December 1

Have you put away childish things? That is a question worth considering. As children, our motives are anything but altruistic. We study and get good grades to avoid being grounded. We do our chores and take on extra tasks to prove to our parents we can handle having a pet of our own. We go out of our way to show kindness so that we will be included in the right friends group. The reasoning of a child is often self-serving, chiefly concerned with personal pleasure and not the glory of God. Yet, we should not think like children forever. Pointedly the apostle Paul summarizes the normative experience of life and in turn applies it to spiritual maturity: When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways (1 Corinthians 13:11). Paul understood that a failure to mature spiritually leaves us like children attempting to serve God for what we may gain, which is actually not service of God, but of self.