Series: Adulting
Thinking & Acting Like an Adult
What happens to you, your faith, and life when you have a fear of becoming an actual adult? The “Peter Pan” syndrome is becoming increasingly common in today’s culture. People postpone college, career decisions, children and all our cultural values are from our youth and people are anxious to move away from that. The celebrity culture has moved into the christian community and more focus is on celebrities instead of having a real desire to be grounded in scripture and the word of God. This results in a lot of misunderstanding and confusion:
We need more courageous adults who who change the world, do fun stuff, fight for us, protect us, sacrifice our life, diagnose our illness, care for us, teach us, lead us. Until we become child like and put our faith in Christ, we are not going to find those adults. Jesus came to sacrifice himself to free us and cleanse our soul from these things that many are blind to and undervalue. Cry out to Jesus for salvation and seek to grow into the adulthood that we are called to be.
Matthew 18:2-4 – He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
1 Corinthians 13:9-12 – For we know in part and we prophesy in part, 10 but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. 11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. 12 For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
Passive Aggressive Trap
The overwhelming majority of people that manage their emotions through passive aggressive behavior. Doug explains the immaturity of passive aggressive behavior, it’s disguise to appear “well intended”, and how it erodes relationships.
Passive aggressive tendencies need to be addressed. They need to be faced head on by speaking truth to yourself about where you are at. Get out of denial and don’t let anger get you off track. Deal with your emotions in the right healthy way. If we are involved in passive aggressive tendencies to others, then that is exactly how we will relate to God and you will never grow in maturity into the fullness of the Love of Christ. Give yourself completely to Jesus Christ.
Ephesians 4:11-24 – So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, 12 to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up 13 until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. 14 Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. 15 Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. 16 From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work. 17 So I tell you this, and insist on it in the Lord, that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking. 18 They are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. 19 Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed. 20 That, however, is not the way of life you learned 21 when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. 22 You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; 23 to be made new in the attitude of your minds; 24 and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.
1 Corinthians 13:11 – When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.
