Adulting 101

Truth be told, many of us don't ever want to 'grow up' - we want to live as 'children' our whole lives. It may be the result of thinking it will be a whole lot easier to just go through life naive, but that vantage point can get us into a whole lot of trouble. It might actually be a little selfishness on our part, no wanting to actually do the 'work' of growing up because it will mean we have to stop doing some things and start doing others. Regardless of the reason behind our 'foot dragging' as we approach our growth in a spiritual sense, the fact remains that we cannot continue as children forever! We need to grow up - putting into practice over and over again the things we have learned until they become second-nature to us. Today they have coined that term "adulting' - maybe what we should admit we haven't accomplished the true consistency we need in the tasks we consider to be 'mundane' in our spiritual walk. If we want to grow up in Christ, we commit equally to the 'mundane' as we do the 'sensational'.

My counsel for you is simple and straightforward: Just go ahead with what you’ve been given. You received Christ Jesus, the Master; now live him. You’re deeply rooted in him. You’re well constructed upon him. You know your way around the faith. Now do what you’ve been taught. School’s out; quit studying the subject and start living it! And let your living spill over into thanksgiving. (Colossians 2:6-7 MSG)

The concept of 'adulting' is that the individual is responsible for their actions - they are consistent in their behavior, especially when it comes to doing the things one considers 'mundane'. These mundane tasks are actually necessary ones and cannot be ignored. Ignore the laundry long enough and you will run out of clean underwear. Ignore the dust bunnies gathering everywhere and you will soon discover you might not be breathing as well in your own home. We can ignore the mundane in life, but it costs us something when we do. We can ignore the 'mundane' in our spiritual life, but it will cost us even more than we may realize!

As a baby, my children were able to drink from a bottle at a very early age. They could not hold that bottle on their own, though. As they got a little bigger, their hands would surround the bottle and in pretty short order they had learned how to hold it on their own. Eventually they graduated to those 'sippy cups' that have a lid on it, but they had to adapt to not sucking like a bottle because they would drown themselves if they did! As we grow up, there are all kinds of 'adjustments' made to adapt to the current tasks at hand. We are learning new things, not for the sake of gathering knowledge, but so we can put it into practice in our lives.

As little babies, cute and cuddly as they were, I didn't mind holding the bottle for my kids. As toddlers I expected them to begin to do some of these things on their own. Why? It is part of growing up. God isn't much different with his expectations of us - he expects us to do the things that reveal we are growing up! The words of our passage are quite clear - we all need to start living what we have been studying. It is fine to 'take in' new truth - now we need to take what we know and put it into practice. We won't get it right all of the time, but as we do practice it more and more, we will. This is how consistency develops new habits and habits become routine.

It isn't that we aren't well-rooted because we are. It isn't that we aren't secure on a good foundation because we are. It is that we aren't becoming 'adults' in Christ! We aren't 'adulting' well in our spiritual life. We are turned off by what some label as mundane - things like consistent study of the Word, relational development with other believers, and getting honest with God in our times of communication. We call this Bible study, church-going, and prayer - these are the religious words for these 'mundane' tasks. Look not at these as 'tasks' so much as the source of what keeps life moving along for us. Maybe if we begin to see them as less 'mundane' and more 'important' we might just 'adult' well! Just sayin!

More than "Miracle-Grow"

Try as I might, my gardening expeditions have produced very little fruit. I spent about three years in a row working the soil, creating flowerbeds, and then planting the vegetables of the season. My hopes were that one of those above ground beds would become a lush vegetable garden. My actual production resembled dead vines, undeveloped melons, and a tremendous harvest for the birds on my tomato plants! Did I harvest what I planted? Most would say, "No", but when you explore the work performed AFTER the planting was done, you'd change your answer!! I harvested dead, half-developed stuff, but not really much I could say was a strong 'yield' from the garden. It wasn't for lack of soil, water, or even earthworms. I'd have to say it was lack of something quite out of my control - the temperature of the sun! Sometimes we plan well, set out to execute the plan, and then we harvest very little because we could not control things totally out of our control. We believe there is no fruit produced, but remember even the worst harvest is something we can learn from!

Don't be misled: No one makes a fool of God. What a person plants, he will harvest. The person who plants selfishness, ignoring the needs of others—ignoring God!—harvests a crop of weeds. All he'll have to show for his life is weeds! But the one who plants in response to God, letting God's Spirit do the growth work in him, harvests a crop of real life, eternal life. (Galatians 6:7-8)

The fact remains, what is planted must be cultivated for it to grow to maturity! We cannot simply prepare the soil, add some seedlings, then think watering will be enough to produce the harvest we hoped for. The most successful gardeners actually spend time in their gardens! Sometimes we want the fruits, but we aren't willing to make the effort to see it produced! For those of you who are avid gardeners, possessing the coveted "green thumb", you are probably shaking your heads about now. In considering my silly attempt at "producing" a bountiful harvest, you probably feel like asking me what I was thinking! The truth is, I wasn't doing much thinking at all! The same thing is true for most of the times I fell flat on my face in some attempt to do something in life. I did very little thinking and a whole lot of actions came out of that minimal amount of thought. The actions were partly good, but mostly non-fruitful!

I expected something because I put "some" effort into it. I really did not apply myself to the task of "maintaining" what had been begun. This is often the case with lessons God is teaching me - I get it, commit to it, then somewhere down the line, I seem to fizzle out. It is not God's doing that brings me to the place of looking at a lack of "fruit" from what he planted - it is mine! Although I might want to blame him - the ownership fits squarely on my back. You may be surprised to find God has not moved the garden in your life! He still watches over it - hoping for fruit. What he is waiting for is our slowing down, taking the time for his Spirit to "turn-over" the soil of our garden, tending all those tender leaves of new growth, until fruit is finally coaxed forth the coolness of our heart's soil. In order to bring forth the good fruit, he even has to remove a few weeds which over-shadow the fruit he is producing. He is much more committed to this gardening process than we are. We cannot deny the laws of sowing and reaping. When we allow the birds to steal away the best of the harvest before it develops fully, or resist the pressure of pushing past the hardened, cold soil of our hearts with the new growth he is producing, we will see much less of a harvest within our lives. When we yield to his "tilling" and "tending", the harvest is much richer - indeed, we'd call it "bountiful".

Bounty is the opposite of stunted. Bounty bespeaks the generous care of a loving gardener. Stunted growth bespeaks the slow, almost stopped growth caused by untended soil. Both conditions of our hearts have signs of growth - but only one yields a harvest of highest worth. What will be your harvest today? Just askin!