Time to Grow Up
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
Has ‘growing up’ ever made your New Year’s resolution list?
I recently finished Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel, Brave New World.
Here, adults are kept simple in their thoughts and impulsive in their relationships.
In essence, they are kept child-like for the sake of societal stability and control through entertainment, sensations, sensual pleasures, and games. On the surface there should not be any discontent. Despite this, a few of them craved deeper relationships and their thinking began to diverge.
They were like children wanting to grow up but caged in a type of Neverland.
Maturity isn’t a process we think about too often. It has never made my New Year’s resolutions. We typically limit maturity to physicality instead of spirituality.
The apostles longed for spiritual maturity in the church.
Paul states we are to “… become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:13)
“Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature.” (1 Corinthians 14:20)
“…we have not ceased to pray for you and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you will walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;” (Colossians 1:9-10)
Put simply, we are to grow up. We are to graduate from milk to solid food and not remain infants in Christ.
There is a time to be children as Jesus instructed for our humility and faith but we are not intended to stay as such.
The world needs spiritually mature adults. Only as spiritually mature adults can have deep relationships, connections, thoughts, and reasoning. As mature adults, we should bear fruit.
Whatever your New Year’s resolutions are, you are essentially desiring to grow up in an area that needs maturity: fitness, diet, relationships, finances.
In 2017 I encourage you to seek spiritual maturity. May you resolve to grow up by searching the scriptures to increase your knowledge of God.
“Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming.” (Ephesians 4:14-15)
