Indicate Maturity, Please

Good cool morning in July! The complaint we hear often goes something like: "Men! Always wanting to date younger women." Yes, I believe that is often the case, and as a man I can only offer this defense: We are generally less mature than women of the same age and thus want to date ladies more in our level of maturity. This is, of course, not true in all cases. So, what are the indicators of the mature Christian? I don't know. I'm not there yet. Right, I don't get off that easily. The infant Christ-one on milk wants to know what he or she can look forward to. So does the adolescent Christian struggling with guilt-surfing and self-shaming. I believe those are the two sports the teen-years equivalent of the Christian plays most often. Still too self-centered, young Christian knows it in those days or years and cannot help but shame the self and feel that burn of guilt. What does it mean to grow past all that? What indicators should be present when Christ grows the Christian beyond the self?

Certainly we should observe the production of the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, etc. should be seen in the life. We should, as Paul tells in Philippians, be working to show the results of our salvation. Before rebirth, we wanted some religion that allowed us to work up to salvation. Realizing at last that it must be Christ and no imperfect, self-centered effort on our part, we received salvation as a gift. However, that is when we gained the work we desired, that of showing the results of Christ living in us. So, the mature Christian begins to live life moving from the inside to the outside. Work, for example, is not just about me or you for the self, but about serving others while we make a living. As we learn to love our neighbors as ourselves, so we serve others as we serve the self.

You might leap to serving at the table by this thought. That does make a good example. In mature love, we do not invite others to dinner and then abstain in a show of false holiness, we sit down and eat with our guests. How uncomfortable would you or I be if a host refused to eat with us after inviting us to dinner? Very, I should think. Jesus often ate with what the Pharisees considered the worst sorts of sinners. Did the Lord abstain because He was too holy? Well, the Bible says nothing about Jesus going off by himself to eat at every meal, for that is what He would have needed to do to avoid eating with sinners. No, Jesus fed himself too as He served others in love. When we get to the Revelation, Jesus promises to come in and dine with those who will open the door.

Hmm, might be following a trail too far here for one little devotional. I guess that there isn't some Christian maturity test that we pass and get a gold-star certificate of Christian maturity. What we do is grow into it with Christ leading us by the hand. It is unlikely that you or I will wake up one morning and say, "Today I am mature in Christ, yesterday I was not!" Just like in that indefinable time when we passed from teen-age immature youth to full-grown adulthood, we don't get an exact date, but a knowledge that Christ has growed us beyond that old stage. Growed? Am I inventing those words again?

The love of Christ to you on this day,
Bucky

Tomorrow, perhaps the most solid indicator - moving from dependence on our record to the grace of Christ.