, not the Ten Commandments, but my commandments. And Jesus went on to explain. The Old Covenant said you shall not commit adultery, but the new covenant equivalent of that is you don't lust in your minds.

Boy, go and ask any man anywhere in the world if that's easy. I'll tell you honestly, it's easier to control your anger than for a man to control lusting in his mind. Yeah, I had a battle with it, and I know.

And every strong man knows that that's such a difficult thing. And God, the Lord says, if you lust with your eyes, you've committed adultery. Where do we go from here? How in the world are we going to live this life?

Sin shall not rule over you if you come under grace. That's the answer. Not just if you speak in tongues, but if you experience the Holy Spirit as the spirit that gives grace. The Holy Spirit is called the spirit of grace in Hebrews chapter 10.

The spirit that gives grace. And grace is better than mercy. And so, these are some of the commandments. Love all your enemies. If there's one enemy of mine whom I have not loved, I'm disobeying God. If there's one person on earth you have not forgiven for whatever they did against you.

You know what the Bible says in Matthew 6 .15? God will not forgive you. How easily we quote 1 John 1 .9. If we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

True. But he also said in Matthew 6 .15, if you don't forgive others, your heavenly father will not forgive you. He's not talking about the worldly people. Your heavenly father, he said in Matthew 6 .15.

He's talking to believers. Will not forgive you. A father in heaven who will not forgive me? That's right. If I don't forgive others. So, now that is the lowest level of forgiving others. Oh, I want to forgive others because then God will forgive me.

No. But when I have God's nature in me through the fullness of the Holy Spirit, it's a joy to forgive others. Just like Jesus as soon as he was crucified. As soon as he was crucified, he said, father forgive them.

Boy, what an attitude. As soon as somebody does something to harm me, father forgive them. That is what the fullness of the Holy Spirit does. My brother, sister, have you experienced this? Have you experienced this life?

Where as soon as somebody yells at you, inwardly, inwardly, immediately your attitude is father forgive them. Immediately. Maybe your wife is upset with you. Your husband is upset with you one day. And the average response is either to yell back or despise your partner saying, oh poor person.

Look at my wife, how she behaves. Look at my husband, how he behaves. No, that's not Christ like. Christ is like his father forgive him, forgive her. How can we ever live this life? It's impossible humanly speaking.

That's why when he says, if you love me, keep my commandments. And if for that moment Jesus had paused and told the disciples, just think for a moment what my commandments are. And the disciples would have said, Lord, how in the world can we keep it?

It's impossible for a human being. And the Lord says, yes, I know that. That's why. See the next verse. Now you understand the next verse. John 14, 16. I'm going to ask the father and he'll give you a helper.

I like the NASP translation of this word, comforter. Helper. Help me to do what? He's not helping me to make money. He's helping me to obey Jesus' commandments. That's the context. We must always read the verse in its context.

If you love me, keep my commandments. I know they are difficult. That's why I'm going to pray the father to give you a helper, to help you keep my commandments. And he will be with you forever. He's not just going to come with you, come upon you and help you for a moment to speak in tongues and go away.

No, he's going to be with you forever so that 24 hours a day he can be with you to help you to overcome, to be an overcomer. You know in the book of Revelation how the Lord keeps on talking about overcomers, overcomers, overcomers.

To all the churches he says, be an overcomer, be an overcomer. That is the Lord's message to the church today. Be an overcomer. To seven churches the Lord said, to him that overcometh, to him that overcometh.

What's he saying? To New Life Fellowship in Beavis Springs. To him that overcometh, I will give this, I'll give this, I'll give the crown of life, I'll make him take part of the tree of life, I'll make him sit with me on my throne.

Overcoming and Reigning with Christ

My brother, sister, that's God's message to you and me. Jesus wants us to sit with him on his throne. But how did he do it? Did he get there just because he was the Son of God? He was there from all eternity as the Son of God seated with the Father on his throne.