October 12, 2025 Sermon “From Throwing Shade to Growing Up”
Key Texts: Matthew 5:9; James 3:18; Romans 12:18; Hebrews 12:14; Luke 6:35
I speak to you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Today’s message is the second in a series we are doing this month on emotional maturity and spiritual maturity.
The reason we’re doing this is simple: Spiritual and emotional maturity always grow together—like roots and branches, you can’t have one without the other.
Spiritual Maturity
Spiritual maturity is simply this: Jesus being formed in us. Nothing more. Nothing less.
Over time, our words, our choices, our way of living and loving start to look more like Jesus.
When Jesus says, “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48), He’s not asking us to be without mistakes—that’s impossible.
He’s inviting us to grow toward Him, toward wholeness; to let God shape us so we love as He loves.
The word perfect here means “complete, whole.” It’s about becoming steady, healed, and rooted in God’s love.
We don’t get there by simply trying harder.
We get there by trusting Christ, receiving His grace, and letting Him change us from the inside out.
C.S. Lewis said God’s goal is not “nice people” but “new people.”
True maturity is Jesus transforming us so mercy, forgiveness, and love flow outward—even to enemies.
Spiritual maturity is a journey, not a finish line. It’s about becoming whole in Jesus, step by step, with God’s help.
Emotional maturity is handling our feelings so they bring life and peace, not harm and regret.
It’s about slowing down enough to notice what’s really going on inside us, and then responding instead of just reacting.
Paul gives us a picture of this in Galatians 5:22–23: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.”
Emotional maturity shows up when these fruit start shaping how we treat ourselves and others.
It doesn’t mean we never feel anger, fear, or sadness. It means we invite God into those feelings and let His Spirit guide our response.
Just like spiritual maturity, emotional maturity is a journey. We grow as the Spirit teaches us patience, helps us weather storms, and gives us kindness even when life is hard.
It’s not about pretending everything’s fine. It’s about becoming more honest, steady, and real—with God’s help and power.
Emotions are like kids in the backseat—you can’t throw them out, but you also don’t hand them the wheel.
With the Spirit driving, emotions ride along as companions instead of taking us off course. And here’s something we all know: Our emotional and spiritual growth is rarely a straight line—it’s more like a squiggly path, full of forward steps, stumbles, and grace.
It goes up and down, forward and back. Some days it feels like progress, other days like setback.
That’s completely normal.
If you mapped my growth, it wouldn’t look like a straight arrow up—it’d look more like a toddler scribbled on the wall with crayons. And honestly, some days I still feel like the toddler.
The book we’re referring to for this month’s series, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality using gives some examples of what happens when emotional maturity is missing.
Let’s think together. I’m going to ask you a few questions. Ready?
Here’s an example: Yolanda is engaged but has doubts. She wants more time to think, yet fears her fiancé and his family’s anger. So she goes through with the wedding anyway.
Can you see yourself in Yolanda’s choice? What counsel would you have given her before the wedding?
Marcus often borrows money. His friends feel used, but no one wants to say no. One friend, James, feels guilty—“Marcus already has so little. Who am I to make it worse?” So he keeps lending, even as it strains his finances and breeds resentment. Can you see yourself in James’s shoes? What advice would you give him before handing over more money?
These stories highlight something important: You’ll never find true peace by pretending wrong is right.
True peacemakers love God, others, and themselves enough to disrupt false peace.
Can you affirm this:
Jesus Christ is my Saviour
Jesus Christ is my Lord
Jesus Christ is my King
Jesus Christ is my life.
We love thinking of Jesus as Saviour and King. But here’s a harder truth: He also unsettles us. He disrupts false peace so we can find true peace.
Jesus Christ my disruptor
If Jesus is truly my Lord, then He must also be my disruptor—the one who unsettles fake peace.
That’s not language we’re used to. But look at the Gospels.
Jesus often disturbed false peace, confronted hypocrisy, and brought God’s kingdom in ways that unsettled the comfortable.
Healing on the Sabbath (Luke 13) – Jesus disrupts rigid traditions to reveal God’s heart of mercy.
The Woman at the Well (John 4) – He disrupts her deflections and cultural norms to bring living water.
Family Loyalties (Matthew 10:34–36) – He warns that following him can even disrupt households.
I know this personally. I was the first to come to Christ in my family.
My family thought I was either unstable, deceived, or worse. There were many tense conversations.
Only when my brother Craig came to Christ four years later—after trying hard to argue me back into atheism—did things calm down.
In the short term, my faith disrupted my family’s norms. My brother, the smart one in the family, had become a Christian. That went a long way to changing the conversation in my family. But at least in the short term Comm my faith in Jesus disrupted the norms in my family.
The Sermon on the Mount, especially the Beatitudes in Matthew 5, flips the worlds values upside down—blessing the meek, not the mighty. The persecuted, not the powerful.
Jesus the Disruptor completely flips the script. Blessing belongs to the least, not the loudest.
So in addition to trusting Jesus as Saviour, Lord, and King, I need to embrace Him as the one who challenges my thinking, disrupts my comfort zones, and calls me out of apathy.
The book Emotionally Healthy Spirituality points out how Matthew 5:9 is often misread. Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.”
Many take this to mean “keep everyone happy, avoid conflict, don’t rock the boat.”
But Jesus wasn’t calling us to be appeasers. He was calling us to a deeper peace—one that refuses to pretend, one rooted in truth.
Boundaries are part of this. It’s good and right to say “no” when you mean no, and “yes” when you mean yes.
It’s healthy to step back from those who abuse or manipulate. But with brothers and sisters in Christ, the call is not avoidance—it’s honest, patient, loving engagement.
But what do we do when we are dealing with brothers and sisters in Christ that we are in conflict with at some level?
Does Jesus want us to cut off people who challenge us? Or does he call us to something higher? I think he calls us to something much higher.
Eph 4:1 ...I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. 2 Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love. 3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
Last week Dale Thompson talked about the idea of thinking of our relationships in terms of “I / It” or “I / You”.
“I / It” dehumanizes the other person; it makes the other person a means to an end, someone that we use.
With “I / You” the other person as a unique and wonderful creation of God, made in God's image, completely and entirely equal to us.
Practicing the quote I – Thou“ in our relationships leads to another aspect of emotional maturity.
It adds to our capacity to resolve conflict maturely and negotiate solutions as we consider other people's perspectives.
Real peacemaking starts with remembering that every one of us is made in God’s image.
That truth, and the example of Jesus, calls us to walk in honesty instead of pretending things are fine—even if that honesty leads to conflict.
And the truth is, many Christians struggle with conflict. Some of us misunderstand what peacemaking really means.
Others have never been equipped to handle conflict well. But avoiding conflict out of fear only makes us false peacemakers.
The way of true peace will never come through pretending that what is wrong is right! True peacemakers love God, others, and themselves enough to disrupt false peace.
Embracing conflict maturely is the path to true peace. Jesus had this way of upsetting the apple cart of false peace wherever he went—his disciples, the crowds, the religious leaders, the Romans, even the folks buying and selling in the temple.
Nobody got a free pass. He showed us that real peacemaking will always mess with fake peace.
Why? Because you can’t have the true peace of Christ’s kingdom built on lies and pretending.
Those things have to be dragged into the light and swapped out for truth. That’s actually the loving, grown-up thing to do.
The problem is, most of us Christians aren’t so good at this. Let’s be honest: we hate conflict. We’d rather chew glass than face it.
We’re Canadians—we’d rather apologize three times and bake muffins for the person than actually bring up the issue.
So instead of risking a fight, we ignore it and cling to a ‘false peace,’ hoping it’ll just disappear. But it doesn’t. It hangs around, festers, and eventually blows up anyway.
And one way or another, we all learn this lesson: we can’t build our lives, and we can’t obey God, we can’t be a part of building Christ’s kingdom on lies and pretending. Only the truth will stand.
Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace. He is the true source of peace. He gives us the "peace of God that surpasses all understanding" (Philippians 4:7).
Followers of Christ cannot create peace in the world until they have first received peace in their own hearts through God's grace.
Since last November, I’ve had a new role with my denomination as Victim Advocacy Facilitator.
In my role, I hear stories of church hurt— sometimes legitimate, sometimes misunderstandings—but always involving conflict.
The challenge is how to bring healing to wounded hearts. That’s what Jesus wants to do through us.
So how do I do this?
Being a peacemaker in daily life can look like this:
Making the first move to set things right when you’ve hurt someone, or when they’ve hurt you. Don’t just wait it out.
Building bridges instead of picking sides
Shutting down gossip instead of spreading it, because gossip tears people apart.
Standing for what’s right and true. Not just for what’s easy
Sharing Jesus, because the biggest peace we’ll ever know is being made right with God. That’s the foundation of all other peace.
Our calling: As followers of Christ, Christians are called to participate in this ministry of reconciliation and be ambassadors of His peace in a troubled world.
Hear the Word of the Lord:
“If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone” (Romans 12:18).
“Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy” (Hebrews 12:14).
“Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness” (James 3:18).
“Seek peace and pursue it” (Psalm 34:14).
And that is how we grow
Let’s be a people who welcome Jesus’ disruption, who choose honesty over pretense, and who take up the hard but beautiful work of true peacemaking.”
Not running from conflict, but living at peace—as far as it depends on us.
Let’s pray. Holy Lord Jesus Christ, would you strengthen us to stand for what is right, even when it’s difficult. Shape us to resemble you more clearly in love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Keep us from shallow peace and empty holiness. Teach us to walk in the balance of truth and grace, holiness and gentleness.
Make us people who seek reconciliation without compromise, honesty without cruelty. Show us how to treat others as your image-bearers and to live transparently before you.
Use our words, our actions, and our choices to plant seeds that will bear fruit in the lives of others.
May the harvest be righteousness, not for our sake but for your glory. Multiply your kingdom through us, Lord.
In our Saviour’s perfect and holy Name, amen.
