CHRISTIAN
LIVING, SPIRITUAL GROWTH

GOD is not satisfied that you’ve taken one step, no more than you are satisfied that your children take their first step. All they did was get started. They still have to go to school. They still have to go through the teenage years. They still have to grow up and get married and have a family. The first step is great, but don’t stop with excitement over the first step. All that’s occurred is the introduction to spiritual life. There is an ongoing process of developing in the body of Christ.138

[New Life in Christ; Sanctification]

1 Thess. 4:1

MANY a parent has told their son or daughter how much potential they possess. They attempt to communicate to their child that they have so much more inside than what is visible right now. When a baby is born, that is only the beginning. Years of growth and development must occur before that infant grows into an adult.

In the same way, God has given every believer the promise of spiritual maturity. What is presently visible is not the end result of spiritual growth.139

HIS NAME was Thomas Anderson. He was just an ordinary computer programmer and occasional computer hacker. He was an ordinary man. But one day he got exposed to another realm. While working on his computer, he discovered that there was a reality beyond that which he was accustomed to. It was called the Matrix. He got transported into this other realm where he met another man named Morpheus. He discovered things were not as they appeared.

He discovered that in this realm, it was the computers who called the shots. He had settled for an ordinary life to sit down all day punching numbers into a computer until he discovered there was something bigger going on. He was then invited to participate in something much bigger than he was aware of. When he decided that he would participate, it became clear that he was the one—the chosen one whose job it was to save humanity from the takeover of the computers in the realm of the Matrix.

All of a sudden, his ordinary life became an extraordinary life. He received a new name; he would be called Neo. In the new realm, He could do things he couldn’t do previously. In the new realm, he possessed abilities he didn’t have before. In the new realm, he had a new love. His relationship with Trinity became his dominating relationship as they worked in partnership to keep the computers from overthrowing humanity. He discovered that life had something much bigger to offer him than his previous existence of sitting at a computer, punching away.

When Jesus Christ saved you, He invited you to partner in a new realm with Trinity—the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit—in order to keep the agents of evil from dominating and taking over humanity. You have been called to something bigger. If you don’t experience that new realm, if you are satisfied being a Thomas when you were made to be a Neo, you will not experience all that you were designed to experience.

Now Neo had to make a choice about where he wanted to live. He had to choose between two pills. One pill would take him into the new realm. The other pill would send him back to his ordinary life. He took the pill that would make his life no longer the same, ordinary existence. After choosing the pill of the new realm, he no longer got up every day to the same old life; he now got up and entered the Matrix.

The question is, which pill will you choose? Will you be satisfied with ordinary living or will you choose an existence that takes you into a new realm?140

Rom. 12:1–2; Eph. 6:11–13