11.23.8 "Grow Up"

"Grow Up"

Ezekiel 45:13-46:24
I Peter 1:14-2:10
Psalm 119:36-52
Proverbs 28:11

"Long to grow up into the fullness of your salvation; cry for this as a baby cries for his milk." I Pet. 2:3

I have been a Christian for 35 years. I accepted Christ as a child after an elderly woman filled in for a children's church worker who didn't show up. She brought in a picture of people going up in the rapture. I wanted that to be me. I was 4 years old. I still remember that picture. After I went home from church that day, I talked to my dad about it, and he led me to Christ.

35 years is a long time isn't it? You know what though? It doesn't mean anything when it comes to Christian maturity. Physical maturity "happens" to you. As time goes by, we physically grow old. Spiritual maturity doesn't work that way. As time goes by we should "grow up", but we might not.

I'm just discovering the need to commit oneself to the maturing process. Faithful church attendance doesn't automatically lead to Christian maturity. Sometimes we presume too much in ourselves (and others) that if we've been saved for a while, maturity has happened. It SHOULD have happened, but it might not have.

I Peter hits on some of the elements of maturity. There are three elements we'll pull from these scriptures: Fearing God, Living Holy, and Loving Others.

Fearing God is not a real popular teaching or thought process for us. We are "friends of God", so we don't really want to get into the "fear" thing. The last part of verse 17 into 18 reads, "so act in reverent fear of him from now on until you get to heaven . God paid a ransom to save you from the impossible road to heaven which your fathers tried to take, and the ransom he paid was not mere gold or silver, as you very well know. But he paid for you with the precious lifeblood of Christ, the sinless, spotless Lamb of God."

Understanding the tremendous price that was paid should create in us a reverent fear of God. A respect. A gratefulness that goes beyond a "Hey, thanks, God!" Taking the time to meditate, remember and comprehend the precious blood of the Lamb should be a regular part of our Christian walk. This births humility and gratitude. This also helps us to constrain ourselves to Living Holy.

I Peter 1:14-16 says, "Obey God because you are his children; don't slip back into your old ways - doing evil because you knew no better. But be holy now in everything you do, just as the Lord is holy, who invited you to be his child. He himself has said, 'You must be holy, for I am holy.'"

Understanding the price that God paid to ransom us and the value he has placed on us should constrain us to do the right thing. When you first got your driver's license, how did you feel when you got to drive the "good" car? There's something about the "value" that caused you to drive more carefully. Understanding the value God has placed on me should cause me to live more carefully.

Most of the rest of the reading deals with a major part of growing up in Christ: Loving Others.

"Now you can have real love for everyone because your souls have been cleansed from selfishness and hatred when you trusted Christ to save you; so see to it that you really do love each other warmly with all your hearts. For you have a new life." I Peter 1:22-23a

Committing ourself to the maturing process should directly effect the way we treat others. Not just in our conduct, but in our heart. I Peter 2:1-2 says, "So get rid of your feelings of hatred. Don't just pretend to be good! Be done with dishonesty and jealousy and talking about others behind their backs. Now that you realize how kind the Lord has been to you, put away all evil, deception, envy, and fraud."

Growing up in Christ should really change my heart, and it should be reflected on the outside. You would think that after 35 years of this I would have taken care of that at least within the first 5 years! I should have been a fully mature 9 year old! It's not that way. I must crave to grow in Christ, and allow his spirit to work in me to make me into who he has created me to be.

We can tend to be hypocritical. Do you ever notice that many times our frustration with other people is because they haven't "matured" as we thought they should? The irony is that if we were as mature as we should be their lack of maturity wouldn't bother us so much. Ouch. That one hits me pretty hard. I really need to grow up.

I Peter 2:14 says, "Once you were less than nothing; now you are God's own. Once you knew very little of God's kindness; now your very lives have been changed by it."

Let's allow our very lives to be changed by God's loving kindness.



Through the Power of the Spirit,
Live the DREAM!

P Greg


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