When you think of the word, “mature,” what do you think of? Some of you may think of wrinkle cream and grey hair while others of you might be thinking of a teenager that you’re hoping will start showing some signs of maturity. Dictionary.com says maturity is “being fully developed; fully grown.” If that is true, what does it mean for us to be mature followers of Christ; mature Christians?
If you’re like me, you want to know what spiritual maturity looks like because you don’t want to be a baby Christian forever. No one wants to go throughout life being fed with a bottle and having to be burped after every spiritual meal!
Read what Paul says about spiritual infancy in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3.
Paul describes what it looks like for someone to be spiritual immature:
-They act like they belong to the world instead of to God.
-They can’t be fed the meat of the scriptures because they aren’t ready for it.
-They are controlled by their sinful nature.
-They are jealous of one another.
-They argue with one another.
-There is no difference in the way they live than the way people of the world live.
-They depend on teachers for their only spiritual food.
Let’s look at the inverse of this and see if we can begin to learn what it looks like to be spiritually mature:
-Our lives are lived differently than that of the world.
-We have different priorities and make different choices.
-We are motivated by love for others, not by our selfish, sinful lives.
-We support and encourage one another – even when others’ lives seem better or more blessed than our own.
-We seek peace instead of conflict. We don’t seek to make ourselves right as individuals, but we seek to find harmony in our need for Jesus and His gift of salvation.
-We feed ourselves spiritual food as we dig into the Bible on our own and talk with God daily.
This week we’ll continue to talk about what it means to be spiritually mature. Don’t assume that you’re mature just because you attend church or have been a believer for years. Some of our eldest church members can be the most immature and some of the youngest among us can show signs of deep spiritual maturity. Let’s open ourselves up to a self-examination of our own maturity.
Author: Anne Bosarge