Maturity Unto The Measure

 

This is Bentley, our 7 month-old kitten/cat. 

Bentley is at that in-between age where he looks more like a full grown cat, but he still has a lot of kitten behaviors inside. Bentley wants to sit on our lap like a mature cat, but he can’t be still. He is very active, wanting to explore constantly, and anything that catches his attention, he’s off to get a closer look. There is a part of Bentley that just wants to rest around the house unworried and untroubled like our other cat, but until he matures a little more, he will continue to have those fidgety and anxious kitten urges. 

If Bentley were to stay a kitten and never mature into a full-grown cat, he would never get to the place of unbothered rest exhibited by our other cat, Rudy. Rudy is always at rest. If you see him walking around, it’s usually just so he can move to another place of rest. And that’s because Rudy is a mature, full-grown cat. Even though Rudy and Bentley are both cats, they have very different behaviors simply because one is mature and the other is not. 

Scripture says that once we become believers in Christ, God’s ultimate purpose is to bring us to maturity— our destiny is not to be eternal infants, but to become eternal sons (Eph 1:5). As we grow in personal knowledge of Christ Himself, we grow in unity of the faith, and we “mature into the full measure of the stature of Christ” the Son of God (Eph 4:13). And one of the benchmarks of such maturity is complete rest in the Father, regardless of what work we are called to or what circumstances may surround us. 

So let us press on brothers and sisters, to full maturity, “attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”

(Eph 1:5) He predestined us for adoption as His sons through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of His will…

(Eph 4:12-14) …to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God, as we mature to the full measure of the stature of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed about by the waves and carried around by every wind of teaching and by the clever cunning of men in their deceitful scheming.

(Rom 8:18 ,19) I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God.

(Heb 4:8-11) For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God. For whoever enters God’s rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from His. Let us, therefore, make every effort to enter that rest, so that no one will fall by following the same pattern of disobedience.