Last week we discussed the attitude that will keep us moving, growing, and pressing on to maturity in Christ, as the Apostle Paul expressed it in Philippians 3. If Paul, who had one of the most powerful, fruitful ministries of all time had the attitude near the end of his life that he had not yet attained, but needed to press on and not look back, how much more should we have this attitude?

For this reason, one of the greatest gifts that anyone could have is hunger for God that keeps them in pursuit of Him. Only the hungry will eat, and only the thirsty will drink. This should be a basic prayer that we pray for ourselves and the Lord's people—for a hunger and thirst for God that will keep us seeking Him. How could anyone who has met the living God, the all-consuming fire, not be on fire for Him? The only way is if we have fallen into the terrible deception and delusion through which the temporary things of this world are seeking to distract us from the course.

Also, concerning our attitude about both the new movements and the older, more established ones, as the Lord explained in Matthew 13:52, "Therefore every scribe who has become a disciple of the kingdom of heaven is like a head of a household, who brings forth out of his treasure things new and old." The Lord is bringing out of His household both the new and the old. If we are going to see His kingdom as it is, we need to have vision for both. In His kingdom there is new wine which needs new wineskins, but there is also the aged, refined wine, which He also says that He will serve at His great feast (see Isaiah 25:6).

The big picture is that when the Lord looks down upon us, He only sees one church. Like an individual congregation, His church has many members, and we need the differences and distinctions. We need the old and the new; we need the prophets, the teachers, the pastors, the apostolic, and the evangelistic churches and movements. These only conflict with each other when we have a low and therefore incomplete vision.

Overall, the body of Christ is the most dynamic, vital, thriving, creative, and powerful force on the earth. We need to have a vision not only for the whole body of Christ, but also for our own part in it. Then we need to see how our part interfaces with the body and develop those relationships which will build up the body and us as well.

There are some teachings that whenever there are two visions there is "di-vision." This can be true, but there are some ways in which we will be divided from the body of Christ if we do not have more than our own little vision. Just as any flock of sheep will get weaker with each succeeding generation if it is not allowed to cross-breed with other flocks, isolated Christians, churches, and even denominations will get weaker, sicker, and eventually die without a relationship to other parts of the body of Christ. We are warned about this in I Corinthians 11:29-30:
 

If we do not "judge the body rightly," we partake of judgment when we partake of communion, which is why we are told here that "many among you are weak and sick, and a number sleep." This remains one of the primary reasons for the weakness, sickness, and premature deaths in the body of Christ. We partake of the ritual of communion thinking that we are fulfilling our obligations, while we do not have a true communion with the body of Christ. Communion means to have common union.

Our primary goal must be to have communion with the Lord and with His body. We cannot be properly joined to the Head without also being joined to His body. For this reason, we must "judge the body rightly," not through the coloring of our previous disappointments, wounds, or idealism of what the body should be like.

The churches and movements that have gone into serious error and heresy, some of which have even become cults, are inevitably the isolated ones. The devil goes after God's sheep to devour them with the same strategy as a wolf, which works to isolate a single sheep from the rest of the flock where it becomes easy prey. It is much better to be in a boring church filled with problems than not to be in one at all.

Every individual Christian with an isolationist spirit is in jeopardy and will get picked off in due time. Such often seek to impart the same spirit to others, especially young Christians, so that they will feel more secure in their attitude. But all they are doing is becoming a stumbling block to them.

If there is an isolationist spirit in your church or movement, if you cannot help bring correction to it, then probably the right thing to do is leave it and find a church that has a healthy relationship with the rest of the body. I say "probably" because a clear word from the Holy Spirit trumps any principle, and there can be a number of reasons why the Lord might want to keep you in such a situation longer. You may be used to help set such a group free or at least sow seeds that someone else comes along and waters.

The Lord loves all of His kids, even those who may have gone astray, and as He taught concerning the Good Shepherd, He may even give more attention to those who have gone astray, seeking to recover them. For this reason, we must not always equate the Lord moving in our midst as His approval for all that we are doing. There is a tendency to think that if the Lord is moving in our midst, it is because we have earned it somehow and He approves of us. Instead, it can be the result of the opposite in that He is seeking to bring His wayward sheep back to the fold.

How can we know the difference between His normal life and activity among His people, and the special attention that He might be giving to us to bring us back into the fold? We need to distinguish just what the fold is, and whether we are in it or out of it. There are clear, biblical characteristics of what normal church life is, and we will examine these over the next few weeks.

Our goal should be to be a perfect Christian, pleasing God in all things, and to help the congregation and movement we have been placed in to be the perfect church. This is actually a command that the Lord gave to us in Matthew 5:48, "Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect." We might think this is the root of the perfectionism and idealism that is a source of the religious spirit, and it can be, but not if we approach it rightly, which is simply to abide in the One who is perfect.

As stated, we do not want idealism, which is rooted in humanism, but we should have a vision of a perfect Christian life and a perfect church. With that vision, we must not become frustrated because we do not measure up or our church does not measure up. We must use it to motivate us to get closer to the Lord and keep moving in the right direction. As we are told in Proverbs 4:18, "But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, that shines brighter and brighter until the full day." Therefore, if we are still on the path, it should be getting brighter every day, and our light should be shining brighter and brighter.

One of the ways we know that we are still on the path of life is ever increasing light. Our path should be becoming more and more clear, which gives us more and more boldness in our walk. This is not boldness with arrogance, but with ever increasing humility that we need more of Him. It was this humility that changed the testimony of the great Apostle Paul from at first claiming to not be inferior to even the greatest apostles, to writing about five years later that he was "the least of the apostles" (see I Corinthians 15:9), to about five years after that writing that he was "the least of the saints" (see Ephesians 3:8), until he wrote in one of his last letters that he was "the greatest of sinners" (see I Timothy 1:15). That is because with true spiritual maturity there will be increasing humility, not arrogance.

Such humility will always be demonstrated by becoming increasingly teachable. Such will always be open to other, different members of the body. Such will always be found to have increasing fellowship and interchange with the rest of the body of Christ. That is also a sure sign of true spiritual maturity—we start to discern the whole body, not just our little part.