It's Time to Grow Up

Introduction

As we move through this series on Doing Hard Things, we have come to one area that this world has struggled with for centuries: GROWING UP.

We have the Toys R Us mentality permeating through the world.

This is the culture that sings loudly “I don’t wanna grow up. I’m a Toys R Us kid.”

Then before that we have the Peter Pan mentality.

We all know the beloved children's cartoon Peter Pan.

Peter did not want to grow up because with growing up comes responsibilities and work.

He wanted to stay a boy with the other lost boys because being a child was better than being an adult.

The problem with this is now we have adult age children all over.

We have people who maybe hold down a job and pay bills, but still act like a child.

They hang out and party and drink all the time.

They spend their money on toys for fun rather than on things that help them and their family.

They strive to have the next best thing because they are never satisfied with what they have.

These types are the ones who only desire to have things their way and will not see what another says.

They refuse to listen to anything that may go against what they want.

Adult infants is basically what this type is. Sadly, this is the majority of people today.

When we spend more time pursuing the desires of pleasure and see work and family as obligations, we are not mature.

When we only think of fun things and never think of the important parts of life, we have not matured.

When we spend every penny we have on parties, vacations, toys, and other foolish expenditures rather than on our families or the service of the Lord, we are not mature.

As I have read, “Strong sons of God are not perfected by childish pursuits.”

I say this right here because we too often want to be a better Christian without pursuing the correct things.

Childish Pursuits may be easy and fun, but they are not what makes us strong men and women of God.

We only become strong faithful believers when we do the hard thing of Growing up.

Too often we are like this story,

One spring, our family was driving from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa, Florida. As far as the eye could see, orange trees were loaded with fruit. When we stopped for breakfast, I ordered orange juice with my eggs. “I’m sorry,” the waitress said. “I can’t bring you orange juice. Our machine is broken.”

I was dumbfounded. We were surrounded by millions of oranges, and orange slices garnished our plates. We were surrounded by thousands of gallons of juice, but we couldn’t have it because the restaurant was dependent on a machine to get it.

Christians are sometimes like that. They are surrounded by Bibles, but if they couldn’t get to a Sunday morning preaching service, they would have no nourishment for their souls. The problem is not a lack of spiritual food; it’s that many Christians haven’t grown enough to know how to get it for themselves.

—Leroy Eims, The Lost Art of Disciple Making (Zondervan, 1978)

Too often People want to play and have fun and not work, not grow up.

We do not want to grow because it is hard work to do it for yourself.

We want to be like the KISS song, “I wanna rock and roll every night and party every day.”

Or the Def Leopard song “Let’s Get Rocked,” where they sing about wanting life to be a seven-day weekend.

All of this gets back to the fact that people do not want to grow up. They want to stay immature and children because work and life is hard.

If Christ saw it fit to come to this planet that He created and die for me so I can be with Him for eternity and serve alongside Him, then who am I to not give Him my all while I am alive in this world?

I believe that living a life sold out for the Lord and working for Him is living the best life you can because in living life like that you are pointing people to the only place there is life.

Partying is not life.

Big extravagant vacations is not life.

Fancy cars and fancy toys are not life.

Big houses and property is not life.

Life is in the Lord and life in the Lord requires us to be committed and let go the “good things” of this world and grow up and be mature.

Which is why I titled this message “It’s Time to Grow Up.”

We see this teaching throughout 1 Corinthians from the apostle Paul.

He is constantly telling them to grow up and stop with divisions (1-4).

Stop praising sinful activities (5).

Mature so you can judge between one another and not take that to the world (6).

Marry and love your spouse and grow together (7).

There are not any foods off limits but if some of you are struggling with things the mature will leave foods out (8-10).

Then he goes into the church and gifts (11-14).

Next he has to re-teach them about the resurrection (15).

Then we find ourselves in 1 Corinthians 16:13-18 where Paul tells the church

1 Corinthians 16:13–18 ESV

13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love. 15 Now I urge you, brothers—you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints— 16 be subject to such as these, and to every fellow worker and laborer. 17 I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus, because they have made up for your absence, 18 for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours. Give recognition to such people.

This passage is pregnant with the charge to grow up and become mature.

In verse 13 we see four descriptors of maturing and being grown up.

The first is...

Be Alert

Be watchful means to be alert. It also means to wake up.

As Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz said, “We aren’t in Kansas anymore.”

Life has hit and it has hit hard and it is hard.

We must be alert and watching out for spiritual enemies.

If we are always focused on money and fun, the enemy will sneak in and snatch away.

He will slip in and take from us and leave us mad at God.

We will look around and see that what we desired most, money, toys, fun, has all vanished and we will blame God for that loss.

We will say things like “Why did you take this from me God?”

“After I worked so hard to put together this perfect retirement, it is all gone.”

“God must hate me.”

When in reality it was our own immaturity that drove the wedge, sent the things we desired away, or destroyed our life.

Think about it.

If all you do is eat cake and drink sweet drinks and eat other trash foods, you may feel like all is right and good when in reality you are killing yourself.

You have let your guard down for temporary pleasure that led to extended misery.

That is why we must be alert and be watchful all the time.

We are in a war against an enemy that never rests and does not need to rest.

We must be prepared and ready and alert for any of his attacks.

Which leads to another aspect of us growing up...

Be Firmly Committed in Conviction

Stand firm in the faith.

When we stand firm in the faith we are firmly committed in conviction.

This means we stand up for what we believe and who we have believed in.

We do not shy away like a small child does when asked a question.

We no longer bury our faces in moms dress and hide.

We stand boldly and accept the challenges that will come.

We embrace the good and the bad and never waver under intense assaults.

We are rooted like a White Oak.

A White Oak tree can have roots as deep as six feet and a spread up to 2.5 times its height.

These trees are deeply rooted and one can say firmly committed in their conviction.

They got that way not over night.

It took time for those roots to get to that depth and spread.

Just like it took you time to grow up into an adult.

Your convictions will take time to grow and develop but they will never develop if we stay childlike.

The gospel is the truth and we need to never waver on it.

But if we are only living life for fun and not wanting to grow up, we will miss the truth of this.

This world will eat us alive if we do not know what it is we stand for.

As Aaron Tippin sang, “You gotta stand for something or you will fall for anything.”

As mature believers we must know what we believe and stand with it.

This takes work, and time.

Work and time that will take away from other pursuits of life.

Maturing is hard because it means we must become responsible and do hard things.

But you can achieve this when you give your desires to the Lord. Let Him be your guide.

Being firmly committed to your convictions takes faith in the Lord that saved you and it takes courage.

Which is what Paul says next.

Be Courageous

The text says act like men but this carries the understanding of mature courage.

Be bold.

Have no fear.

As a child is or was afraid of the dark, as an adult we must overcome this fear.

We can’t let something paralyze us that is harmless.

But courage in the Lord is more than not fearing the dark.

It is taking courage to confront sin.

But if we are partaking of the same sins of those we must confront, we have nothing to stand on.

But when we have leaned into the Lord and have stopped acting like a child and have begun to act like an adult, we can confront sin.

Where is the church in the culture today?

We have rampant sin happening all over this country and too often we make statements like “if we are to confronting of the sin we will not show love.”

Like when Row V. Wade was overturned and Christian people were saying we should not be celebrating to much because we had people in our churches fearful now.

I looked at those statements and shook my head because that was something to really celebrate.

Life had won out and death and murder had lost a grip, not lost completely but lost some grip.

Then we have people saying that confronting sinners and telling them that their lifestyle is wrong or their passions are wrong, is not what we should do but we should only show them compassion.

This again betrays a weakness to challenge sin and be courageous.

Some of this is a backhanded way of supporting sinful lifestyles.

Some of this is because some in the body of Christ are still immature and maybe a pet sin is being insulted.

We if we are to be bold and faithful mature followers of Christ, we must do the hard thing of confronting sin in our lives and then in others before that sin takes them or us.

Be bold and be willing to place yourselves on the front lines and take the assault.

But to do this and the other things before we must...

Be Strong

This is not about physical strength but just like a person becomes stronger through repetitive workouts, we must exercise our spiritual muscles.

We must as Paul wrote in Eph. 3:16

Ephesians 3:16 ESV

16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being,

We can become mature and courageous and alert and firmly committed to convictions through the power of the Spirit.

Part of becoming mature and growing up is admitting that you can’t do it all.

That it will take more than you have.

This is laying aside the ego and letting others help you.

This is getting connected with a team of believers and working together.

This is also as Paul wrote 2 Cor. 12:9-10

2 Corinthians 12:9–10 ESV

9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 10 For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Being mature and strong in the Lord is admitting that we are weak and need Him to fight many of these battles.

To confront another who is in sin and to live your life in avoidance of sin is not something we do by our power.

No, it is by His power working in us and us giving ourselves over totally to Him that we can do this.

We must submit all to the Lord and allow Him to lead and guide us and to stop us if necessary.

Maturing and growing up is applying what the Lord has said to us in His Word through the power of the Spirit in us.

But if you think being a mature Christian is only about being rough and gruff well, Paul deflates that with the next aspect of growing up when he wrote...

Be Loving

In verse 14 he told us that all we do must be done in love.

When we confront someone in sin we must do it from a position of love and a broken heart.

We should not come at them with a sadistic “haha I gotcha in that sin.”

No, it should shatter our hearts when we see another out getting drunk, getting high, having an abortion, getting divorced, committing adultery, blowing all their money on foolish things, living in sin, living for the devil over God.

But for it to break our hearts we must first reach a level of maturity in our life that we actually see that it is sin and bad.

To be loving to all is for us to live a mature life of purity and a desire for unity in this body.

As we looked at last week we need to live holy lives.

Living for the world and then trying to get others to not live for the world is not going to work.

Just as Paul wrote in 1 Cor. 13:11

1 Corinthians 13:11 ESV

11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

We must leave childish things behind and live for the Lord.

We leave behind the passion for the toys, parties, big luxurious vacations, and other things that it seems everyone lives for more than anything else.

This does not mean having a nice vehicle, or having a neat little “toy”, or going on a big vacation is bad.

It only means that if these are all we live for it is bad and when that is the case we are more focused on that over being mature and loving towards others.

When we live that way we will not be living entirely pure ourselves and will not be setting a good example for others.

Which does lead to the final aspect of maturity and that is to...

Be Encouraging

In verses 16 and 18 we see twice where Paul says that we are to be encouraging to faithful followers of Christ.

In these verses he is indicating the leaders in the church.

One way to be encouraging is to be subject to those in leadership.

This is not saying that you blindly follow everything a leader in the church does or says but it is saying that we seek to honor them and not always be against them.

This is the unity part.

We strive to make a way as fellow members of the body.

We will disagree but a mature and loving member of the body seeks peace and unity with each other over fighting and bitterness.

Next he says to give recognition to such people.

What this means is that as mature people in Christ we give respect to others.

We give honor where that is due.

We swallow some of our own thoughts and show love and respect to other faithful followers in the church.

When we do this to each other we encourage others in the church and we show the world that we are different.

When we are alert, firmly committed in conviction, courageous, strong in the Spirit, and loving we can be encouraging because we are seeking to honor the Lord and show others the truth.

Simply put, when we are mature we realize that not everything is about us and we begin to help others and care more for others than we do ourselves.

We realize that the church is not for us only but for many many other people.

We see that life does not revolve around us.

We commit to help and work and serve and glorify God because we have seen that His people are more important than the things we desire.

Christ and His body have come to take a higher place in our lives and we show deep respect for each other when we commit to be together in worship above other things we desire.

We show respect to one another when we serve and help others serving.

This is maturing and growing up.

We move past what we want and desire and sacrifice because others are worth it.

Conclusion

I read this story this week that fits well with the necessity of growing up

Leslie Stokes, an English Baptist minister, once told the following parable:

Once upon a time there was a tree. It was a lovely-looking tree, shapely, strong, and stately. But appearances are not always to be trusted, and they were not in this case. For the tree knew inwardly that its massive strength was beginning to wane. When the wind was strong it had felt itself shaking ominously, and heard suspicious creaks. So, wisely, it took itself in hand. With much effort it grew another branch or two, and then looked stronger and safer than ever. But when the next gale blew, there was a terrific snapping of roots and, but for the support of a friendly neighbour, it would have been flat on the ground.

When the tree had recovered from the shock, it looked at its neighbour curiously. “Tell me,” it asked, “how is it that you have not only stood your ground, but are even able to help me, too?”

“Oh,” replied the neighbour, “that’s easy. When you were busy growing new branches, I was strengthening my roots.” (Paul Lee Tan, Encyclopedia of 7700 Illustrations, 1063).

We are equipped with everything we need to grow up and mature in the Lord so we can be alert, firmly committed in conviction, be courageous, be strong in Spirit, be loving, and be encouraging.

It all falls to us on whether we want to grow up or have toys and remain a Toys R Us kid.