Making the Right Moves | Tony Evans

Once I was given a checkers set. On each checker there was a crown. That’s because each checker was created to become a king. Each checker was created to be crowned. Every checker won’t become a king; it all depends on the moves they make. But each checker was created to reign. If you’ve trusted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you have a crown on your head. You are created to rule. The Bible says that the grace of God gives us the ability to reign. When Jesus died on the cross, He paid for our sins, but when He rose from the dead, He guaranteed our victory. That’s why the Bible says we are more than conquerors in Christ because we are made to rule. Satan wants to take your crown from you, like checkers that have to be removed from the board because they didn’t make the right moves. We want to make the right moves so that we get the crown that God has for us—the ability to rule under His rule. When we submit ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, we find His rulership being delegated to us so that we experience the ability to rule with Him. In fact, Scripture says that grace has seated us with Him in heavenly places. Where is Jesus seated? On a throne on the right-hand side of His Father. Who sits on thrones? Kings.

He rules, and we’re seated right beside Him because we are supposed to rule with Him. The beautiful thing about grace is that it ups the ante of your human existence. It means that you now get to call the shots under God’s authority for the kind of life He has called you to live and the experience of victory He has called you to have. I want you to start thinking about yourself differently in spite of how you were raised, in spite of what people said about you, in spite of your circumstances, all of which might say, “You have no right to a crown on your head.” As long as you belong to Jesus Christ, you have a crown on—you just need to make the moves so that you experience that crown that grace has offered you to rule under His authority. You’re not to settle for anything less than the ruling authority that Christ offers you. If you become His full-time disciple and don’t settle for being a part-time saint, you’ll get crowned and you will not be removed off of the board of victory that God has preordained and called you to experience.