Are you going to take the blue pill or the red pill?
Do you remember the classic film The Matrix? It told the story of Thomas Anderson who, in the film, also went by the name Neo. He was a computer programmer and part-time computer hacker who lived a regular, plain, ordinary life. He wasn’t anyone special–just an ordinary guy doing the best he could with what he had.
Until the day he discovered the truth about a computer-generated alternate reality: the matrix. What he learned about the matrix nearly blew his mind. He learned that he possessed powers he’d never dreamed of having before. He found that the world was much more complicated than he’d ever imagined. And he realized that he belonged to an entirely new community of people who lived in a place he’d never heard of before—Zion.
But along with all the good things that Neo discovered, he also came face to face with a terrifying evil—an enemy simply called Mr. Smith. Neo’s mission, over the course of the three Matrix films, was to overcome the power and the deceptions of Mr. Smith.
But before this could happen, Neo needed to realize that the world he thought was real wasn’t the whole story. He learned that there was a deeper and darker reality he would have to face before he could find freedom for himself and others. What happened in the matrix affected everything outside of the matrix. This unseen realm hugely influenced the realm of the seen and known—all his past and present experience.
That’s when the next part of the dialogue took place, a conversation that many people will recognize, even if they’ve never actually seen the movie. In that scene, Morpheus offered Thomas Anderson a choice of two pills. He told him he could take the blue pill and then go back to his ordinary life. Or he could take the red pill if he wanted to enter the realm of what was really real. The question boiled down to whether he wanted to choose what he thought he knew to be the whole story, or if he wanted to experience the extraordinary reality that lies behind it all.
This film has always struck me as pretty profound, and I think it is a powerful parable for the choice that is laid out before us all. Will we settle for plain and ordinary and predictable lives, or will we seek to understand and live in accordance with the supernatural truth that exists below the surface of our lives?
The reason why so many of us have settled for this ordinary kind of life may be that we have become used to functioning in the wrong realm. We are identifying with the wrong environment. We have mistakenly believed that this world of the five senses is all there is, when in all actuality, the spiritual realm is far more real than we could ever comprehend. So, in order for a person to fully maximize his or her potential by living with kingdom authority, they must recognize the underlying influence for all that takes place in the here and now. They must understand the underlying supernatural reality that undergirds, connects, moves and motivates all that occurs in the natural world we know as our earth.
Like Neo in The Matrix, you must make a choice. Will you take the mind-numbing blue pill of an ordinary life . . . or will you reach out for the red pill and go deeper into the realm of what can’t be seen? You cannot afford to ignore the spiritual realm–the realm where a conflict rages on which hangs your own personal destiny, as well as the destiny of your culture.
So, open yourself to discovering the spiritual authority that God has given you so you can use it in the battles you face.
Put God’s Authority to Work in Your Life
There’s more power available to you than you ever imagined. Learn how you can move in kingdom authority with The Authority of God, Volumes One and Two, Kingdom Authority, and its companion DVD and study guide.
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