To know Christ, grow in Christ, and share Christ's love.
|
To know Christ, grow in Christ, and share Christ's love. |
|
Signs of Maturity
We are all on a spiritual journey, whether we choose to be or not. We are on a spiritual journey because we are spiritual beings, made in God’s image. There is no one way to develop our spirituality, our true inner selves which most perfectly reflect God’s image in us. We pray. We study. We find silence and wait for God to comfort and guide us. Somehow, by grace, we change, we mature. Though there are no surefire ways to make oneself grow, there are signs of maturity, signs of progress.
Signs of Maturity
I attended the General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church in the late 1980’s. Our seminary dean, James Fenhagen, in his book, Ministry and Solitude wrote of signs of maturity that make great sense to me and I’ll share them with you. They are as follows (all quotations come directly from the book):
1. Growth in self-awareness. Self-awareness involves “sensitivity to one’s impact on others as well as an ability to receive criticism and use it for one’s own growth.” Dean Fenhagen added that “self-awareness implies a sense of one’s own finiteness and a profound dependence on the infinite forgiveness of God.”
2. An increasing sense of wonder and awe. This is rooted in humility. “One of the paradoxes of the Christian life is that the more deeply we come to experience God, the more aware we are of how limited our knowledge of him actually is.” He adds, “Christian maturity involves a high tolerance for ambiguity and paradox and a lessened need for certainty. This sense of wonder allows us to open doors rather than close them in our relation with others.”
3. “Christian maturity involves commitment to a disciplined pattern of nurturing the life in Christ. Such a pattern involves a life rhythm that moves easily between solitude and action. It will involve an increasing knowledge of scripture as a means of understanding one’s own identity…, which is a life lived consciously in the presence of God” as a part of a praying church community.
4. “Christian maturity involves a growing capacity to respond to the pain of others, including the pain of others very different from ourselves.”
5. “Christian maturity is reflected in our capacity for joy. For the Christian, all life is a gift. We are the recipients of a love that will not let go… Christian joy is more than good feeling. It is an ability to appreciate the gifts we see in others. It is a response to life that overcomes cynicism and allows for hope, even in the midst of darkness. We can sense joy in others not by the giddiness of their behavior, but by the way their joy empowers us.”
It goes without saying that all of us will mature in Our Spiritual Journeys in different ways but I hope you will find the above five signs helpful. What are your thoughts or feelings about these signs of maturity?
