Maturity
MATURITY
Introduction
I have begun at the lowest rung of the ladder, and have tried to go step by step to the full implications of victorious living. Mature souls must be patient with the first steps, remembering that many are not able to live a victorious life because they do not know how to link up with God’s power.
Victorious Living
Who Can Find God?
Luke 11:9-13
There are those, especially in India, who feel that one has to be mature, even old, to find God. But the Christian way is different. At question time one day, I asked, “Where is God?” A little fellow of five excitedly whispered to his mother: “Why, I can answer that. He is in my heart.” He was right!
Victorious Living
(Week 4, Thursday)
The Ladder for Old Age
Psalm 92:14; Acts 2:17
Gracious Lord, help me to grow old gracefully and beautifully, to come to maturity majestically. Let me fill my mind and soul with you, so that when physical beauty fades, spiritual beauty may take its place. Physical beauty is an endowment; spiritual beauty an achievement—help me to achieve it by constant companionship with you. Amen.
Abundant Living
(Week 42, Saturday)
The Three Stages of Life
Hebrews 5:11-14
But after independence is gained, one finds that independence isn’t what it is cracked up to be. You long to be interdependent, to relate yourself helpfully to other people, to establish right relationships. This is maturity. In maturity you lose your life to find it again.
The Way
(Week 18, Thursday)
The Therapeutic Value of Self-Surrender
2 Corinthians 4:8-12
But let us clear the debris of wrong thought from around self-surrender. . . . It is not weak to surrender to Another. The adolescent attitude is insistence on independence; the mature attitude is to take one’s independence and delegate it, or surrender it, to a higher entity.
The Way to Power and Poise
(Week 11, Tuesday)
Through Wheeling into a New Center
Luke 9:23-24
[If] you are to enjoy your own maturity, as the goal of “the mature mind,” . . . you won’t have maturity, but infantilism, for infantilism is preoccupation with oneself. Maturity is a byproduct of a mature purpose attached to a mature object, God, and working out a mature plan: the kingdom of God.
How to Be a Transformed Person
(Week 6, Monday)
Introduction
Spiritual maturity is no longer a luxury for a few; it is a necessity for us all. . . .
But we must not leave readers feeling the club of necessity to be spiritually mature hanging over their heads. We cannot be scared or clubbed into maturity. It must be a beckoning instead of a bludgeoning. We must feel the call. Fortunately that call comes from above and from within. God wills our maturity. God has arranged the world and us with one thing in view, namely, our maturity. And fortunately we are made for maturity: for growth, for development, for perfection. Everything within us works toward that end, everything except one thing: sin, or evil. This is the unnatural intrusion throwing monkey wrenches into the machinery of human living. Except for this, all else—I repeat, all else—is made for spiritual maturity. We are destined to be mature, to be perfect.
Growing Spiritually
(pp. vi–vii)