Immaturity vs. Disobedience
Over the years, God has humbled me, shifting my perspective towards those who are young in their faith. As someone who hadn’t fully surrendered their life to Christ the day I asked Him to be my Savior, I lived lukewarm. I wanted to call myself Christian, yet I thought, acted, and sounded like the world. Thank God for his grace over my life that he brought me out of that, so that I may no longer just call Him Savior, but truly live a life that says He is Savior AND Lord.
One day the Lord convicted me as I began to grow bitter and frustrated as I would see Christians young in their faith act rash and reckless, not best representing the love and composure of Christ. God then said three simple words to me that matured my mindset. He said, “THAT WAS YOU.”
In that moment I realized two crucial things about my walk with Him.
I had not been extending the grace towards others that God had constantly and freely given to me as I misrepresented Him
He was still extending grace toward my immature mindset in that very moment and will continue to for the rest of my life since I will always need more maturing
It was not until recent that God granted me more understanding on this topic. My wife and I were sitting down with some marriage mentors of ours, and one of them mentioned something that was so profound to me. He was telling a story of years past when His wife would pick the berry bushes in their backyard to make jam.
On one muddy day (as it had rained the day previous), she went out to collect the berries for her jam while her little son also played in the backyard. Before she and her daughter had realized, their son was stomping all over the collected berries, mixing in the basket the mud from his boots along with the juices of mashed berries. The new jam recipe created was not the edible kind.
As frustration grew, God spoke to the parents. They realized that their son was only doing what he watched his mother do - smash the berries into a jam. God revealed to them that their son was not acting out of disobedience, but immaturity. The lesson they shared with my wife and I from their muddy experience spoke to me beyond the bounds of marriage and family. What they had learned was:
As parents, discipline disobedience, but DO NOT discipline immaturity.
Hearing this was an “aha” moment. God showed me that this is the same case for the “little one’s” in the faith. Although immature moments are still moments to provide teaching and correction, they are not moments to discipline as one would with disobedience.
I believe there are many times as Christians where we fail to extend grace towards other Christians who are acting out of immaturity. Sometimes we can be so quick to want to pluck what we determine to be weeds that instead we prematurely pluck the crop. Although our intentions may be well, it is important to discern the times where we let God do the sifting. Jesus’ parable of the weeds explains this perfectly.
“The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field. But while everyone was sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat, and went away. When the wheat sprouted and formed heads, then the weeds also appeared.
The owner’s servants came to him and said, ‘Sir, didn’t you sow good seed in your field? Where then did the weeds come from?’
‘An enemy did this,’ he replied. The servants asked him, ‘Do you want us to go and pull them up?’
‘No,’ he answered, ‘because while you are pulling the weeds, you may uproot the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn.’”
It is important to realize that the wheat could only be discerned from the weeds when they both had matured. I am no botanist and I assume many of you are not, like myself. Therefore, let there be discipline where clear disobedience is found, additionally, let us extend the same grace of God towards others that has been bestowed unto us through our times of immaturity and disobedience.
