What Spiritual Immaturity Looks Like

What Spiritual Immaturity Looks Like


“When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11)

Every church needs a healthy portion of immature members. After all, new believers start out as spiritual babies with a world of learning and growing ahead. No one is born fully grown.

However, the sad part about this is that many who have been in church most of their lives are still "babies" when it comes to spiritual "maturity". How long one has been in church has nothing to do with this maturity. So having "new" immature member s is good, having "old" immature members is not good. By old and new I am not talking physical age but "church" age. I am afraid there are many members of all churches that have been faithful members for years. They attend, tithe regularly and can quote the Bible, at least some can, but still don't "get it". Sometimes we want to say to these “Have you not ever read any of the Bible”? The writer of Hebrews kinda’ felt this way as we will see later on in lesson - Hebrews 5:12

What spiritual immaturity looks like:

A spiritual infant looks and acts a lot like human infants. They’re self-centered, cry-babies, impatient, helpless, noisy, and messy.

1) Spiritual infants are self-centered. They arrive at church thinking, “What can I get out of this?” Then, they sometimes leave saying, “I didn’t get a thing out of that today.” Church is all about them. Jesus says in one of his parables that “The seed that fell on the footpath represents those who hear the message about the Kingdom and don’t understand it. Then the evil one comes and snatches away the seed that was planted in their hearts.” (Matthew 13:19)

2) Spiritual infants are noisy. They cry a lot, particularly when they don’t think their needs are being met. The church leadership presents a plan for reaching young adults in the community and the senior adults immediately complain that the church plans to abandon them. That’s immaturity on display.

The leadership asks the church to fund a mission project and someone complains that the girls’ bathroom needs remodeling with that money.

The story of the Israelites in the wilderness is one instance of griping and complaining after another. Poor Moses had to babysit hundreds of thousands of God’s infants for a full generation. No wonder pastors admire Moses so much and identify with him so readily.

Sometimes we need to do as the Psalmist writes, “Be still, and know that I am God!” (Psalm 46:10a)

3) Spiritual infants are messy. Toddlers do not clean up after themselves. That’s someone else’s job. On Sunday night after everyone has vacated the premises, walk around the church building and you’ll know in a heartbeat whether the congregation is mature or immature.

4) Spiritual infants are impatient. The crying baby cannot be told that the milk is warming and should be ready in a few minutes. He wants what he wants and he wants it five minutes ago.

“Why did you leave that church?” “We were not having our needs met.” Ever heard that? This is the customer/provider approach to Kingdom work. The church is there to provide services which members pay for with their offerings; if the services are inferior, they withhold their money or even leave. Such is the nature of worldly devotion. Paul says one of the fruits of the Spirit is “patience”. (Galatians 5:22) Note: There are times when one may need to leave a church but only when led to do so by the Lord. Should be a lot of praying involved.

5) Spiritual infants are defined by what they cannot do. They cannot cooperate, cannot submit to others, and cannot understand deep things. They are unable to apologize and mean it, and resist sharing.

They cannot see far away. Suggest the church participate in a community event or send money to missions, and they respond, “Why? What does it do for us?”

6) Spiritual infants are explosive and can “go off” at anything. They were in the hospital and the pastor did not visit them, so they drop out of church. They worked hard on that project and got no recognition from the pulpit so they are ready to quit. Paul tells us to “Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander.” (Ephesians 4:31)

7) Spiritual infants are irresponsible. They’re great at expecting a lot from others and nothing from themselves. They always know who is to blame for all that’s wrong in the church.

It’s the nature of the immature to be childish. It’s the natural order of things for babies to be infantile. We’re not saying otherwise. We love babies.

Babies can love and laugh and add a great deal to any gathering. The biggest huggers in any church and the ones most likely to call out a hearty ‘amen’ to the sermon are the newer members, those “fresh in from the cold.” They add a lot to the church.

But we don’t want to keep our children as toddlers forever. They should grow.

We should not be against spiritual babies: everyone goes through that developmental stage.

But to remain a baby forever is unnatural. And the same applies to “baby” Christians. The Bible says in Ephesians 4:13-14 that “This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ. Then we will no longer be immature like children. We won’t be tossed and blown about by every wind of new teaching. We will not be influenced when people try to trick us with lies so clever they sound like the truth.”

Growing into maturity is the natural order of things. The writer of Hebrews said to some unnamed Believers, “You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food.” (Hebrews 5:12). Which really means “But you need to return to the first grade and start over with the basic truths of the kingdom”.

We don’t tell our babies to grow. It’s the natural order. If we feed and nurture them, protect and care for them, they will grow.

But Spiritual growth is a choice.

We grow spiritually into Christlikeness by the choices we make–whether to read the Bible and pray, to obey the Lord in a particularly difficult situation, to give our tithes when finances are tight, to share our faith when doing so might be uncomfortable, to resist temptation when its pull was so strong.

We choose to grow by making right choices. And, when we make the wrong choices we choose not to grow. We feel lazy on Sunday mornings and decide to sleep in; we are deciding not to grow. We decide to spend God’s money on ourselves rather than give it in church; we decide not to grow. We go a week without serious attention to the Word of God; we are sentencing ourselves not to grow.

To use Eugene Peterson’s phrase, spiritual growth takes place as a result of “a long obedience in the same direction.” BTW, this is the title of his book.

The Apostle Peter writes “…., you must grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18).

There is a way for God’s children to speed up the maturity process, to grow at a much faster clip than is normally the case.

But you won’t like it.

It’s called persecution.

When believers are persecuted for the faith, when they are harassed and tormented, and some even killed, when being identified as a follower of Jesus Christ subjects one to all kinds of opposition and humiliation, the Lord’s people decide in a hurry to what extent they believe Him and believe in Him, and how important He is to them.

The faithful who persevere in difficult times grow much faster than those who live in safe societies where serving Christ costs them little or nothing. They have to.

But I wouldn’t want to volunteer for persecution. There are easier ways–not to say more survivable ways!–to grow in the Lord.