“Mike, my faith is no longer like how it was when I was at Bible school! Can you teach me how do I maintain such faith when I am back home?” Mike was our school dean of spiritual formation, who directed our chapel services’ topics

He asked, “Explain more. Where do you think you are failing?” I proceeded to give an  explanation,

“I’m not as passionate about reading the Bible or feeling His presence as strong as when I am here in the States, surrounded by my Bible professors, weekly Chapels & conversation with Christian community.”

I shared my struggle to live in the world, but not of the world—-adjusting to the social drinking pressure of Asia to network or having to struggle more with more temptations the more my career calls me upwards. With the pressure of work too, I felt I could not be the loving ‘Christian’ boss I should be to my team—knowing what to do but failing to do so.

“Tamara, you are more mature of a Christian than you think you are” Mike said.

I was taken aback and wondered what maturity meant. He continued, “Maturing Christian is when God takes away all the pleasures of Him and ask us, “Will we still want to serve Him, even though He takes away the pleasure of seeking Him?”

Teenage Christian vs Adult Christian

The Church puts so much highlight and praises that the ideal Christian is one SO on fire for God—brimming with passion & joy for reading the Bible or serving at Church. Now that is marketable by Churches—-yet the older I get, I realize those are unsustainable and not reality of life.

When we are a new Christian, the whole pursuing God was exciting and full of zest (You know what I mean)!

When you are a teenage Christian, God takes away some of this pleasure and let us make choices. We experience more things in the world, are exposed to temptations & He allows us wisdom to choose and figure out things for ourselves & about ourselves. As God removes the pleasure and desire to intensely worship for instance, we start to fill them with other pleasures such as drinking or clubbing. And this is the pursuit where Jesus is training us what is good and what is not; whether we will follow our Fatherly guidance or not.

The verses in Hebrews indicates the need for Christians to grow from drinking milk to eat solid food. God beckons us to grow and not keep being “fed” only with milk and not be able to eat the more solid theology of God.

12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, 13 for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. - Heb 5: 12-13

So what does it look like to be an adult, mature Christians?

It should not be to any surprise that maturing Christians struggle between their own desires as they know themselves more & the desire to live for Christ with the more we know what pleases God. Our maturity is not measured by how ‘enthusiastic’ we are in Church-y settings. It is measured by whether we will still choose God in the hard decisions in our lives. Mature Christians submit to God by disciplining their feelings, directing our willpower, to desire & obey God’s commands instead in the reality of our lives that is often not black and white.

Our feelings are fleetings. Rather than trust our hearts, we are to commit our hearts to God: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not into your own understanding: in all your paths submit to him, and he will make your paths straight” - Prov. 3: 5-6

A lot of Christians fell out of faith because they rely on these “spiritual highs” to feel the Christian faith is for them. When they are no longer ‘feeling the Presence of God’, they start to piling up guilt as they live in their own ways, they begin to abandon God thinking His goodness is irrelevant to their lives.

“The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure Who can understand it?” - Jer 17:9

The saying: “Follow your heart” had ended more marriages, mutilated more bodies, destroyed more souls, and ended more lives than the devil could have imagined. It is hell’s effective slogan.

Our main responsibility as a mature Christian is to be mindful of the soil of our heart and to grow deep roots of His truth. Let’s look into the parable of the sower:
“Therefore hear the parable of the sower: But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty." - Matt 13: 18-23
 

We are to not let our faith be choked by the distractions of the world, nor unbelief that God uses times of trials to also foster our faith.
Keep going. You are more mature than you know,

T.W.