Oh, Grow Up

I want to start today’s message off with a video I found this past week entitled, “Things you can’t do when you’re not a toddler”.

VIDEO: “Things you can’t do when you’re not a toddler”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOs5K5-NtXs

These things may seem a bit outrageous but I think every one of them is true. Many things in life are not appropriate as we age and become more mature.

Today is Hazen’s Birthday, Friday was Logan’s Birthday, the week before was Shelby’s, the week before that was Shayla’s, and the week before that was Jade’s. 5 of our 8 children all have birthdays that fall within 5 weeks.

Besides hitting our pocket books, it really hits us as parents with the reality that they are all growing up and getting older.

But you know, many times age does not have a thing to do with how young or how old someone is.

You know, I have had people tell me all my life to grow up. I’ll be 43 in November so I believe it is obvious they are not talking about age.

In our text today from I Peter we are admonished to grow up as well - to grow in respect to our salvation. It has nothing to do with age. In fact, I can promise you that whether you are a young child, a teen, a young adult or older; you are going to be told periodically in your life, to grow up.

Some of us this morning need to grow up! We need to grow up in the things of God and stop playing church.

Illustration: Back in 2011 I received an invitation to attend my 25-year high school reunion. For months I was excited to take Stacy back to the place I had some of the best memories of my life. The closer the time came for the reunion, the more excited I became, thinking of all the wonderful stories I would hear about the changes and the accomplishments of all of my old classmates.

I wondered if any others had found Jesus as I had and if their lives had changed too as a result.

I even tried to guess what some of my friends would look like, and what kind of jobs and families some of my close friends had. The big day finally came and my energy was almost contagious. But I have to tell you it was one of the saddest experiences of my life. “Good grief,” more than a little surprised. It was not what happened but what did not happen. It has been 25 years, 25 year—and they had not changed. They had simply gained weight, changed clothes, gotten jobs…but they had not really changed. And what I had seen was maybe one of the most tragic things I could ever imagine about life. For reasons I can not fully understand, it seems as though some people choose not to change.

I never, never want that to be said of me. Life is too precious, too sacred, too important. If you ever see me go stagnant like that, I hope you give me a quick, swift kick where I need it. I hope you will love me enough to challenge me to keep growing.

I. You know; we need to grow up. We need to grow up and be a winner and not a whiner!

A. In verse one of our text, Peter invites us to put aside all malice, hate, hypocrisy, envy and slander. In other words to grow up and let the mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.

1. A whiner meerly wants to blame someone or something for perceived injustices in his or her life. And what if by chance the whiner is right – that someone else is to blame, will it make any difference most of the time?

2. No, not at all. A whiner’s life is diminished because his or her focus is always on what is wrong rather than what is right. He or she seems to have a built in homing device that accentuates the negative; and life’s victories are drowned out by the constant search to find what is wrong.

3. If you are a whiner this morning you need to grow up.

Illustration: Bernard Brown is president of a Regional Health Care System in the state of Georgia. Brown once worked in a hospital where a patient knocked over cup of water, which spilled on the floor beside the patient’s bed. The patient was afraid he might slip in the water if he got out of bed, so he asked the nurse’s aide to mop it up. The patient did not know it, but the hospital policy said that small spills were the responsibility of the nurse’s aides while large spills were to be mopped up by the hospital’s housekeeping department.