WOW! It's been a while hasn't it? After taking the summer off, we've been slow starting our Real Women studies back, but...we're back! And ready and open for God to do amazing things in our lives!
We have recently started our new series by one of my favorite speakers, Priscilla Shirer, called "He Speaks to Me." It is all about the life of Samuel and the goal is to learn how to hear the voice of God through the static of our everyday, busy lives.
Our first session introduced the idea that the first thing we learn about Samuel was that he was a child and how we should approach God as a child and not with our preconceived adult ideas.
This got me to thinking on an idea and I asked our ladies to think on something over the time between our meetings: In regards to your relationship with God, are you a baby, a toddler, a teenager or an adult?
Now this idea has nothing to do with how long you've known Christ, but rather what your attitude is toward God.
You see in session 1, Priscilla has us read Luke 18:16, where, after telling numerous parables to a crowd of people, Jesus then says "Permit the children to come to me and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." And when we see illustrated depictions of this passage, we see Christ surrounded by a pack of preschoolers.
However, if you get down to the Greek, those are not the "children' he was talking about. Rather, the Greek word used for "children" is actually better translated as "infant." A baby. A Newborn. Someone completely and totally dependent on the actions of another for their survival.
So, I ask you what I asked the girls Wednesday night: Are you a baby, a toddler, a teenager or an adult?
You might be sitting there wondering "What's the difference?!" To me, this is how I view the differences:
BABY-100% dependent on a source other than themselves for survival. A baby craves to be close to mommy or daddy so much that it makes them weep just to be away from them. They trust their care-giver to act in their best interest and more so, EXPECT their needs to be met.
TODDLER-They still love mommy and daddy, but occasionally desire to test out their own independence. They scream and throw a fit when something is taken from them, even if it's for their own good. But, they easily forget that anyway and move on to the next thing. They rush to mommy and daddy a little less everyday.
TEENAGER-Think they know everything! (right!?) There is a need to test their wings, but need to be reassured that mommy and daddy are waiting to catch them if they fall. There is a deep struggle with what's right and what's wrong.
ADULT-Have it all together. Only in drastic and dire circumstances do they express a need for help. They have lost the anticipation and sense of expectancy that kept them ever hopeful at the dawn of each new day.
So, which are you? We are all somewhere in one of those categories and during different seasons in our lives, we shift between all of them.
But if we take Christ at this word, He has called us all to be babies and as infants to come to him, so we should strive to spend as much time in the that first category as possible. And it even says that if we do...we will be rewarded with the Kingdom of God, which in this context no only means eternal life in heaven, but also a radical amazing, overflowing life in Christ, here on Earth.
Again I ask...which are you??
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