Let's Grow Up

A perceptive person observed, "The church is better at getting people saved than teaching them how to live saved lives."

True.

We enter our life with God through grace and by faith in Jesus Christ but too often remain as we entered spiritual -- infants. We don't grow up. There is little evidence of spiritual formation in our lives. Therefore, we become preoccupied with religious activities, or play follow-the-leader even when the leader goes in the wrong direction, or substitute ritual for relationship.

Paul spells out the way spiritual formation works in the middle of his letter to the church at Ephesus: Therefore I, the prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called (Ephesians 4:1). Two words catch our attention: "walk" and "calling." Spiritual formation involves that we recognize that God does the calling; we do the walking. Another significant word is "worthy." It's a picture word. "Worthy" represents the midpoint of an old fashioned set of scales where two weights are balanced on one midpoint.

Spiritual formation, therefore, is not a balancing act, but the point at which God's calling and our walking come together to His glory and honor. Spiritual formation ("growing up into Jesus") is not a static life but a life lived in responsiveness to God's word and God's Spirit. The way we respond to God's call (his direction, his word, his summons) determines the way we 'walk' (live).

Calling is how we get a person's attention. God "called" Adam in the Garden. God "called" Abraham; Jesus "called" his disciples. In the same way, God calls you. And we either respond or ignore his call. If we respond, we respond to a Person, not a concept.

Spiritual formation happens Person to person. God to you. God to me. Spirit to spirit. The Holy Spirit to your spirit. The Holy Spirit to my spirit. It is a life-long journey, a deepening relationship that continues from our spiritual new birth all through life. It happens every day.

When it happens we grow up into Christ. His life is formed in us. We mature. When spiritual formation doesn't happen we remain infants, spiritually immature. God calls; we walk. And the result is a life worthy of His grace.