Graduating toward Maturity

It's the season of graduation.

It's both exciting and a little scary leaving behind what you know and jumping into something new. The new is exciting because it's not the old. It means new friends, new experiences, new opportunities, new challenges.

The old, though, can sometimes be hard to leave behind. It's what you know. It's what's comfortable.

In the Bible, God everywhere is pushing his children forward into the new. He doesn't do this because he takes some sort of sinister delight in watching us suffer as we get acclimated. I think he does it because he knows that we are hard-wired to like things the way we like them. And to get us to grow in any way, God has to turn up the heat a little bit - make things just a little uncomfortable, a little risky, a little awkward so that we'll let go of the past and trust in the future that God has for us.

We see this in the OT as the Israelites are wandering through the desert toward their final destination of the Promised Land! Throughout their wanderings they cry out to their leaders to take them back to Egypt! At least there they had consistent food to eat, a place to live, and work to do - even if they did have all those things not as free people, but as slaves.

It was hard for the Israelites to let go of what they knew and press forward to God's amazing promise for them.

At the same time we're letting go, God is doing a work inside of us of pressing us forward to greater maturity. We leave behind spiritual childhood and we move toward becoming spiritually mature adults.

Now it's possible to be a biological adult without being a spiritually mature adult. Look at what Paul has to say in 1 Corinthians as he goads a divided church to start acting like spiritual adults.

1Co 3:1 Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly-mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? 4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?

There's milk. And then there's solid food. There's simple teaching about what one must do to be saved. Then there's the harder work of living out that salvation like Paul says to do in Philippians 2 with "fear and trembling." Once we leave behind simply knowing how to be saved, we enter the much more difficult (but rewarding) journey of daily living out our walk with Jesus.

It's one thing to have a one time experience of your sins being forgiven. It's another thing to daily forgive those who have hurt you and seek God's forgiveness for the ways we've hurt others. It's one thing to to experience the "high" of receiving Christ for the first time. It's another thing to receive Christ every single day even though you're not sure where the strength is going to come from to make it through your day. It's one thing to see realized the hope you have of being in heaven in eternity. It's another to bring heaven down to earth in the ways you treat people, the ways you do your daily work, the ways you show love for people you don't always feel like loving or honoring.

My men's group that meets on Wednesday Nights is reading through C.S. Lewis's, The Screwtape Letters. One of our discussion recently we talked about how every day we experience a "mini-salvation" - a deliverance from evil, a setting free from the things that want to keep us chained up, a renewal of the hope we have that God is good and wants good things for our lives.

Most of us would admit that we are not the same person today that were were in High School. We graduated from High School and just started living life. In the course of that life, we have had to make choices remain stuck where we are because it's what we know or to step in faith into the amazing life of living Jesus daily.

Consider one of my favorite scriptures from James, chapter 1. Jas 1:2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

The journey into God's promise - though uncertain - can be filled with joy because each day of walking that walk, God is perfecting us, God is making us more mature. God is making us complete human beings.

The last thing I want to point you toward is this.

Eph 4:14 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 men in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Our growth doesn't happen without others praying for us, encouraging us, challenging us and holding us accountable to the goals we have for ourselves. As we live this life together, we're like a body that is held together by a thousand different ligaments each one supporting and assisting the other. We speak the truth in love and don't hold back because life is too short to be stuck in bad place just because the people around us want to be polite and spare our feelings. We can't grow unless we know the truth of where we are.

We also can't grow unless we have a destination. And our destination is full maturity in Christ. He is the head of our body. He is the completion of our process of maturity. He is the horizon upon which we fix our sights as we press forward in life.