I was eating breakfast this morning with Noah, my four-year-old, when he asked me how I ever got to be my age. I responded with a version of the parent’s go to answer for hard questions, “Because God helped me get this old.”
When you come right down to it, that is the answer!
His reaction made me laugh. His eyebrows furrowed, and the corners of his lips tightened in an expression of half confusion and half disappointment. “I wish God would help me get that old!” He said.
I chuckled and responded that God was helping him! It was just that it takes time and you can’t just go from 4 to 28 instantly.
But then it hit me. Why do I understand the necessity of a process for getting physically older, but still struggle with the idea of a process for growing spiritually more mature?
And then it hit me again. Doesn’t the Bible actually talk a lot about our spiritual maturity in terms connected to physical age? So I did some searching and found a few passages.
It starts with a new birth. Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” John 3:3
There are children and those who are mature. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. Hebrews 5:12-14
Each of the stages of maturity is a valid part of the process. I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven through His name. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. 1 John 2:12-13
The process is moving us toward maturity. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. Colossians 1:28
How very like little children we sometimes are, always seeking to skip necessary, formative stages in our spiritual growth, so that we can get to the “good stuff” of the Christian life.
But when I look at my kids, or when I think back on the time when I was a child, I do not think of these times as a waste. Nor is this moment of our lives, in whatever stage of spiritual maturity we find ourselves in, a waste.
In fact, while raising capable adults is certainly the goal of any parent, there is more to it than that. Isn’t it really about savoring the joys of building a relationship with your children? Relationship is really the heart of what drives the maturity process after all. The better of a relationship you have with your kids, the better they mature and grow, right?
It is wonderful to think that God is here, right now, ready to have a relationship with us, no matter where we are in life, because of His love and mercy towards us. And then, as our relationship with Him deepens, we grow and change. But the change is the side effect, not the center.