Raise your hand if you are the all-in type.
You know the kind. You get into a new hobby and you want everything for it immediately, and you want to be the best at it by next weekend. Guitar, shooting, whatever your thing is. You buy the gear first and figure out the rest later.
That works for a lot of things in life. Faith is not one of them.
Based on maturity, not age
A pastor said something once that stuck with me, and I am paraphrasing.
A lot of parents hand out cell phones and privileges in the preteen and teenage years based on how old the kid is. He does it based on maturity instead. Do you clean your room the first time you are told? Do you unload the dishwasher when you are asked, or before you are asked? Do you keep your room picked up without somebody standing over you?
Not how many birthdays you have had. Whether you have shown you can handle the responsibility.
Your walk works the same way.
You cannot skip it
You cannot go from raising your hand in church and accepting Him as your Lord and Savior to being a theologian the next week. It does not work like that.
And you especially cannot go from living a worldly life for however many years straight into full theologian mode with a snap of your fingers. It takes work. It takes reflection and repentance. You have to get past comfort, past complacency, and if we are being honest, past apathy.
You have to do it over and over and over again. That is what spiritual maturity actually is.
Crawl, then walk
When you are born, you learn to crawl. Then you learn to walk. Then you learn to talk. Then, a long way down the road, you figure out a 401k and plan for retirement.
Nobody skips to the 401k. You would not even know what the numbers meant.
Peter lays it out the same way, one thing built on the last.
“In view of all this, make every effort to respond to God’s promises. Supplement your faith with a generous provision of moral excellence, and moral excellence with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with patient endurance, and patient endurance with godliness, and godliness with brotherly affection, and brotherly affection with love for everyone.”
2 Peter 1:5-7
Faith is the floor, not the finish. Every step there sits on the one before it, and there is no jumping to the top.
But do not camp out
Here is the other side of it, and the writer of Hebrews does not soften it at all.
“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 learned to recognize the difference between right and wrong.”
Hebrews 5:12-14
Through training. Not through feeling like it.
Crawling is where you start. It is not where you set up camp. There is a difference between a man who is new at this and a man who has been at it fifteen years and never left the shallow end.
“So let us stop going over the basic teachings about Christ again and again. Let us go on instead and become mature in our understanding.”
Hebrews 6:1
Why it ends on love
Go back and look at where Peter’s list lands. Faith at the bottom, love for everyone at the top.
That is not an accident, and it took me a long time to understand it.
How can a man know what unconditional love is if he has never been loved that way? You cannot hand somebody something you have never been given.
Maybe you were raised by people who were not loving. Maybe you have never had a healthy relationship with a significant other and you are starting to wonder if that is just how it goes for you.
God. He fills that. I am not going to pretend it makes the hole disappear, and I am not writing this from the other side of it. I have had my own situations and I am still working through some of them.
“We love each other because he loved us first.”
1 John 4:19
That is the order. Not love Him better and then He will love you. He went first.
And that is what maturity is actually for. Not knowing more. Loving better, because you finally know what it is you are handing out.
Start somewhere
Do not expect to be a theologian right off the bat, or ever. Faith is a lifelong thing, same as maturity. But start.
Start by praying
Start by going to church
Start by reading the Bible
Start by joining a small group
Start by reading a faith-based book
There are plenty of ways in. Pick one.
When you fall off
You are going to fall off the wagon. Get back on. Rinse. Repeat. Repent.
But understand what repenting is. It is not a get out of jail free card. If you sin and then do the same sin again, repentance means your heart is in the right place and you actually want to fix it. It is an apology to God, and an apology is not a real apology without action behind it.
We are called to always forgive, because we are always forgiven with every repentance, as long as your heart truly is for God. That is grace, and grace is not permission.
Still crawling
Start small. It takes time. That is okay.
Spiritual maturity takes a long time, especially coming out of a very worldly life, which I know something about. There is plenty I am still working on. It is a lifelong process and I am nowhere near done with it.
So do not worry about the 401k yet. Worry about learning who Jesus is and starting a relationship with Him. His love does not have conditions on it, and it is not waiting for you to get good at this first.
Learn to crawl. Then start to walk with Jesus.If you are out on the road and could use a conversation with another believer, hit reply when you are parked. No pressure and nothing to join.