Growing Hurts....If You Let It

Ok, ok, I ain't gonna lie, sometimes when you are building something, it gets hard.  Building people is tricky too.  You may say, what do you mean building people?  Well that is what we are in the business of as children of God.  There is a process in our growth in the spiritual just like the natural.  We go from baby and being spoon fed, to teen interdependence, to adult dependence to reproduction.  The cycle may not be cognitive as it is natural, yet there is a definite process to personal growth and development.  Some have a positive and healthy process in growing up in the natural and some are about as dysfunctional as you could imagine.  The calling is for parents to have a clue and to be formational in the shaping of their children.  Selfishness, ambition, greed and such- all hijack people from the calling of forming children into healthy and functional adults.  That we see perfectly in the natural (rude and insecure people overly needy and unbalanced). 

In the spiritual we see a similar parallel.  Jesus says to us in Matthew 28:19 to go and make disciples.  What in the heck?  How does one do that.  My coin phrase in our church is "you can't make what you are not."  Well, the spirit is not different in this case than the natural.  What I mean to say is that one has to be spoon fed, then they must become interdependent in their learning and application of spiritual truth, then they can move onto birthing other sons and daughters.  Problem is people think because they are 35 in the natural, they are mature in the spirit.  Wow.  Imagine a baby balancing a checkbook, or serving in military conflict.  But I see that every day in the spiritual.  One of the things that I am wrestling with now as a pastor/discipler is that some people will not "allow" for the process of their own spiritual growth.  The one difference in the natural and spiritual process is that natural children are "forced" into having a growth process.  In the spirit it is much more an invitation and a submitting to the process, in the natural parents come with the package.

So in understanding this process, been having some challenges on encouraging people to get in the process of their own spiritual growth process and it can at times be overwhelmingly frustrating, especially if the individual thinks they are somewhere they are not (they are in spiritual diapers, but leading a bible study etc...).  Many struggle with submitting to the process of growth.  Internalizing this makes me frustrated much like a coach is frustrated by an unwilling player on a team, or a husband is frustrated with an apathetic wife. 

Cheap answer is to not care and let people fall in their own pride.  Other answer is to shirk my responsibility as a man of God and just live my life and let people fumble.  John MacArthur in his Matthew Commentary offers some strong words about the topic of half hearted spiritual people: 

"When Jesus called the twelve to Himself, He carefully instructed them about what they would be expected to do and endure.  In so doing, He excluded the half-hearted people who wanted the benefits of the kingdom but not its commitments.  He elected to Himself only those who were willing to enter the narrow gate and walk the narrow road."

Ouch-  time to grow up-  Stu