A number of years ago, when I was 27, I became the lead pastor of a church in Michigan. We had been preparing for a big launch Sunday, and I had spent a significant amount of time working on the message. I practiced it, prepared for it, and when I finally finished preaching that Sunday, I felt pretty good about how it went. Which, if you’ve ever preached before, you know doesn’t happen every week.
A couple of weeks later, I discovered that someone had recorded an almost two hour podcast critiquing my sermon. And when I say critiquing, I mean going through it practically word for word, pointing out everything he thought I had gotten wrong. I was furious.
That evening, I was heading to a retreat with several other pastors, including a mentor of mine who had been in ministry for decades. I sent him the podcast, fully expecting him to tell me how ridiculous the whole thing was and reassure me that I had done a great job.
Instead, he listened patiently to everything I had to say and then told me something I didn’t particularly want to hear. He said I was responding to criticism the same way I would have responded years earlier, and it was time for me to mature in that area. Which was incredibly helpful advice. I just didn’t appreciate it at the time.
But he was right. At that point, I had been following Jesus for about twenty years, and I realized something uncomfortable. Twenty years had passed, but twenty years of spiritual maturity hadn’t necessarily happened in every area of my life. And I wonder how many of us could say the same thing.
Time Doesn’t Automatically Produce Growth
I think there’s an assumption many of us make about spiritual maturity. We assume that the longer we’ve been following Jesus, the more mature we’ll naturally become. And sometimes that’s true. But time passing and spiritual growth happening aren’t necessarily the same thing.
You can attend church for twenty years and still respond to conflict the same way you did when you were twenty. You can know an enormous amount about the Bible and still struggle to forgive people. You can spend decades around Christianity and never really allow Jesus to challenge the parts of your life you’ve become comfortable protecting. Here’s a question I think is worth wrestling with.
Do you have twenty years of spiritual growth, or have you repeated the same year of spiritual growth twenty times? I don’t ask that to make anyone feel guilty. I ask because I think God has something extraordinary in mind for the kind of people we’re becoming, and sometimes the greatest obstacles to that growth are the things we’ve simply learned to live with. What Kind of Soil Are You Becoming?
In Luke 8, Jesus tells a story about a farmer scattering seed. Some of the seed falls on a path and gets eaten by birds. Some falls on rocky ground, grows briefly, and then withers. Other seed falls among thorns that eventually choke out the plants. But some lands on good soil and produces an abundant harvest.
Jesus explains that the seed represents God’s word, and the different soils represent the ways people receive and respond to it. What’s fascinating is that the seed itself isn’t the problem. The condition of the soil determines what happens after the seed arrives.
And I think that’s worth paying attention to because we can spend an enormous amount of time asking God to speak to us without ever seriously considering whether we’re willing to be changed by what He says. For some of us, our faith has very little depth. We love the encouragement of following Jesus, but when something difficult happens or we encounter questions we can’t easily answer, everything begins to feel unstable.
For others, Jesus describes something more subtle. The seed grows, but it’s eventually choked by life’s worries, riches, and pleasures. I think those three things are particularly relevant to the world we live in. Worry can consume so much of our attention that we begin acting as though everything depends entirely on us. Money and possessions can create an illusion of security that slowly reduces our dependence on God. And pleasure can become a way of avoiding the difficult things in our lives that we don’t want to confront.
None of this necessarily happens overnight. In fact, that’s what makes it so dangerous. We can become comfortable enough with the things that are limiting our growth that we stop recognizing them as problems.
What Spiritual Maturity Actually Requires
When Jesus describes the good soil in Luke 8:15, He identifies people who hear God’s word, retain it, and persevere until it produces a harvest. I love how practical that is. Spiritual maturity isn’t primarily about accumulating more religious information. It’s about allowing what we hear from God to become part of who we are and how we live.
That requires a willingness to be challenged. It means approaching Scripture with enough humility to acknowledge that we might be wrong about something. It means allowing people who love us to speak honestly into our lives, even when what they say makes us uncomfortable. And it requires perseverance.
Because becoming more like Jesus isn’t something that happens in a single emotional moment. It’s the cumulative result of choosing, again and again, to allow Him to shape our character, priorities, relationships, and decisions. The goal isn’t to become a person who never struggles. It’s to become a person who continues growing through those struggles rather than remaining exactly where they’ve always been.
Putting This Into Practice
If you want to grow spiritually, I think the most helpful place to begin is by being honest about where growth has stopped. Here are three things I’d encourage you to do this week.
1Identify one area where you’ve stopped growing.
Think about the person you were five years ago. How did you handle criticism, conflict, disappointment, temptation, or uncertainty? Now consider how you respond to those same things today. Choose one area where you recognize that your reactions haven’t changed very much. Write it down, and ask God to help you see what genuine maturity could look like in that part of your life.
2Identify what’s choking out your growth.
Go back to the three things Jesus identifies in Luke 8:14: worries, riches, and pleasures. Which one has the greatest influence on your life right now? Maybe worry has consumed your thoughts, financial security has become your primary source of confidence, or you’ve developed habits that help you avoid dealing with difficult emotions. Identify one specific behavior connected to that struggle and make one intentional change this week.
3Invite someone to challenge you.
Find someone who knows you well, cares about you, and is willing to be honest with you. Ask them a simple question: What’s one area of my life where you think I still need to grow? Then listen without immediately defending yourself. You don’t have to agree with everything they say, but be willing to consider whether God might use that conversation to help you become more like Jesus.
The beautiful thing about spiritual maturity is that none of us are finished. Regardless of how long you’ve been following Jesus, there’s still room for God to shape your heart and your life. The question isn’t simply how long you’ve been following Him. It’s whether you’re still allowing Him to change you.
