07/12/2017
How mature am I as a Christian? Have I moved from that stage in my faith where the focus has shifted from learning who Jesus was, and how to live the life of Christ, to that of actually knowing Him and living alongside Him? Am I fully engaged and surrounded by the will of God and in close relationship with Jesus, or still battling within myself to wrest control from the sinful man that resides there?
I am an older man, and at the point in my life where retirement from my job is getting close. I look at my financial situation and gauge how near I am to being able to transition into that new life comfortably. I have moved from a time in my working life when work was something I looked at and wondered what career I would choose, to the excitement of selecting one, to determining who best to work for, to throwing myself into the culture of my company, to advancing the goals of my employer, to being fully assimilated into my company, to bringing my own goals and aspirations to my workplace, to achieving financial comfort for my efforts, to now to facing the thought of leaving all that behind for a new venture into a strange place... retirement. After a lifetime of working, it is a frightening thought, and I wonder who I will be, and what I will do when this phase in my life is complete.
Our faith has several similarities to our profession. We mature and transition through several stages in faith, just like we do in our working lives. First we have to determine that we believe in God, then in His Son, and from that point the exciting life of a believer truly begins... I have to decide who I will truly serve, humanity or the Lord, then to what degree? Will I go to church on Sunday and return home to a separate life, or immerse myself fully in my faith? Once I decide to form a deep relationship with Jesus, where do I place Him... am I completely assimilated into Him? Am I moving in that direction? Then, one day I find myself comfortable in the will of God and following him readily. I begin to find that His will and mine are blurred and that I have a hard time distinguishing between the two. Then finally, I am bringing my relationship into my church as an example to those around me, and teaching others what it means to follow Jesus and serve God. But, this is where our working lives and our lives of faith separate completely.
There is no retirement from our faith. We never reach a place where we can no longer perform the duties of our faith with the same vigor... because it was never about the works we did, but rather the motivation behind them. The goal was never first and foremost the job, but was always the relationship. If we failed to realize this, then we most certainly were stunted in our growth, and we remained immature as children in faith... never growing beyond that. God's desire is for us to mature. It is implicit in everything He created.
“until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes.”
Ephesians 4:13-14 ESV
Oswald Chambers warned us to separate our desires and God's. He spoke and wrote of placing our relationship with God before even our own self interests. This is a part of the maturing process, and defines us as mature beings of faith.
"Am I building up the Body of Christ, or am I looking for my own personal development only? The essential thing is my personal relationship to Jesus Christ - "That I may know Him." To fulfil God's design means entire abandonment to Him. Whenever I want things for myself, the relationship is distorted. It will be a big humiliation to realize that I have not been concerned about realizing Jesus Christ, but only about realizing what He has done for me." - Oswald Chambers
I watch as pastors reach the end of their pastoral work. Their bodies might be wearing out, but the faith those frail vessels contain remains as vibrant as ever... just more settled and deeper. This happens with all older Christians. Rather than exciting us with their youthful exuberance, they teach us from a place of deep abiding faith... they show us what relationship means and looks like when it approaches maturity. We see the comfortable way they can sit with God and be at ease in the silence, and feel the love of their faith as a slow moving river that doesn't appear to be the same one that raged through mountain gorges, but is in fact the very same river... just wider, deeper, and carrying much more water.
So this is how we gauge the maturity of our faith. We look at our relationship with Jesus and God; stripped bare of our own desires, and compare it with the smooth water that appears to move slowly, but carries great volume.
I watched my in-laws during the final days of their lives. It was hard to witness the vessel that contained them die, but in each case I saw the faith within as it bubbled to the surface. My mother-in-law singing hymns with nothing more than shallow breathing, and my father-in-law asking for hymns to be sung by those at his bedside... what had matured was still there, even though their bodies were retiring. This is what we gauge ourselves by, this is the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ that we strive for.
Prayer:
Father, I thank you for the process of bringing me to maturity in you. I thank you for each step and lesson along the way that leads me to a deeper faith, and stronger relationship with you. Holy Father, your river runs deep and smooth, and We are often concerned with how slowly it appears to move, but Father, it carries more volume than we can fathom; it soothes us with its peaceful flow, and comforts us in its constant motion. You are ever steady and your love and wisdom are deeper than we can imagine. Never let us confuse the churning water of our faithful headwaters as being you solely, when in fact the greatest part of you flows slow, wide, and deep, to join the waiting sea. Still our hearts Lord, calm our spirits, and let us love you in the quiet peace of mature love and relationship, even more than we did when we first believed.
Rich Forbes