It is much more appropriate to view the church and your participation in church as a training camp rather than a classroom. Christians are not to be isolated philosophers of theology, sitting around discussing God ... rather, we are to become vulnerable and closely associated with one another in order to mature and grow. In so doing, we surface and deal with immaturities.

When one becomes a follower of Christ (that is, connected with God and a participant in His kingdom), the Holy Spirit begins to work in the life of the believer to change him/her. Now, this is where the expectations of God and the expectations of most who connect with the church begin to diverge. For, too many of us would rather accessorize our life with God rather than having a complete and total overhaul of our life. But, this change is beautiful ...

The Holy Spirit is always working in the Church community, and we can either cooperate with that work or get in the way of that work - God probably doesn't appreciate the latter. This message simply describes how the Holy Spirit works to overcome evil and cooperate with others to mature and expand the Kingdom of God. Oh, and how to not interfere with that work ...

An attempt to do anything of substance requires infrastructure - the basic equipment and installations needed for the proper functioning of a system or organization. The church uses infrastructure as well, and we need to embrace that the important infrastructure is not likely buildings, programs, and finances. It must be primarily the infrastructure of the Holy Spirit ... spiritual gifts are the elements of this infrastructure.

We often think of spiritual maturity as an individual effort, but it is more a cooperative endeavor. Any high potential person, such as a child of God, may easily fall into limiting behaviors and situations. We all need to have encouragers in our lives to help us out of these traps, and to urge us on to victory.

The path toward this vision is going to take dedication ... commitment. And, unfortunately, Americans are becoming increasingly lax on their commitments. In most every journey toward a goal, there will be tough times where the discipline of the commitment will be needed in order to prevent chaos from sabotaging the goal.

The first step in pursuing your spiritual potential is simply to understand that God has envisioned a powerful spiritual life for you. Do not settle for an inferior vision.

One of the major side-effects of this new perspective from God is that we will develop a different perspective of success. The world typically measures success by setting and accomplishing goals ... without dying. But our success in the eyes of God is not how many goals are accomplished, but how much love is distributed.

Unfortunately, Christians find themselves setting, pursuing, and often failing to accomplish spiritual goals ... and, as a result, they can become spiritually depressed where they feel distant from God and sometimes even question their basic relationship with God (surveys note that 70% of Christian pastors are spiritually depressed). This is why Paul is so adamant about frequent encouragement of one-another.