I want to see me...

I'm at the gym and it hits me.

I've been coming here for five years, seeing many of the same people, and we all still pretty much look the same. There's such a thing as maintaining, I know. But some of us need a little bit more.

How is that?

I mean five years!

I'm not as concerned about my physical condition as I am my spiritual. I definitely don't want to be coming to church Sunday after Sunday and just maintaining. I want to be moving forward.

One thing that keeps us from moving forward physically is a failure to see ourselves for who really are.

And I think the same thing can be true spiritually; we sometimes suffer from a kind of spiritual blindness; maybe not so much blindness as just having our eyes closed.

There are reasons we're able to do that and stay content spiritually.

For starters, we have a warped sense of where we are at spiritually.

Another problem, theological "knowledge."

Now I've got to be careful here. By theological knowledge I don't mean theological knowledge, I mean theological "knowledge." True theological knowledge is the key to spiritual growth, but what I've found is that it is very easy to substitute theological "knowledge" for theological knowledge. Easy to think you know God just because you know the right words about God. Easy to think that because we can say words like sovereignty that the way we are looking at the world corresponds with that belief. Easy to think that we are mature believers because we know big words when in reality we haven't really applied those truths to our lives. Easy to think that we don't need to listen to others because we've heard it all before. Easy to think that just because we have a certain amount of knowledge that we are automatically right.