Recently, I experienced difficulty in sending texts on my iPhone. Our youngest son, Arden, was in India speaking at a conference, and he needed to get in touch with me. He was texting me, but I couldn't reply to his messages for hours due to a glitch in my phone.

It took more than 15 minutes to type out a sentence or two, then my phone would suddenly back out of the messages app, losing everything I had typed, and I'd have to start the process all over again. I got one short text to him in four hours. I wanted to say more, but couldn't.

Needless to say, I was very frustrated.

I tried everything to fix the problem, from closing apps, to shutting off my phone and rebooting, all the way to the "force quit"—the action you turn to when nothing else seems to work. I then proceeded to more complicated steps, but there was no relief from the annoying glitch.

Finally, in a state of desperation, I brought my phone to some experts—technicians who knew far more about how it worked than I did. I'd attempted to solve the problem for days, but they got to the root of the trouble in less than 15 minutes. Turns out I had inadvertently done something that jammed up the phone's operating system. After a quick fix, I was texting once again without any problems.

The whole experience got me thinking—what if I hadn't sought out the solution? What if I had just accepted the way things were rather than take the time to search out answers? I would still be using the phone far beneath its intended functioning level and, tragically, wasting a lot of time. It would have hindered communications with my family, team and friends.

Let's take it a step further. Suppose I'd never experienced the reality of texting? Thirty years ago, I didn't even know what a text was, let alone a smartphone. Just a hundred years ago, there wasn't even a transcontinental phone call; it didn't exist. Back then, I would have been delighted to labor four hours just to send an instant message to my son in India. Any communication would have been better than no communication at all.

Without knowing what was available to me, I wouldn't have been so diligent to seek out the solution and press through the difficulties standing in my way. But with my iPhone, I had experienced the benefits. It was this knowledge that caused my frustration level to be so high.

But here's the catch. We as a church should be experiencing the same level of frustration.

If we take an honest look at the effectiveness, influence and power of the New Testament Church, it's not hard to see that there is so much more available to us as God's people than we are currently experiencing. We are only walking in a fraction of the power the early church witnessed in their day.

That leaves us with only two choices. We can accept things the way they are and rationalize why God doesn't move a certain way anymore. Or the second is that we can seek out answers and aim to get rid of anything that is stealing our potential.

That's why I wrote Killing Kryptonite. It's an attempt to face these questions head-on and find the answers, no matter how difficult they may be. If you want to take your faith to the next level, I encourage you to take this transformational journey with me. Are you ready to wrestle through some tough questions, invite God to search your own heart and discover the power God intends for you to walk in?

There is more to our potential than we have realized. It's time we step into it. Who's with me?

John Bevere and his wife Lisa are the founders of Messenger International. A minister and best-selling author, John delivers messages of uncompromising truth with boldness and passion. His desire is to support the local church and resource leaders regardless of location, language, or financial position. To this end, his resources have been translated into over 90 languages, and millions of copies have been given away to pastors and leaders worldwide. When he's home, John tries to convince Lisa to take up golf and spends time with his four sons, daughter-in-law, and grandbabies.

This article originally appeared at messengerinternational.org.

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