This is an excerpt from Dr. Ron’s book Kingdom Advancement.
Lift up your heads, O you gates! And be lifted up, you everlasting doors! And the King of glory shall come in. (Psalm 24:7)
One of the most practical revelations in Embracing Your Crown of Authority is that each crown functions as a key in the spirit realm—a specific instrument of authority designed to open specific gates. Just as a physical key is cut to fit a specific lock, your crown has been shaped—by your calling, your preparation, your testimony, and your spiritual inheritance—to open specific gates.
No one else can open your gates for you. There are territories where your advance specifically—with your specific crown—is what opens the gate. Others can pray alongside you, intercede with you, stand with you in covenant. But the gate that requires your crown will not open until you show up and use it.
This means you are not competing with anyone. Your gates are yours by assignment. No one can take them from you by being more gifted. They are waiting for you—and only you—to use the key that has been cut for them.
And I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in Heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in Heaven. (Matthew 16:19)
How do you know which gates are assigned to your crown? The primary way is through the face-seeking we explored in chapter four. Holy Spirit knows your gates. The Courts of Heaven carry the records of your assignment. Ask Him. Go to the Courts and ask to see the records of your specific mandate.
But here is a practical indicator: whatever genuinely provokes your spirit—the way Athens provoked Paul’s—is likely close to your gates. The thing that stirs you, that you cannot stop thinking about, that has your name on it in the heavenly realm even when no one else seems to notice it—that is where your crown is meant to function.
The command is not merely to open the gates—it is to lift up their heads. This language describes an expansion beyond current dimensions—a raising of the threshold, a widening of the opening. The gates must not crack open. They must be elevated.
God is always calling His people to enlarge—their faith, their capacity, their spiritual containers. Elisha told the widow to gather as many jars as she could find, because the oil would flow until the jars ran out. The limitation was not in the supply. It was in the capacity of what she brought.
Your gates can only rise as high
as your spiritual capacity allows.
The inner work of the preceding chapters is the enlargement. The advance is the expression of it.
Nehemiah rebuilt the physical gates of Jerusalem—gates destroyed and left in ruins for over a century. The spiritual principle his labor illustrates is precisely what Psalm 24:7 describes: a qualified, positioned, commissioned individual showing up to open gates that have been shut, in the face of significant opposition.
Nehemiah’s preparation was thorough before he ever reached Jerusalem. He wept, fasted, and prayed for days. He acknowledged the iniquities of his ancestors that had resulted in the city’s condition. He did the inner work of Psalm 24:3–4 before he picked up a trowel. And when opposition came—mockery, conspiracy, threats, deception—his response was always the same: I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down. That is the posture of a gate-opener.
When the gates were complete, Ezra read the Law and a spiritual awakening broke out among the people. The physical gates opened the spiritual gate. The King of Glory advanced through a people who had been cut off from His full presence. Your gates matter—not just for your personal advance, but for everyone waiting on the other side of them.
Philip went to Samaria—a spiritually mixed territory that observant Jews typically avoided—and opened a gate. Multitudes came to faith, miracles followed, and great joy filled the city. Then the Spirit redirected him from that thriving revival to a desert road, to find one Ethiopian official reading Isaiah. One conversation, one baptism in a roadside pool, and a gate opened into an entire continent.
Philip did not choose these assignments by strategic evaluation. He followed the Spirit. His crown was shaped to open the Samaritan gate and the Ethiopian gate—one urban and sustained, one remote and sudden. You do not always know the scale of the gate you are opening. You open the one you are standing in front of.
[This activation is both spiritual and practical. It should be done at the actual location of one of your assigned gates—or with a map or written description of that territory in front of you.]
Identify one specific gate you are assigned to open. Name it: a specific person, a family, a neighborhood, a business, an institution, or a territory. Write the name down.
Speak aloud the ownership declaration:
“This territory belongs to the Lord. [Name the place or person]. The King of Glory has a claim on this ground, and I am His authorized ambassador assigned to open this gate.”
Now speak the command—not the petition, the command:
“I address you, gate of [name]. Lift up your head. Be elevated. The King of Glory is coming in. I command every spiritual structure blocking this gate to be removed in the name of Jesus and by the authority of the crown I carry.”
Apply the blood of Jesus:
“I apply the blood of Jesus over every legal claim the enemy has used to keep this gate shut. I present His finished work completed on the cross at Calvary and finalized through His resurrection as the instrument that cancels that claim and secures the opening of this gate.”
Declare what the King of Glory’s advance through this gate will look like:
“When this gate opens, [describe the Kingdom outcome—salvations, healing, restoration, transformation]. I declare it. I receive it. I hold the gate.”
Return to this gate in prayer regularly. Gates that have been opened require continued presence. Mark the date you first opened this gate and revisit it monthly to speak maintenance over what has been opened.
“I lift up the gates assigned to my crown and command every door in my sphere of authority to be elevated.”
“I open the way for the King of Glory to advance in my family, my city, my calling, and every territory under my jurisdiction.”
“I will not come down from this assignment. I am doing a great work.”
“I enlarge my spiritual capacity to accommodate more of the King of Glory than I have yet experienced.”
“Let the King of Glory come in—through my life, through my crown, and through every gate I have been assigned to keep.”
