The Matrix and the truth

Recently I spoke for our students at CRU at GMU and my talk focused around the concept of perceived reality vs. Biblical reality. My desire was to challenge them to walk with Jesus this summer when life goes back to "the way it was" before college. My main opening illustration for the talk focused around the scene in the Matrix when Neo first meets Morpheus. Morpheus gives him the choice of the pills etc... First I love the movie. Better than the other two in the trilogy in my humble opinion. Of course the film makers use incredible religious symbolism, but I think that outwardly it is pretty Buddhist. What I find to be interesting is that when you look at the concept of the movie I think that it actually agrees with some of the big pictures of the bible. We live in a world where we are slaves, but we don't even know it. There is the rag-tag band of people who are trying to save the world by bringing freedom to one person at a time. They are waging a war. When Neo finally realizes that what he sees is not necessarily what is true,(at the end of the movie) the agents really can't hurt him. In fact he has more power over them then they have over him. It is all about what he believes.

Isn't this true in the Christian life? Isn't our ability to live the abundant life really directly tied to what we believe about who God is and what he says(in his word). Most Christians really don't have that hard a time assenting to intellectual belief in Jesus and his word. The problem comes when intellectual belief stays, well... just intellectual. If our belief system never really makes it to the core of who we are, our heart, it never really makes that much of a difference in our life. My friend Stephen and I were talking a few months ago and we came to the conclusion that real life change and abundant living takes place when our intellectual beliefs become heart/core beliefs. The real question then is how does that happen? How do we make that move from the head to the heart?
The answer is I'm not totally sure. But I know that it is a supernatural process. No different than any person that believes(in a life invested way) that Jesus is God and that he paid for their imperfections in life. This is not just the free will of a person to choose God. God is directly involved in drawing that person in. I believe that God is the one who gives anyone the ability to believe in Jesus. I also believe that this holds true for any other belief about God and his character. More about this tomorrow.