Looking at yourself right now… in the world you live – is this who you thought you’d be? Are you doing what you thought you’d be doing? Have/Are you fulfilling your promise, potential? Do you think your parents, close friends, and relatives believe what you’ve become is who you are? What about the Lord? Have you answered His call on you for your life? Are you grown up? Or… are you in the growing up process? Or…
Just to be clear, I don’t think ‘grown up’ is a status one ever fully attains. If you think you have then I would challenge you to look at your life again… are you growing, are you learning – or have you stopped? Grown up is a kind of ‘made it’ and stopped status and I don’t believe anyone ever completes their journey, their path to grown up until the Lord calls them home. I feel growing up is a number of stages, plateaus that define us. Yes there are mountain top experiences as well as walking on the straight plain as well as those desert and missteps. All of this combines to aid us on our growing up journey.
As you sit/stand where you are right now – look back and do you see growth over the past 3 to 6 months? If not, then what is it you do see? When can you identify you as growing? Can you go back even further and look at your life during the past year or past 5 years? Certainly you must see growth over that length of time – don’t you? Again, if you don’t… what do you see? Can you identify those areas that do show growth and the ones you’ve put ‘on the back burner’? Can you also look forward and see what your next step will be?
Maturity is what will be the end result of your labors when you allow your learning to lead you, to help you see where you need to further understand,
perhaps at a deeper level, what it is you know. Growth in understanding is available when you take the time to appreciate and understand what it is you know and how it has directed and influenced you. You aren’t simply a jumbled mess of a lot of pieces of knowledge, but it takes your time to see how those pieces fit together – where they merge and complete other areas and where they diverge yet coexist. You really are an incredible creation. And it is you who takes that creation and through thought and prayer grow into who you are at this moment in time.
The Father created us with a mind. We need to employ what it is we know, what it is we understand, what needs further refinement… and the list goes on. This is why I say we never truly ‘grow up’. On the path to maturity… always our decision. But it will take your intent to see and understand… you: your whats, whys, wheres, who’s, that combine to make you that unique person, never duplicated, that you are. Time for celebrating. And then… continue the journey.
