Growing in Maturity

Asking, "What If?"... Seeing it Before it Happens

12/9/2008

“…For me, I can have a bad reaction to something, but then I can talk through it or work through it.”

That is immature. It really is God’s desire that you would be able to see things before they happen. You can take your heart to the right place before it happens so that you’re not always blindsided by something that throws you back into the same immature state. That’s not your flesh or your wiring that’s causing you to have a “short sin” and then repent. It’s just not required that anybody who is like Jesus has to have that strong reaction in the first place. You have to know where your weak areas are and be holding those areas up to God when you wake in the morning, and before lunch, and in the mid-afternoon. You are saying, “God, I need Your mercy. I need Your tenderness. I need Your wisdom.” You’re holding these things up to Him. You’re asking the “what ifs.” “What if this happened today? How would I be? God, please refine my heart so that I don’t have a millisecond of bad response.”

Saying “I have strong flesh. I have a type-A personality. I have a…” Those are really easy hiding places. Everybody has their excuses, but in the end, is it really Christ-like to react for a short time and then catch ourselves? No! So, there is no excuse.

It has to do with maturity. The word teleos means complete, perfect, mature. Those are all the same word in the Greek. Teleos means that we have grown into the full measure of the stature of Christ—not a partial measure, not a temporary, delayed measure, but the full measure. And the way to get there is to identify your weak areas and be holding those up before God and “what if-ing” your heart. What if? If I have a patience problem, I’m asking myself…What if I’m in crowded traffic and the car in front of me dies and can’t start and I am stuck here and I can’t change lanes because there’s too much traffic and I’m stuck here for fifteen minutes. What if? Well, I get out and I help them with kindness in my heart because I am more compassionate toward their problem and their embarrassment than my own impatience. Voila! I have now grown in maturity because I have offered that to God in advance. So, now when it happens, I don’t get riled up and then catch myself, because I’ve already offered that to God. I’ve grown that much more even though it never happened.

So those “what ifs” and submitting our hearts, our minds, and our emotions to God in advance, prior to something happening—that’s teleos. That’s maturity. Perfection is one of the ways teleos is translated. Complete in Christ is a person who has learned how to see things in the unseen world before they ever appear in the seen world.

That’s the part you can choose to do. The proactive part is identifying your own weaknesses and asking yourself the “what ifs.” God will bring visual aids in front of you. Jesus did that all the time: “Consider the farmer in the field. Consider the lilies. Consider the pearl merchant. Consider. Consider. Consider.” This is a process of considering things and finding the opportunity in them. Who saw that farmer in the field? Who saw the pearl merchant? The widow and the two mites…Jesus had to point her out. Nobody else noticed her. And He put Himself into her skin and said, “What if? What if that’s her only grocery money? While everybody else is pouring in all this other money and you’re thinking she’s pathetic, what if she gave more than all of them put together? What if?” Jesus was the only one who stopped and projected Himself into this pathetic situation of this woman who humiliated herself by giving almost nothing while everybody else was pouring in bags of silver. While everyone is impressed with them, Jesus is the only one impressed with her. He put Himself into her skin and said, “What if? What would you do if that were your only grocery money? What would you do? Because that’s what she did.” The “what if” caused everyone who heard Him to grow a little bit spiritually, if they were listening. Yeah, what if? What would I do? It wouldn’t be two mites for me. How much would it be FOR ME to give all of my living money? What would I feel like? How would I go home wondering what I’m going to do next? Would I be in a panic? What would I do?

Each of us can put ourselves into her shoes through Jesus’ voice. Here we are two thousand years later, and we can still ask ourselves those questions. What if it’s all my grocery money? Okay, so I gave generously in this situation for the Kingdom of God. Was that all my grocery money? No. What if? What if it was? How would I feel? What would I think? Would I resent it? Would I police it? Would I compare to others? What exactly would I do? And I have that chance right then and there to grow even though I’m not in that exact situation. But it’s proactive. You put yourself in that situation, and you grow vicariously through the pearl merchant and the farmer and the lily. And in doing so, you can absolutely demolish any little tweak satan has in those moments of reaction, even if you “catch yourself.” You can even eliminate that part. That’s teleos. That’s maturity.

It takes persistence. Persistence is effort over time. I’m going to knock and knock and keep knocking, and that door will be opened because I’m not making excuses for my reactions, and I’m not going to remain unchanged. By God’s grace and His power, I’m going to throw this mountain into the sea and not make excuses. I’m not going to make comparisons by thinking, “Yeah, but they…Yeah, but I’m better…Yeah, but I’m not as bad as…” Forget all that nonsense! This reaction is not like Jesus, and that is all I need to know. That part is beyond dispute. Jesus doesn’t have temporary reactions and then get better. Since it’s not like Jesus, then it needs to be historical. Be persistent. Knock and keep on knocking.

The proactive part is the “what ifs?” Don’t be lazy about that because that’s very, very good seed to sow in areas that haven’t happened. But, what if they did? Who would I be? You can actually form character in your prayer life by the “what ifs.” You can form character in the unseen realm that will begin to emerge in the seen world. It will emerge almost in a laughable way like “Ha! I already did that this morning! I got through that one in prayer this morning, so now the real thing is sort of anticlimactic. It’s not that big of a deal.”