When we’re little kids we just can’t wait until we’re big kids. They get to have all the fun, because they’re mature enough to do certain things all by themselves. They even get to wear big kid underpants with Batman on them! We want to attain what they have, and when we do we think we’ve truly arrived.
But then we find out that there are bigger kids, and they get to start having their own money and some of them even drive cars around like adults! We start to get jobs, we study and practice for a driver’s license, and then we’re sure we’ve arrived.
But then comes adulthood, and we begin to realize that we have no idea what we’re doing. If we thought everything was new before, there are even more things now! While we’re mature enough (usually) to figure things out, the older we get the more we realize that we aren’t as mature as we first thought.
Just like physical maturity is not something you simply arrive at, spiritual maturity is equally if not more difficult. For whatever reason, sometimes we think we are mature enough, and that causes us to become stagnant. But even Paul the apostle said he hadn’t attained yet! (Philippians 3:11-15) In Sunday School yesterday I was in my dad’s class while he taught, and he talked about this. If I had the spirituality of Paul the apostle, I would probably be satisfied with that – and that’s a problem. We should be constantly growing more mature in Christ, because we will never reach the point of really attaining. If you think you have attained, you aren’t anywhere near as mature as you like to think.