Every day a little ungodly piece of you needs to be crucified.
Every day a little ungodly piece of you needs to die
Every day there needs to be death to self
So that life eternal can take residence in you
And HIS fruit can grow

Good morning everyone, your friend MB here.

What you see above is something my wife and I were talking about last night.

In my opinion, this is the hardest part of following Christ, allowing a little piece of your pre-salvation self to die every day.

A different little piece of who you used to be.

This is something that we have to do every day from when we decide to follow Christ until the day that we leave this earth in physical death to go meet him.

It will benefit all of you who are reading this to internalize what I’m about to say:

This life, while it is filled with a bunch of things that can be enjoyable to us and bring us temporary happiness is not meant for just enjoyment; in fact, this is meant to be the hardest part of your existence.

This is meant to be a training ground where you learn who God is and what he wants for and from his children.

You are meant to learn how God sees everything he’s created, including yourself. You are meant to learn who you are, meaning, not who you think you are, but who God made you to be; you are meant to learn to submit to and serve God.

You are meant to learn how much he loves you and the difference between his love for you and your love for him.

You are meant to learn many things all of which God has put in front of you so you can choose to become who he intends for you to be.

With all of that being said, in order to make room for the new you, you first must purge yourself of old habits, old thoughts, and old ways that are not of God.

You must be willing to die spiritually to accept God’s gift of salvation that he gave you by dying physically.

Just as he was brought back from the dead you must be reborn from spiritual death into eternal life. To do so, you must accept Jesus Christ into your heart. You must declare him both inwardly and publicly as your Lord and Savior. You must accept his sovereignty and his mastership over you. After that, you must allow the Holy Spirit to take residence in you. Once you do that, that is where true death to self, picking up your cross daily begins.

The Holy Spirit of God will begin to convict you about and convince you against things you used to do, things you used to wear, things you used to say… Anything that he does not like and he will want you to remove those things from your life permanently. Why?

Because those things were not things he wants his children to have. Those are things that do not befit royalty.

These changes will be difficult but they need to be made. Don’t fight them, but instead embrace them. Embrace the convictions of the Holy Spirit because that is God leading you to where he wants you to go and molding you into who you are meant to be.

Once you accept Jesus Christ into your life and make him your Lord and Savior, you become a co-heir  along with him to the kingdom of God.

So to be royalty, you must both look and live the part.

-MB