As I was growing up there were many who would say to me, “Would you grow up and be mature!” There were always things that I did that were silly and sometimes very childish. Although if you asked my wife she would tell you that there are still times of immaturity. Of course many of you may have the same thoughts. Anyway, enough about my immaturities, remember that I’m a work in progress, lol.
I have recently started a study on the book of Philippians and as a part of that study I found out that Paul loved this church. If you read most of his letters to the different churches you will find out that most of them were very immature. They would allow sin enter the church and were constantly compromising. As a result the letters to those church would be, “don’t do that, stop doing that, you need to do this, etc.” However, when you start to look in Philippians you don’t see that. So what is it about that church that has made them so mature?
One of the examples of maturity is how you handle circumstances. Many times when we get into tough situations, or things aren’t going our way, we have a tendency to be thrown for a loop. That has a tendency then to feed our emotions. We fly off the handle, we yell stomp and throw a temper tantrum. We see these behaviors in our children and then go and correct that behavior. Isn’t it interesting to see all the temper tantrums in the church and we then wonder why the church is the way it is.
So how do we overcome? I’m glad you asked! The greatest key in maturity is learning to live above our circumstances. All of us go through all kinds of situations and have all kinds of circumstances. Some of them are easy and some are hard, but remember that all is good. God has given us the victory through Christ to rise above our circumstance, to have peace in the midst of the storm. As you are going through the situations, rely more and more on the Lord and walk in the victory that is ours through Christ.
I plan on sharing more through my blogs about Philippians and walking in mature victory. Love all of you and come Sunday to start this new study with me.
Pastor Rob
