Welcome to Calvary Church with Skip Heitzig.

We're so glad you've joined us today.

While many books, articles, and social media posts offer advice on adulting in our daily lives,

there's only one resource to help us become spiritually mature believers.

God's Word.

This study in the book of James with Pastor Skip will encourage you to embrace discipline and difficulty to glorify God and demonstrate your faith to others. And we're continuing in our series, adulting. And as I was prepping for this message, if you're one of those people like me that you're in service, you want to read ahead a little bit to say, okay, what are we going to be looking at today? This is a heavy book,

and it's a heavy topic. But I think we kind of promised that at the onset of this series.

This series is about adulting. And let's be honest, adulting's hard. Adulting is difficult.

Really, the core idea of this, more than adulting, maturity is hard. It's difficult to grow in maturity.

And the only way you grow in maturity is learning what to do and what not to do,

oftentimes by making mistakes and learning the hard way. Anyone learn the hard way, some big lessons that you carry with you today? I look back and I look at all those hard lessons of maturity and adulting. And now on the other side, I'm thankful for him. Or aren't you, aren't you thankful for those difficult lessons you learn? I mean, it can be as early as when you're a little kid and your parents say, don't touch the stove and you think I know better, that thing is nice and red and looks beautiful. I'm going to touch it. And you burn the crap out of your hand,

and that's the last time you touch the stove. Because some lessons, you got to learn the hard way.

Some lessons are difficult to learn. Adulting and maturity can be hard. And that's what this whole

series has really been looking at is how we can mature more and more into the image of Christ,

because I don't know about you,

but I don't want to be a baby. I want to be an adult. And I think maybe some people, you know, in their early 20s, are happy being babies and living at mom's house, but I'm not happy living at mom's house. I want to be an adult. I want to learn things the right way and do things the right way, especially when it comes to

my faith in Christ. Anyone in here want to be mature in their faith in Christ?

I've titled the message today, don't give them an excuse. And we have a huge problem in the

church today. Whether you realize it or not, there is a massive problem

in the church today. And really, it's a problem that's not just exclusive to the church today.

It's been happening for centuries, for millennia, since the church started. Even before the

church started, we've had a big issue. And that is that pastors are falling out of ministry at an

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