Passions | Wayfarer

Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.
1 Corinthians 14:20 (NIV)

I had a conversation the other day with parents who have a child in their late teens. As with most parents, they were struggling with that fact that this intelligent, capable child regularly makes really stupid choices and foolish decisions. Yep.

I shared with my friends that Wendy and I both observed a major shift in our daughters as they reached their mid-twenties and their brains were fully developed. I learned how much the brain is a part of our maturation process. We don’t control it. It just is.

At the same time, I know fully functioning adults who continue to act like teenagers as if their brains never fully developed. They allow themselves to be led by their self-centered appetites and passions. They repeatedly make foolish life decisions. Their lives are always in chaos. They are perpetually trying to escape the painful consequences of their own childish foolishness.

Paul is dealing with people like this among the Jesus’ followers in Corinth. In today’s chapter, he once again tells the Corinthian believers to “grow up” and stop acting like children.

One of the things I thought as a foolish child was that adults reached a level of complete maturity around the age of 30 and then it was sort of smooth sailing after that. You act like an adult and the rest of life is easy. It was around the age of thirty I started making some of the most foolish and childish life decisions of my entire journey!

As a disciple of Jesus, I’ve had to embrace that the process of growth and maturity never ends. Jesus said He was the Vine and I am a branch of that vine. What healthy plant stops growing, developing new growth, and bearing fruit? So it is with life in the Vine.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself thinking about the many ways I still need to prune, water, feed, and cultivate continued spiritual growth and applied wisdom in my life. I do this so that as my aging body wanes my life continues to grow, flourish, and remain spiritually fruitful until the end.