Years ago, I went on a short-term mission trip to a country that was very hostile to the gospel. If a person converted to Jesus, they risked losing their jobs, their property, their family, and possibly even their own life. I chatted with a leader of one of the small house churches we visited, and he said a very interesting thing, which I am reminded of often. He said that when a person became a follower of Jesus in his country, they were already ahead of most Christians in the United States in spiritual maturity, who had been Christians all their life. He said in the United States, many Christians are in a state of arrested growth or plateaued, a state that they rarely escape from, but in his country, that never happened. All believers grew rapidly from day one and never stopped. The reason was that they were picking up their crosses daily and following Jesus. They counted the cost of being a disciple of Jesus every day, and despite the dangers and fears, they continued to follow and serve Jesus. We never face persecution for our faith here; there is no price that we pay to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus. There, they risked everything to attend a small house church and rarely missed. It was a severely punished crime to be caught with a Bible, so they read it in secret for hours before passing it off to someone else to read and memorize. Christians in our country can grow rapidly and bear much fruit, but they are rare. In Oregon, the only ones who grow and never stop are the ones who desperately want to and pay the price in personal discipline to grow.