Growing Up
You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong. (Hebrews 5:12–14)
How do we determine whether we are grown up? Does it mean our hair starts to turn gray? No, that means we’re growing older but not necessarily wiser. I’ve met people with snow-white hair who are still immature. Signs of aging do not necessarily mean we are showing signs of maturity.
If you think it’s easier to tell from the inside out, forget it. How do you know that you are more mature this year than you were last year? Has living twelve months longer made any difference? We know we’re growing older, but how do we know we’re growing up? And is growing up something God even requires of us? Maybe He just wants us to live in His family, to exist between now and eternity, then He’s planning to take us home. No, that’s not the way it works. Growing up is a stated objective for every member of God’s family. God says so in His Word.
The writer of Hebrews addresses this very matter when he takes his readers to task for their lack of maturity. They had grown older in the faith, but they had not yet grown up. Instead of building on the foundation laid by the apostles, they were still playing with blocks.
Few things are more pathetic to behold than those who have known the Lord for years but still can’t get in and out of the rain doctrinally and biblically. To put it succinctly, they have grown old, but they haven’t grown up.
Do you feed yourself regularly on the Word of God or must you have the teaching of someone else to keep growing? Now, don’t get me wrong; I don’t decry teaching and preaching. How could I? That’s my job security! All of us have a need for someone to instruct and exhort us in the things of God. But it isn’t because we have no other way of taking it in on our own. Teaching and preaching are more like nutritional food supplements.
Let me ask you several penetrating questions. Are you digging into the Word of God? Are you truly searching the Scriptures on your own? Are you engaged in a ministry of concerted and prevailing prayer? Can you handle pressure better than you could, say, three years ago? Are you further along on your own growth chart than you were a year ago, two years ago, five years ago?
Taken from Hope Again by Charles R. Swindoll. Copyright © 1996 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. Used by permission of HarperCollins Christian Publishing. www.harpercollinschristian.com
