These are the marching orders for every born-again covenant child of God…

We must surrender our lives totally and completely to Jesus…

Revelation 2:11
“He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The one who overcomes will not be harmed by the second death.”

Matthew 16:24-26
24 Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. 26 For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul?
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The first death is our death to self (death to our flesh), the result of overcoming, of self-conquest.

This is a gradual death that happens each day, over the span of our life, until we graduate to Glory; as Paul says, “we must die daily,” to our own will and to our own ways.

Luke 6:46
Jesus speaking: “Why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and do not practice what I tell you?

1 John 2:6
He who says he abides in Him (Jesus) ought himself also to walk just as He walked.

Romans 12:2
And do not be conformed to this world [any longer with its superficial values and customs], but be transformed and progressively changed [as you mature spiritually] by the renewing of your mind [focusing on godly values and ethical attitudes], so that you may prove [for yourselves] what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect [in His plan and purpose for you].

It is one thing to read what Jesus tells us in His Word, but it is another thing to heed it—to take it to heart and act upon it.

James compares the person who is a hearer of the Word but not a doer of it to a man who looks at his face in a mirror and leaves, forgetting what he saw (James 1:23–24).

He adds: “But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:25).

Jesus promises the believers of the church at Smyrna that the second death—the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14)—will not harm them.

God’s people’s final home is heaven (John 14:1–3).

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