In the lab …

Tech lovers were flush with adrenaline recently as the iPad was finally released and a new piece of technology entered the public marketplace.

Technological and scientific advances are happening at a much greater speed than when any of us were kids. What was a fantasy when we were growing up is the commonality for today’s kids. Children today do not know a world without laptop computers, the internet, cell phones, and a variety of things that didn’t exist when most of us were growing up.

The key behind the advances in technology — or a variety of sciences — is research and development. Companies spend billions every year simply working on ideas, looking for possibilities, and then finding successful ways of turning those possibilities into functional realities. Without this significant focus, investment, and commitment in research and development, how we live would be radically different.

The same goes for our spiritual life. Our relationship with Jesus Christ is directly impacted by both the “research” and “development” we do. How we live is directly impacted by what — or whether — we are learning from God’s Word, and how we develop in the practical application of it. The idea is that we not remain that “old man” we started as, but that we be radically changed into someone much better, the advanced “2.0” version of the “new man.”

Paul described this commitment to “spiritual research and development” in Ephesians 4:11-13, “11 Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. 12 Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. 13 This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.”

The idea here is that next year’s model of who we are should be different than today’s version of us because of our commitment to researching God’s Word, and developing that into our lives, with a final product being “… that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.”

Do you have the same kind of commitment to research and development of your spiritual life that a business has to making a better light bulb? Are you constantly learning and growing in God’s Word? Are you committed to your spiritual development so that you can be a mature child of God, living up to the “complete standard of Christ”? Or do you need to get back in the lab for more serious R&D?

Scotty