Growing up, not just about maturing to a point of acting responsibly or in a reasoned way. Growing up, becoming your real self in Christ. Since I'm designed by God for God, I can only fully be who I am in living relationship with Him (form follows function). Everything else about who I am (how I act toward others, what I believe, what I do or don't and think every day) will evidence the quality and quantity of that relationship.
Romans 10:3
Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.
Corinthians 5:21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Hebrews 12:11
No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
Isaiah 61:3
and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendor.
Ezekiel 47:12
Fruit trees of all kinds will grow on both banks of the river. Their leaves will not wither, nor will their fruit fail. Every month they will bear, because the water from the sanctuary flows to them. Their fruit will serve for food and their leaves for healing."
Growing up is that process where I come more and more into line with God's truth, thoughts and heart. I think like he does, do what he does and it becomes like breathing - no longer a purposed behavioral drive to achieve perfection or struggle to remember or striving to meet a standard - just a natural outflow of right design and functional being. It's so crazy making at times because I've been so conditioned by deception (the things I think I know resulting from wrong perceptions of things that happened to me). I act out of lies. Even knowing this, I'm still silly enough at times to rely upon and act from my flawed understanding. How do I do that? Denial - how I've hated that word! How I've learned I'm still in it in many ways (things I don't know that I don't know or may still have fear of admitting). Sometimes I see it, sometimes I don't. Grace - thankful for a complete covering of God's grace in it.
It has been so good (though very painful at times) when I come to grips with this process, even in the struggles of it. Now hard things make me very hopeful - I know something really good is on the other side of a painful thing I'm enduring. I've been a prisoner to so many lies for years. Afraid I'm: worthless, condemned and alone. These lies are loosening and falling away through willingness for Jesus' touch and His relentless love pursuit.
Romans 7:21-25
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Romans 8:1-8
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature,God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering.And so he condemned sin in sinful man,in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.
Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so.
Authentic selves are not the product of a moment. They are the product of a lifetime of moments - some painfully crushing, some delightfully uplifting - all ultimately glorious in the hands and heart of our AMAZING God!
The process of submission/abandonment of self to God = Growing Up.
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