Maturity

When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭13:11‬

I have been thinking about the word "maturity" a lot this summer. My desire for maturity largely comes from people in my life whom I have greatly respected over the years who have displayed qualities of maturity that I want for myself. I have encountered speed bumps along the way in the form of these people I greatly respect showing their imperfections, my inability to reconcile this, and my own imperfections.

As a child, adults I respected could do no wrong in my eyes. So when I experienced their imperfections, I could not wrap my immature understanding around it and would become angry and defiant. I would cut off relationships because of my hurt and lack of guidance.

I don't think maturity is a constant growth. I think of it more as growth spurts and growth spurts can be painful. After all, that is why we have the term "growing pains." I am not usually aware that I am growing in maturity, I think because I am often too focused on the pain. I don't usually realize maturity has occurred until sometime after when I see someone else exhibiting an immature behavior I once considered normal and see just how detrimental it really is.

There is maturity in vulnerability which I find interesting because the most vulnerable among us are children who, by definition, are immature. But children express their emotion and are their genuine selves at all times. When I am with a child, I know if they are feeling happy or sad or afraid or angry. They laugh, they cry, they cower, they yell and stomp their feet and they want someone to respond, to laugh with them, to console and comfort them, to protect them and help them feel safe, and to help them make sense of why things don't always go their way. And because sometimes people react poorly to our genuine, vulnerable selves and we are made to feel some emotions are undesirable, we experience shame and we learn to hide our true emotions and new levels of immaturity emerges such as sarcasm, passive aggression, and running from our conficts rather than try to resolve them.

So while our thinking as children is immature, I feel true maturity comes when we combine our wisdom in thinking that comes from age and experience with the openess of emotion and vulnerability we experience as children.

He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭18:2-4‬ ‭NIV‬‬

Life is hard. Sin is easy.

Life is hard, sin is easy, and sin entices. If it didn't, we wouldn't feel tempted, and life would be easier if every person always made the good and right choice. So much suffering could be avoided if we never sinned. The only bright side is that through our failings, through our mistakes, God can work in us to help us mature and grow... if we let Him. He won't force us to accept his guidance. But even then, while we accept the grace and guidance of Christ's sacrifice and love for us, it won't erase the pain and natural consequences our sinful choices may have caused. Not until eternity at least. This may lead to a loss of relationships with those badly affected by our mistakes. It may lead to a loss of a marriage, a family, a friendship, a partnership, an education, a career, a goal, a home, of peace, happiness, freedom.

Sin entices, but always ends in pain. Consider David, who had affair and got a woman pregnant. To cover it up he ordered the death of her husband in battle and as a consequence, lost the child. Consider Moses who lost his temper and did things his way instead of following God's instruction and was not allowed to enter the promise land he spent so many years trying to get to.

The gift of salvation is easy. We just have to willingly receive it. But the road to walk after is treacherous, for as we grow in our knowledge and understanding of God and His word, temptations will still bombard us and make it difficult to resist.

When I was a teenager, I remember hearing this analogy... Consider there is a line dividing sin from righteousness. Sometimes we try walking on that line, trying our best not to cross it, but when you are walking that line, it is so easy to accidentally step over. A goid way to think of it is trying to walk on a balance beam - not an easy feat. But if you choose to walk several feet away from the line, one misstep won't send you over the line into sin.

So what does that look like in practical terms? It means avoiding that which tempts you. Don't watch shows or movies or visit web sites that might lead you to cross that line. Don't spend time with people who want to lure you past that line. Guard your thoughts. Don't allow yourself to fantasize about sin. Stay in God's word, pray, find good Christian fellowship, find someone you can be accountable to whom you can be vulnerably honest with.

It's not easy. Jesus even said the road would be hard. But He promised to always be there if we turn to Him.

Competition

 I have been thinking a lot about competition the past several weeks. We recently had the annual Super Bowl, one of the greatest competitions of our time that countless numbers watch.

Competition exists everywhere. It starts when we are very young and is felt between siblings and peers. It seems to grow stronger as we grow older.

What drives this need in us to compete? We need only look at the reward we receive - to be seen as the best, the champion. After all, if we always lose in a competition, we give up. I tried volleyball in 7th grade. I wasn’t very good, so I didn’t play again. I gave up softball for the same reason. In high school I dreamed of getting into the best singing group in school. After being rejected three years in a row, I gave up choir. It’s not fun if you feel like you always lose and it’s not fun to just sit on a bench.

When we win, we are so consumed with our feelings of pride and happiness that we don’t care about the feelings of those who lost. Some people who lose develop problems with depression and low self-esteem because they base their worth on success, which comes from striving to be good at something and hopefully the best.

But the reason I have been thinking of competition is because I have been pondering eternity. Ever since my dad died in 2016, I find myself thinking about Heaven and eternity a lot. Over the years I have heard people talking about looking forward to playing a myriad of sports in Heaven and I find myself wondering - will such things exist? We play sports and games because they are fun, but they only feel fun because of winning. And to win, someone must lose. And in Heaven, when we are recreated as perfect immortal beings, I am left to think there will be no striving to get ahead, no desire to be seen as the best and better than our brothers and sisters. I have a hard time imagining competition existing in a world where we are at perfect peace with who we are.

But in the meantime, in these mortal bodies plagued by sin, we will continue to strive to be seen as great, good, wonderful, strong, the best, a champion in pursuits that do not affect our eternity, and which may momentarily blind us from showing love, compassion, and kindness to those we want to beat.

Give your wounded, shrapnel filled, dirty heart to Jesus

At some point in our lives, someone probably tells us that we should give our heart to Jesus or God. For some that is repeating a sinner's prayer, for some it is being baptized. Regardless, for those who truly want to follow Jesus, at some point, we tell Him that we are giving Him our heart, our mind, our soul, and our life. We ask Him to be our Lord and Savior, to forgive us for our sins, and to heal our wounded spirits.

Often I have thought of this gesture of giving my heart over to God as some kind of noble act where I hand him this beautiful beating heart, entrusting Him to take better care of it than me or anyone else. But the older I get, the more I realize the gesture looks more clumsy than noble and the heart looks anything but beautiful.

I imagine as I pull this beating bloody heart out of my chest that it's not bright, but dark, not red, but black, not healthy, but sick, not strong, but weak. It is badly bruised, for it has taken a lot of beating. It has scrapes and cuts and those wounds have become infected and are blistering and oozing with disease. Even worse, there are pieces of shrapnel filling the heart.

The heart is dying when we painfully rip open our chest to give it to Jesus. We are giving Him a precious gift, but a gift no one would ever want. No one, that is, but the lover of our soul who gave us life and seeks so desperately to redeem us. No surgeon on earth could heal our war weary heart. Only the Great Physician with His special, healing touch can do that.

But here's the thing, He doesn't heal it all at once. He heals it as we open ourselves up to be healed. Each piece of shrapnel has a painful memory attached. Maybe that piece is attached to the memory of someone who bullied you as a child. Maybe that piece is attached to the memory of a teacher who treated you unfairly. Maybe that piece is attached to an abusive relationship. Maybe that piece is attached to the memory of someone you treated badly.

When Jesus goes to remove each piece of shrapnel, that memory is going to come up. And with each painful memory, He forces us to face it. We then have the choice, to surrender it to the Great Physician and experience the pain until the shrapnel is gone and the wound healed and we come out of it with our heart more healed and a stronger, healthier person, or we can tell Him no, and resist His attempts to remove the shrapnel. But as long as it remains, it poisons our very soul.

Even after we give Him our heart, it is possible for us to grab it back and allow more wounds to hurt it. We do not give our heart to Jesus just once, but continually as we realize we have taken it back and that we need to give it to Him again if we are to be healed.

Even if we live a long life, our heart may never be fully healed. Full healing will not come until we trade our mortal flesh for immortal. As long as we are alive on this earth, as followers of Christ, we must always be handing our wounded, shrapnel filled, dirty heart to Jesus, the only one who can heal the wounds this world inflicts upon it.

It may not look beautiful, but it is. It is a beautiful mess of God's redeeming love at work in our messy lives, and it is beautiful.

I will sacrifice praise, thanksgiving, and joy.

For the past couple years, I have thought about, and been extremely skeptical, of the following worship song from my childhood:

We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord
We bring the sacrifice of praise into the house of the Lord
And we offer up to You, the sacrifices of thanksgiving
And we offer up to You, the sacrifices of joy

I have been skeptical because I don't see praise, joy, and thanksgiving as things needing to be sacrificed and thought it seemed like a pretty lame thing for us to say we offer as sacrifices. A sacrifice, after all, is something that hurts us in some way to give.

But then I read a chapter in a book that talked about this, and now I get it!

When life is hard and we are inclined to grumble, gripe, complain, pout, get angry, etc., that is when these become sacrifices.

When I am in the midst of a struggle, it is then that I must offer these sacrifices. Look at the situation I am in and tell God, "I am thankful for..." and "I am joyful because..." and "I praise you for..."

For example, I recently was feeling grumpy during a time of praise and worship singing because several people behind me were talking loudly and it was distracting. In that moment, my sacrifice should have been to thank God that these people had come and would get to hear about Him, to be joyful because of the opportunity I had to be there to sing praises, and to praise Him for providing good worship music.

That seems like a minor thing in comparison to many things that plague us in life, but I use it as a simple example. In some of our darkest experiences, we can thank God that our faith will be tested and strengthened by what we are going through and praise Him because even if the worst things happen to us - we fail, we lose our jobs, we lose our health, we lose everything - we can praise Him that we know He loves us and that all things work together for our good because we love Him.

I plan to put this into practice more. That when I feel tempted to grumble, gripe, complain, sulk, etc., that instead I will think of the positives that I can then bring before God as a sacrifice of praise, a sacrifice of joy, and a sacrifice of thanksgiving. God is good and He loves us. We are more important than the sparrows whom He always provides for.

Mental illness and Jesus

So I've been seeing a lot of posts about depression and suicide since the death of Robin Williams.

It's got me thinking about mental illness and the church, or more importantly, mental illness and Jesus.

The Bible says it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. The Bible says Jesus went to the lowest in society, the outcasts, the sick, the unclean, the sinners, and loved them. Jesus said that in this world, we would have trouble.

We know for a fact that Jesus does not heal every person who accepts Him and is saved. Christians still die of cancer, heart attacks and a variety of diseases. Christians live with paralysis and a variety of diseases as well and are never healed.

But what about the mind?

I have heard Christians say that a Christian should not suffer from any kind of mental illness because since it's mental, that should be able to be easily healed by Jesus, that Christians should not take medication for mental illness, that if a Christian continues to suffer from mental illness, it's because they lack faith. (Okay, some claim that for physical ailments as well.)

Any honest Christian will say that even after accepting Christ in our lives, we struggle with sin. We will until the day we die or Jesus comes back and takes us home. Sin can be sneaky and affect how we think without realizing it, or it can be bold and obvious and tempt us to do things we know are wrong.

Paul wrote in detail about his struggle with sin, writing that the good he wanted to do, he did not do, but the evil he did not want to do, that he kept on doing. He also talked about having a thorn in his side that he pleaded with God to remove, but God would not, saying His grace was sufficient for Paul. The thorn could have been temptation. Perhaps it was an illness. Perhaps it was mental illness. We really don't know, Paul never elaborated what this "thorn" was for him.

But going back to Jesus going to the worst in society. It stands to reason that people with mental illness are going to be drawn to Jesus because Jesus runs to people who are suffering. And knowing that accepting Jesus is not a ticket to healing in this world, it stands to reason that people who suffer from mental illness who accept Jesus will still suffer after accepting Jesus. They are not hated or despise by God for lack of faith or sin in their lives. It may simply be their thorn that God allows in their life to remind them His grace is sufficient.

And Christians who do not suffer from mental illness should take on the mindset of Jesus and love and serve those who suffer, especially in the body of Christ, without passing judgment on them. We are all weak and in need of grace. And like the song says, "Everyone needs compassion."

Vulnerability

I gave my life to Christ when I was 12. I saw adult Christian leaders as people who had things together. They seemed perfect, like they didn't struggle with sin, and I assumed that by becoming a Christian, I would be the same way when I grew up.

As an adult, I continued to see Christians who acted like they had no personal struggles and they were perfect. All my life I have strived for that perfection and never felt it and this has led me many times to question my relationship with God. Does He really love me if I struggle, because it seems other Christians don't struggle.

I think as Christians we often have the misguided idea that maturity equates perfection and that we don't struggle. I think more, we are either not honest about our struggles or we choose to hide them from others and thus put off this persona of being perfect.

But the Bible tells us to confess our sins to one another.

Why? Why should we confess our sins to one another? This question was asked in our small groups at CIY and my answer is this - because when we confess our sins to one another, it encourages others to know they are not alone in their struggles and if we confess our sins, we can hold each other accountable. Temptation can lose its hold on us when we hold one another accountable. I think God desires us to be vulnerable, not act perfect. When we are vulnerable, He can use us.

I am not perfect. I have PTSD, I struggle constantly with self-worth, I'm always afraid I'm disappointing God, I feel I deserve punishment more than grace, but through the grace of God, He has brought people into my life who are honest and vulnerable, who remind me that God sees me of great worth, that He sees me as His little child whom He cherishes, and thankfully I grew up with a great dad that I can understand that kind of love. I need encouragement daily and God knew I would. That's why He says in the Bible to encourage each other daily, as long as it's called today, so that sin does not gain a foothold.

We need to be honest with each other. We need to be vulnerable. We need to encourage each other that we understand sin, understand pain, understand the struggle between our sinful nature and the new creation Christ is making us to be.