I Won’t Grow up! Ephesians 4: 11-16,
Are you ready for today’s lesson”, It comes for a young philosopher and I believe it tells us a lot about human nature.
I won’t grow up, I don’t want to go to school. Just to learn to be a parrot, And recite a silly rule. If growing up means It would be beneath my dignity to climb a tree, I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up Not me!
I won’t grow up, I don’t want to wear a tie. And a serious expression, In the middle of July. And if it means I must prepare To shoulder burdens with a worried air, I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up Not me,
Never gonna be a man, I won’t! Like to see somebody try And make me. Anyone who wants to try And make me turn into a man, Catch me if you can.
I won’t grow up. Not a penny will I pinch. I will never grow a mustache, Or a fraction of an inch. ’Cause growing up is awfuller Than all the awful things that ever were. I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up, No sir,
I won’t grow up! I will never even try I will do what Peter tells me And I’ll never ask him why We won’t grow up! We will never grow a day And if someone tries to make it We will simply run away I won’t grow up! No, I promise that I won’t I will stay a boy forever And be banished if I don’t!
And Never Land will always be The home of beauty and joy And neverty I’ll never grow up, never grow up, never grow up Not me!
This morning when I left home my sermon title and my sermon did not match. And that song from Peter pan kept running through my head.
In many ways, I am still a kid. I would rather have fun than Go to school. That song is fun and easy to put my self in the position of just staying the same and not changing.
I was a teenager I was always a little mature for my age. Maybe it was actually shyness. Kids can be mean if you don’t fit in. Adults will let you sit and listen and if you are funny, the laugh with you and not at you.
I remember wanting to be more grown up than I was. I wanted to drive, that starts being a big deal by 12 or so. The closer you get to 16, the more you want to do it. Teenagers can be self-centered and demanding, we are lining through that period with teenagers now. But for most they have learned some of the rules of Life.
A new born baby on the other hand is completely selfish. It has no concept of anything except its needs and wants. Eat, sleep and comfort on his or her schedule. The self-centered view of the world last for a couple of years at least and in some ways it never really goes completely away. At some point a small child learns that not every toy is theirs. That some of the stuff in the house is not theirs.
By the time they get into the high teens, concepts of sharing and helping are understood, maybe not normally offered of followed but they are in the understanding someplace. By that age, a person is usually figuring out what they will do with their life and are actually mature enough to really start doing it. That is when some suddenly don’t want to grow up.
Today’s scripture is talking about how God equips the body of Christ, the church, with people that have certain gifts. How like the human body we grow and are held together by tendons and ligaments. The Church is not the building, the church is the living intently which includes you and me and the people all around you. There is even a bigger picture that connects all the churches together, but we are not talking about that today.
Paul is describing the spiritual maturation process. He points out that God provides the people that will make up a balanced body. The parts that you need to be built up and provide sound growth. We are all at different stages of maturity. We are all growing and as a body we help each other along.
According to Paul spiritual maturity is a process that is started by God and progresses by his design. But please don’t think it is automatic. Each of us has a certain amount of control over the process. The scary part is that the control is not restricted to just our Spiritual growth it affects others and potentially everyone in he body of Christ.
Here is an important concept for you to consider this mourning. Every person that becomes a Christian is provided to a church with a God assigned task.
We are expected to grow up and to keep maturing.
But, There are things in our life that will stand in our way of becoming a mature Christian. Most are probably in our culture. Everything from work to entertainment, even our financial situations can slow or stop our maturation process.
There are personal things that can get in the way, choices, health and even family can have the same impact on our progress.
Simply stated any life circumstance and have an impact on your spiritual growth process. Way too many things can stunt your growth.
Including personal choices to just not grow up!
-If we fail to mature we can not be all that God want us to be.
-If we are immature there is no way for us to know what God want us to understand.
-If we don’t grow in maturity, We can not do the things that God wanted us to do and that impacts the whole body of Christ because every part is important..
It is so important that each of us continue our growth. It is obviously important to us personally, because that growth gives comfort and satisfaction. That growth is a building of our faith and confidence that lets us accept those things unseen with a wonderful certainty.
Here is an important point: The maturing of the human body does not stop until you die and the same should be true of your spiritual growth!
With our bodies, we seem to have little choice. They age and change. But we can affect how we feel, not that I am a good example. But eating properly and exercising lets us enjoy life longer. If we just sit and do nothing our body suffers. We get stiff and unable to move freely.
(Sometimes the physical is not a choice; it is the path we are on. But perhaps the same can be true with our minds. If we just stop learning, it gets stiff and sore also.)
Spiritual maturity is no different. We are all on a growth path that should be predictable. We start out as babies, self-centered, unable to care for our selves. People feed us, make us comfortable and take care of our needs.
That is what the church is all about. The church is a family similar the one that you grew up in. It is a place to be raised to the point where we are old enough to head out of the house and start working toward a life and family of our own.
You know God has this whole design and process thing all figured out. It is neat how we can look at how ne process works and apply the methods over and over again to life’s directions and problems.
I would guess that we will all agree that a baby and even a pre teen child can not take care of him or her self. We would probably agree that a young teen really should not figure out life and make life choices alone. We would probably agree that the younger the person the more likely they need a mature person, a parent, a family member or a safe adult to teach them about choices.
The exact same thing is true for the people within the church. It is easy for a young person, or a new Christian to try to figure out the path they have found and the learning choices they can make. But it is really important that they have more mature people to guide them and help them. That is what God has designed within the church.
He designed a process that is self supporting and directing. A never ending process that people mature at different rates and times. Where somebody is the mom or dad and keeps the bills paid, meals on the table and the house picked up. And the children just go to school and hangout.
The process normally works almost automatically. God has designed a great system. There is only one problem in the design.
The problem is the use of human components. Humans that have the ability to make choices. That have the ability the say ”I won’t grow Up!”
In some cases, people have developmental problems, I met a down syndrome young lady a couple of weeks ago. She was 21, but mentally she is a child, probably pre-teen. She can read and write, her mom taught her. But she has advanced as far as she can. She will always be a child and is unable to be anything else. If she had a choice, to just say, I want to be a grown up…I want to do what is normal and natural …. I don’t She would not even hesitate.
While she is a child, she seems to know that she is stuck where she is. But she is not the problem in God’s design. The problems in the machine weither it is a family or a church comes when people do not keep growing in maturity. They never want to progress and do better. The sing the peter Pan song and want to stay a child and be taken care of by the mature people in their lives.
It is easy to say just feed me. When someone else is doing the work, making meals and cleaning up, it is easy to just show up. We don’t even have to like the food as log as there is some satisfaction in the hunger.
When a Christian only shows up at meal time, and has no other worries about the family, they are not mature. If they never ask how to fix a meal, if they never invite a friend over for a meal, if they never learn to even fix their own sandwich. They are probably not maturing.
Spiritual growth, leads a Christian to expirence and learn on their own. The look up stuff in the book. They ask questions about the things tey don understand. They share what they have learned because they get excited with ideas and flavors.
Persoanlly I remember, When I learned how to tie my own shoe laces. I know I was having trouble with it because mom had me sitting in a chair with a show lace lied on the arm and had me practice until I got it.
Mom was patient and trained me. She had to push me into it because it was easier to ask her to do it. I was immature and wanted it done. After if found it out for myself is was excited and I had a personal price. Later, It was my turn to teach some one how to tie their shoes.
I probably tried to teach people at school. But I know I did with my kids.
If I had resisted and not learned. I would have been saying I don’t want to grow up.
I would not have fulfilled my design. To teach the simple thing I learned to someone that did not know.
All Christians are teachers in one way or another. God has placed you in the church to take up personal responsibility and to teach by example, by actual teaching or the just take care of things in one way or another so that the teaching can happen.
If you ever choose not to grow up, you are not fulfilling what God has for you to do. You don’t know what you are missing. You don’t know what it means to help others reach the place you are as you move to the next level.
This problem where people choose not to grow is not new. Paul talked about it in 1 Corinthians 3: 1-2
1Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly--mere infants in Christ. 2I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready.
Spiritual growth is not completely automatic, I wish it were. It requires you to want to proceed. It does not automatically come with age. OR baptism or doing church work. It comes when you realize that something is missing or wrong about your understanding and you look for the answer instead of walking away. Spiritual growth develops out of dissatisfaction with where you are.
Spiritual maturity shows itself to others when you want to teach what you know, take the energy from meals received and prepare nourishment for the young ones around you.
I have just a couple of additional points for you to consider. On some occasions, age has nothing to do with the Spiritual maturity of a person. I have met many 10 and 20 year old young people that are easily living in a mature state and still growing every day. They set out on the path of spiritual growth every early in their life and are living active and rewarding lives because God is using them to teach and preach and witness and to help other people, mostly young people along the path.
I have also met many people that believe that they are spiritually mature that stopped their journey. They thought hey reached the end of the line and they were done.
I don’t know what made them stop their progress but I know why they feel comfortable. There were baptized a long time ago.
They went to church services every week.
They were mature in age.
They knew what they thought and got what they wanted.
They had held important jobs in the church.
Their lives had been reasonability successful and comfortable.
They studied and knew a lot.
Over time it is easy to fool yourself. They learned to live within the rules and are a good people but their growth stopped. They stopped responding to the call of God for their service. The stopped being helpful to people that were struggling in their growth. The stopped using their spiritual gifts to the benefit of the Body of Christ because they stopped seeing that any of our real efforts today only show results in the future.
When any one takes their focus off of tomorrow and only sees today, their journey stops and they are left sitting still watching the clock instead of the scenery of the journey.
Restarting the journey is as simple as looking at your life and questioning if you are making progress. If you worry about your movement and improvement normally indicates that you are moving. The steps may be small, but the journey toward maturity is continuing.
In our scripture today, Paul is telling us that we must be maturing to the point of being useful so that the world can’t beat us up and stop us. None of us can leave someone behind. This is a journey that we are all making together, and sometimes we give help and other times people help us. That is what the body of Christ , the Church is all about. Reaching the goals that God has set using the time, talents and resources that God has provided.
All Glory be to God!
