Author: Matik Nicholls

We are super excited to announce that we have a new book coming out!! Whoopee!!! My latest book, Becoming Mature: A Practical Guide for Disciples of Jesus, will be released on April 21st, 2025!

If you feel like you are struggling in your spiritual growth journey or just not progressing as fast as you would like, then this book is for you. Becoming Mature offers a transformative approach to Christian discipleship using scripture, personal experience, and psychological insights to connect with the reader. Becoming Mature takes you on a step-by-step journey of growth in love, purpose, community, identity, responsibility, wholeness, resilience, competence, and most importantly, intimacy with God.

It’s available to pre-order now on Amazon. Get it here!

And since y’all are my peeps. Here’s a free preview of the introduction.

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Introduction

If you can keep your head when all about you  

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,  

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;  

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;  

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;  

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;  

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,  

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,  

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,  

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,  

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

~ Rudyard Kipling ~

As a young boy, Rudyard Kipling’s poem If (quoted above) made an indelible mark on my soul. Before I knew Christ, it embodied what I believed maturity would look like. It was the only poster that hung in my room, constantly reminding me of the man I wanted to become. It is no coincidence, I believe, that maturity has been an obsession throughout my life. In hindsight, it was a God-inspired obsession, a heavenly calling. God has given me more understanding since my boyhood days, both through divine revelation and through practical experience.

I would describe my achievements in life as mediocre. I have a checkered history where my personal relationships are concerned. Today I am happily married to a wonderfully on-fire woman of God, and we have a beautifully blended family of five children and one granddaughter. I attribute this outcome solely to the grace of God. (If you knew my story you would too, trust me.)  My children are good kids. I am very proud of the adults they are becoming but none of them are really on fire for God…yet. I have a successful career, currently holding a managerial position at a natural gas company, but I could have achieved more. I can’t say I have won many souls for Christ, nor have I any notoriety in the Christian world. There is only one thing that I have truly excelled at – inner work. I have a dogged commitment to doing the hard, hidden work of maturity.

So let me set your expectations straight upfront: This book is about the unglamourous, unheralded hard work of becoming like Christ that most won’t see and very few will give you accolades for, BUT it is THE MOST important work that you can do, and if you choose to put in the work, your reward will be great indeed.

Excited? Let’s start unpacking it with Romans 8:19 (NLT):

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God.

It is significant that in this verse the apostle Paul used the Greek word huios (which is translated as ‘sons’). There are four possible words that he could have used. There is nepios which is a word used to describe an infant. An example of its usage is contained in Hebrews 5:13. Then there is paidion which is a young child as used in Matthew 19:13-14. There is also teknion which describes an adolescent or immature young adult. In the New Testament, it is often used by a teacher to refer to his disciples who have not yet matured. For example, in 1 John 5:21. Finally, there is huios. It is the word used for a mature son. It is the word used to describe Christ as the Son of God, and the word Christ used for Himself when he referred to Himself as the Son of Man.

Therefore, in the context of Romans 8:19, all of creation is not longing merely for more converts to Christianity, but for all the Christian babies, children and teenagers to grow into mature manhood and womanhood. This is what the world is waiting to see, and this is the cause that I have given my life to. My mission is to be an example, a catalyst and a servant in God’s glorious plan for maturing the Bride of Christ into absolute perfection, full authority and dazzling beauty of the fullness of Christ! I too, am eagerly longing for the church (myself included) to grow up into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. I hope it will happen in my lifetime, but even if it doesn’t, I will happily dedicate the rest of my years in service of this vision. Of course, this is not just my vision, this is God’s heart desire for His daughters and sons. He longs for us to come to maturity.

This mission is the reason for this book. My prayer is that you will find practical wisdom here that will help you grow in Christ. This is a book about the how – how we become mature. The contents are the gleanings of my journey toward maturity. I converted to Christianity as a teenager when I became a Roman Catholic through the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA). Then, at twenty-one, I became a born-again believer and got baptized (again) in a non-denominational church with Pentecostal roots. However, I did not begin to see significant growth in my maturity until my late thirties.

What was responsible for this acceleration in my spiritual growth? A God-encounter. Up until that moment I had experienced a lot of religion and a lot of behaviour modification but limited transformation. What I mean is, I was filled with knowledge about God and how a Christian should behave but I had very little (if any) change in my internal desires and motivations.

(To read about my testimony, check out my first book – Authentic Joy).

After my encounter with the liquid love of Jesus, I began to see a change in my life. This was not as a result of my willpower, but through the power of the Holy Spirit, fuelled by His love for me and my love for Him.

This is how it started for me. From that moment, I would meet with my Rabbi every morning with excitement to discover what He wanted to teach me each morning. That was over ten years ago, and it was just the first key to unlocking a life of transformation. On these pages, I will share with you all that I have learned from my successes and my failures on my life’s journey thus far.

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Stay tuned for more sneak peek previews in days to come!