Growing to Maturity

I've been reading the book Seasons of a Mother's Heart by Sally Clarkson. Honestly, if it had not been given to me, I probably would have never picked it up off the bookstore shelf. Neither the title nor the cover are especially eye-catching, and I had never heard of the author. I have since learned that Sally Clarkson is a homeschooling mom, who alongside her husband, Clay, directs Whole Heart Ministries. In this book, she shares some honest and true wisdom about the awesome task of raising children. I really appreciate how she never loses sight of her long-term goals as a mother. Here are two excerpts from the chapter entitled Planning to Live that really resonated with me.

"Finally, I know that it is not enough to raise children into adults who know God's word and walk in God's ways. To be fully trained, they must also do God's work. That is what it means to have integrity as a Christian -- to be fully integrated with God's purposes. God's truth may fill their minds, and his Spirit may be at work in their hearts, but the process is incomplete until the passion of Jesus for the lost and hurting moves their hands to reach out to the people for whom he died."

"There is no doubt in my mind that personal ministry is the missing measure of Christian maturity in the evangelical church today. Truth and character alone do not fully define a mature Christian."

Those statements challenge me not only as a mother, but in my own walk with Christ, as well. The second of the two quotes I feel is a good summary of what I have mistakenly believed defined a mature Christian for much of my life: if a person knows and believes all the Biblical truths and lives a moral life, that person must be a mature Christian. I now know that's a shallow definition of Christian maturity. What did Jesus say were the two greatest commandments? To sum it up: love God and love others - unconditionally. That kind of love does not come naturally. It only comes from the transformation God works in my heart and mind, as he molds me into a mature Christian. It's very easy to hide behind the facade of right living and right knowledge and try to fool people into believing I've got my Christian life all together, but in the words of the Apostle Paul (1 Corinthians 13), "if I have not love, I am nothing."