Or let me put it like this. You may feel and say ‒ as many do ‒ ‘I
was converted and became a Christian. I’ve grown ‒ yes, I’ve grown in
knowledge, I’ve been reading books, I’ve been listening to sermons, but
I’ve arrived now at a sort of peak and all I do is maintain that. For
the rest of my life I will just go on like this.’
Now, my friend, you must get rid of that attitude; you must get rid
of it once and for ever. That is ‘religion’, it is not Christianity.
This is Christianity: the Lord appears! Suddenly, in the midst of the
drudgery and the routine and the sameness and the dullness and the
drabness, unexpectedly, surprisingly, he meets with you and he says
something to you that changes the whole of your life and your outlook
and lifts you to a level that you had never conceived could be possible
for you.
Oh, if we get nothing else from this story, I hope we will get
this. Do not let the devil persuade you that you have got all you are
going to get, still less that you received all you were ever going to
receive when you were converted. That has been a popular teaching, even
among evangelicals. You get everything at your conversion, it is said,
including baptism with the Spirit, and nothing further, ever. Oh, do
not believe it; it is not true. It is not true to the teaching of the
Scriptures, it is not true in the experience of the saints running down
the centuries. There is always this glorious possibility of meeting
with him in a new and a dynamic way.”
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, on John chapter 4
