Never let time become more important than eternity.

Dr. Tony Evans says looking to the future has great rewards for today.

Keep a heavenly perspective and you'll get along better on earth.

This is the alternative with Dr. Tony Evans,

author, speaker, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas,

Texas, and president of the Urban Alternative.

Celebrating the arrival of a new life is a joyous occasion.

Seeing a baby happy at play or even peacefully at rest usually brings a smile to our faces.

But babies don't stay in their cribs forever, and Christians can't linger in spiritual infancy either.

It might be cozy having everything taken care of for you, but growth

is an essential part of life. Let's join Dr Evans as he takes a look at the level of fellowship.

In the book of First John, John is writing

to talk about how Christians are to expand

their experience with God tied to their spiritual development.

We've already seen that this is a book not about salvation but about fellowship.

It's not about how you get to heaven.

It assumes you've already accepted Christ

is talking about how heaven gets to you

in terms of our spiritual growth and development.

In our passage today, a familiar one, he talks about this process of development from babyhood to maturity, from infancy to adulthood.

He begins in verse 12 and he says,

I am writing to you little children

...