Each day we are challenged to renounce and turn away from some aspect of worldliness, lust, or self-will. If we choose to do so, Christ helps us and gives us to eat of Himself, of the Tree of Life. Our sinful adamic nature dies and in its place is formed resurrection life.

We cannot eat of Christ except as we are willing to put away our sin, which we do with His assistance.

The cherubim and the flaming sword guard the way to the Tree of Life. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. The gate to the path of life and the path itself are difficult to find and to travel. It is a case of repenting, turning from our sins as the Holy Spirit guides us.

As we overcome we are given to eat of the Tree of Life. When we do not overcome we are not given to eat of the Tree of Life. We can sit in church until there are colonies on the sun but we will not receive one drop of life if we are not living as an overcomer.

Every Christian is to be a victorious saint. Every Christian is to walk as the Lord Jesus walked, to be righteous as He was righteous; to be holy as He was holy; to be strictly obedient to the Father as He was strictly obedient to the Father. We can accomplish none of this moral transformation in our adamic nature, but only as we look continually to Jesus. He is our Example and our Source of power and wisdom in all circumstances of life.

As we pray and overcome the problems of the day the crown of life begins to be placed on our head, the white voting pebble is given to us signifying we have passed from the ranks of the called and have become one of the chosen, the rod of iron is created in our spirit and soul. Although the rewards are very elementary in the present hour they are of the same essence that one day will be multiplied beyond our present comprehension.

Opportunity to eat of the Tree of Life is the beginning. Placement on the eternal Throne of Christ is the consummation. Increment by increment we attain the glory promised to us by the Father.

To not return to our first love of prayer, Bible reading, and consecration to the Lord's service is to forfeit our right to the Tree of Life, which is the right to partake of the body and blood of Jesus Christ given to us in the spirit realm. Then we do not have the strength to remain in the prison in which we have been placed, to overcome the lusts of Jezebel, or to buy gold tried in the fire.

Victory leads to the next victory. Defeat leads to the next defeat. We are on a path leading upward to the throne or downward to defeat and corruption in the Day of the Lord.

You can eat of the Tree of Life, Jesus Christ, today by praying to God for the strength and wisdom to do what He is commanding you right now!

We overcome each day and we receive the rewards to the overcomer each day. When our overcoming attains its fullness our rewards will be revealed in their fullness. Those who are not overcoming each day are not receiving the rewards to the overcomer. For the conquerors it's onward and upward to the Throne of Christ and the first resurrection from the dead.

How terrible it would be to go through life as a Christian believer and then find, at the time of our death or when the dead are raised, that we did not participate in the process of change, the process that would have made us coheirs with Jesus Christ of the works of God's hands! Yet this is what will take place for the majority of evangelical believers in the United States of America unless God in His goodness awakens His people to the truth of the Scriptures.

It is not that we need a new revelation. It is that we have not been saying "Amen!" to the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation. We have been ignoring them, pretending they are not "practical," that they have no bearing on the actual course of our discipleship.

The truth is, the second and third chapters of the Book of Revelation are a love letter to the Bride of the Lamb. We can hear the voice of the Bridegroom calling to His beloved to "come away" from the carnality of the churches to skip with Him on the mountains of spices.

Those who have an ear to hear the Spirit will follow Jesus through the tumultuous years, the age of moral horrors that even now is reaching its tentacles toward us. That which would have been cause for hanging a hundred years ago in America is now protected by law or regarded as the ordinary problems of civilization. From sea to bloody sea!

A new age is before us filled with opportunity for glory and opportunity for sin. We will most assuredly reap what we are sowing at this time.

Let us turn once again to the Lord Jesus, renewing our first love. He will feed us with His own body and blood. The body and blood of Jesus Christ are the only true food and the only true drink.

If we will open the door of our personality to Jesus He will enter us and dine with us on His own body and blood. Then we shall live by Him as He lives by the Father. Then we shall walk in eternal, incorruptible resurrection life.

(from The Necessity for Overcoming)