Maturity

When I think of someone who is mature I don't primarily think of some nineteen year old kid who has only been out of high school for one year, has never had a 'real' job, and has been known to fall on the ground laughing at people. Yet this is who I am. Am I mature?

The first 'week' of school has recently been completed and I now take some time to reflect on who I was about one year ago. There has been so much about me that has changed that I would not know where to exactly begin if I had to spell it all out. And so I shall focus on one main area that truly affects every other area and could be called the most important anyways. I can say with total confidence that I have grown more spiritually in this last year than I have in all the years together before. Even now fully comprehending that it was never of my own self-effort that would produce this within me, but it was the power of the very Word of God in my life. Life has been marked with tears, pain, and failure but God has seen fit to use such affliction to draw me into His embrace so that I may understand more in part of His great love.

Last night I had a long talk with a good friend here at Bible school and, among other things, I asked him why he and his wife seemed to invest so much into me. What he said has given me much to ponder and it was this: that they saw in me a desire to grow in my relationship with God and a true faith. I seem to still have trouble in connecting words like "faith" into real life (probably due to my saturation in the world of Christianity since early childhood). I wondered what really made me different than anyone else. Almost contradictorily I seem to both view a select few in a state of Christian perfection and haughtily overlook others as being less worthy than myself. But is not every believer the same in Christ? For Christ did not come to play favorites or to exalt some while diminishing others, but all have been put "in Christ" as He also has been put into them. So there is no reason for shame when regarding the lives of other believers. Does not the Good Book say that there is now "no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus"?

Along the lines of maturity I wish to share my present situation concerning the topic of wisdom. I have been told that "God does not give us answers, He gives us wisdom." Until most recently I have not been presented with such a situation that I earnestly longed for God to simply give me the answers to my problem but understood that I was only to receive wisdom when I asked of God. In a way it is a frustrating process because it is only natural to want to know the answer immediately when there is a problem. Yet therein lies the problem: it is natural to desire answers but it is evidence of godliness to trust in the wisdom of God.

I write in the understanding that I have yet many more years ahead of me, if in God's will I do not die and Christ continues to tarry, to endure the afflictions that this present life brings and learn to abide in the True Vine, Jesus Christ. This is a day by day process wherein the key lies in trusting God for everything and placing no confidence in anything else.

"But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called "today," that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin." -Hebrews 3.13