The Lord greatly loves the repenting sinner and mercifully presses him to His bosom: “Where were you, My child? I was waiting a long time for you.” The Lord calls all to Himself with the voice of the Gospel, and His voice is heard in all the world: “Come to Me, My sheep. I created you, and I love you. My love for you brought Me to earth, and I suffered all things for the sake of your salvation, and I want you all to know My love, and to say, like the apostles on Tabor: “Lord, it is good for us to be with You.”
~St. Silouan the Athonite
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
~ Jesus, King of The Universe, in Matthew 18
Oh beloved, it is true.
We all want to grow up. But, the problem is that the world only tells us how to get bigger, and more sophisticated. And in going this route, we actually miss adulthood. For, getting larger does not mean getting better.
Oh, the world will continue to pound us with the lie-laden messages bound up in its cosmotic, toxic roux. And most of us will listen.
> We will trade away our strength for thrills.
> We will give away our peace and exist soaked in anxiety.
> We will give away true wealth in our pursuit of fiat currency.
> We will abandon our dignity for some artificial position.
> We will lose our heart in the pursuit of some tiny little hill that seems worth the climb.
And then, death will come after a few short years. We may only have a little pile of that fiat security. But, in all of it, we will find that the promise was nothing but wind and vanity, and vainglory never found.
Can we see it?
The adulthood we seek is never found in the world, because true maturity has nothing to do with what the world has to offer. True maturity is bound up in the strange, but totally true economics of the Kingdom.
In the Kingdom,
> We forgo earthly thrills to find the eternal joy and strength of His Presence.
> We cast our anxiety and cares upon Him, and He Himself becomes our Peace.
> We spread our cash to those in need, and store up eternal wealth in The Kingdom.
> We humble ourselves in every situation, and find honor and strength and exultation in Him.
> We abandon the world, and find a path towards the very mountain of G_d.
Hopefully, beloved, we can see the difference. Because actually, the first list is the immature of this world trying to act like what they think a grownup is. But, the second list actually describes a true adult. A truly human being, grown large in Love – instead of in stuff.
So, are you trying to grow beyond your immaturity? Many of us in the Colony really never grew up. We were always chasing the wind in our foolishness. Maybe tonight is your night: Time to abandon the pursuit of nothing. And time to allow Him to replace that pursuit with the very heart of a child that you might mature into who you were ever called to be.
Unction comes to the preacher not in the study but in the closet. It is heaven’s distillation in answer to prayer. It is the sweetest exhalation of the Holy Spirit. It impregnates, suffuses, softens, percolates, cuts, and soothes. It carries the Word like dynamite, like salt, like sugar; makes the Word a soother, an arranger, a revealer, a searcher; makes the hearer a culprit or a saint, makes him weep like a child and live like a giant; opens his heart…as gently, yet as strongly as the spring opens the leaves.
~EM Bounds
