Our baby girl Klaire is 23 years old and she is about to get her masters degree and then start her career in education. She wants to teach second grade. I can see her doing that and even being good at that but I am just a little biased.
She has a big girl job at Houston Baptist University and I’m amazed at the stuff she does. I’m overwhelmed by the authority (interview, hire and fire) she has and the responsibility they have given this 23-year-old that still needs to use her mom and dad’s Visa card periodically.
Don’t get me wrong, this girl is a stud. She’s a Rockdale Tiger just like her parents, a hard worker with a charismatic personality who sets goals and reaches them on a regular basis. If you look up overachiever in the dictionary, her picture is probably right next to her older sister Brooke’s picture.
I’m not just bragging about this strong, independent woman, I’ve got a point. My point is Klaire has grown up. Guess what? God wants His kids to grow up too. In Colossians 1:28 it says one of the goals of the church is to instruct folks so that they can be presented to Christ as mature, full grown or grown up.
In the Apostle Paul’s first letter to the Church at Corinth he told them he could not even address the church as spiritual people. Ouch. He told them they were still sitting at the kid’s table at the family Thanksgiving meal. He called them babies and then he told them it was past time to get off the baby bottle and time to start eating some steak.
Later Paul wrote, “Do not be child-like in the way you think…but in your thinking be mature.”
I can remember doing some pretty immature and really ignorant things as a teenager, and my parents would say, “Kenny, what were you thinking?”
That’s the point. I was not thinking, but as a male teenager my brain was not fully developed so I did have an excuse.
But as Christians we do not have any excuses. The only thing stopping us from being a fully developed Christ follower is us.
I could be wrong, but I think some people just hope Christian maturity happens. In their book First Things First, S. Covey, Roger and Rebecca Merrill share, “The problems in life come when we’re sowing one thing and expecting to reap something entirely different.”
Discipleship does not just happen. We have to be intentional about gaining the insight and knowledge that helps us grow up. It’s like eating your vegetables when you were a kid. We were told they make us grow up strong.
I can remember going to some high school reunions and thinking some people never grow up, and that was not a compliment. We may not all be as mature as we should be or even as mature as we want to be, but we should at least be aiming towards the goal and open to others coaching us up in Christ.
He told me to tell you that.
“They will spring up like grass in a meadow, like poplar trees by flowing streams.” Isaiah 44:4
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