28 We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ.
Did you ever wonder what you would do if a child without a developmental or physical handicap was still in diapers when they were 10 years old? Or if they were still crawling around on their hands and knees? Or if they were still having to be fed with a spoon? In our guts we know there is something wrong with that picture. Babies are supposed to move through and past these things. We know there are more stages in development that a child passes through as they move toward adulthood. But when a child gets stuck at some spot in their development we know something is wrong. The same is true in the spiritual realm. But in the spiritual realm we so often don’t know what mature looks like. We ourselves are stuck at some particular stage of spiritual development and we don’t know it, or we choose to stay there. The goal of all godly exchanges is the perfecting of those who have started a relationship with God. There is an end state! We did not start this spiritual journey to just start. We are to be progressing. But there are so few examples of people who are mature we often think they don’t exist. Or we think that mature just isn’t possible. I am glad that Scripture has recorded the lives of some mature believers. They are lives filled with challenges and disappointment, failures and recoveries. They are real people like us who sin and then get up and move on. They have learned that walking with God is about staying in contact, even if it means we need to go to God in humility following a journey, be it long or short, into sin. That is because mature is about a process, not so much about the destination. We will get to the destination when we die, but until then we are God’s project. We will not be complete until heaven. I picture an apple tree. As soon as the smallest bud appears following pollination we can testify that it is an apple. It doesn’t have the right color or the fullness that we expect, but it is still an apple. If we tasted it we would wince and spit, but it is still an apple. What is lacking is the process of maturing. Give it time, nutrients, water, sun, and it will become that tasty apple we expect. So it is with us. Our immaturity makes us look not quite right, we sometimes don’t ‘taste’ quite right (a little bitter causing people to reject our actions), but we are not complete. We have not at the end of a process. We are still being formed. When we are done the process we will be mature, complete. Until then need more of God’s presence and working in our lives. In what ways are you immature today?
The Arnold Journey 