True growth as a Christian starts with who you already are

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This is a companion to the video "The secret to TRUE growth as a Christian." It is for the person who has genuinely tried. You have made the resolutions, read the books, gritted your teeth through another year of trying to be a better Christian, and somewhere in there a sentence settled into your bones: I'm just a sinner saved by grace, and this is as good as it gets. It is also for the person who has a Bible-serious faith that works fine in theory while an ordinary week still feels small, as if the real story were happening somewhere else. If either of those is you, this guide was written with you sitting across the table.

Here is how to use it. Watch the video first if you can. Then open your Bible to Genesis 1 and keep it open beside you, because we are going to start there and we will not leave it for a while. Read "The teaching" straight through; it carries the whole argument on its own. Then work "The passages" slowly, with a pen, checking every line against your own Bible. Save "Questions to sit with" for last, and answer them on paper rather than in your head. Paper is honest in a way the inside of your head is not.

One thing before we start. Being right about identity in Christ does not save anyone. Faith in Jesus does. I have friends all over the map on how much of the new creation we get to experience now, and every one of them loves the Lord. So hold this study the way you would hold a conversation with a friend who disagrees with you: be convinced by the text if the text convinces you, and stay kind toward everyone who reads it differently. I would rather you leave this guide with your Bible marked up than with a new slogan.

It matters because the story you believe you are living in is the story you will live out. If you believe you are a sinner who got lucky, you will live like a sinner on probation, and you will be tired all the time. If you believe what the text says God made humans for and what he has already made you in Christ, you will live like someone who has a job to do and a Father who is pleased with you while you do it. Same Bible, two very different ways to get out of bed.