I talk a lot. I’m a preacher, you know, so I talk a lot. It’s amazing to me to find out what actually sticks with people. Sometimes it’s stuff I never intended to stick. For example, I told a story once about Lego pain. You know the kind—there is nothing quite like stepping bare-footed on a Lego brick. I talked about it in one sermon, and now every time someone sees a Lego meme on Facebook, I get tagged and they say, “This made me think of you, Pastor!”
Yes, I love Legos. My father passed the love on to me, and I’m passing it on to my children.
For years my kids have played with Legos. Technically, I guess you would say they’ve been playing with Duplos. Duplos are the bigger blocks made for younger kids. It’s the same company and same concept, just harder to swallow pieces, and the designs are not very complex. My kids and I have a blast playing and building stuff. You really get to use your imagination when you’re trying to build an airplane or a zoo or a dinosaur out of Duplos.
But something happened yesterday that changed everything.
My daughter won a prize at VBS (Vacation Bible School) and she picked out a set of “big kid” Legos. This wasn’t just a 10-piece-you’re-done set either. It was a car, a helicopter, and an air-traffic tower—maybe 100 pieces total. It was the kind of thing where she couldn’t do it alone—she needed a parent to “help” build (yes, I ended up doing a lot of the building). It was a proud moment for me because my baby girl is growing up and moving up to the Lego big leagues. It was a sad moment for me because my baby girl is growing up and is not the same kid she used to be.
But that’s a good thing.
We’re not supposed to stay with the baby toys forever. In fact, if we play with the baby toys for the rest of our lives, then there’s probably something wrong. We were designed to grow and move from childish things on to more complex and grown up things. This is especially true in our Christian life and thought. While we start out as babies, we ought to grow to the point where we put childish ways behind us and move on to mature Christian behavior. The apostle Paul got frustrated with the Christians in Corinth because they continued to act in immature, worldly ways and hadn’t yet adopted the behavior of mature adult Christians.
For Paul, Christian maturity meant behaving well and leaving behind jealousy, fighting, and quarreling. That was kid’s stuff. My kids fight and bicker all the time. I joke that I could teach NFL Officials a thing or two because I do more reffing in five minutes with my kids than they do in the entire Super Bowl. But as they mature and grow, they (hopefully) will move beyond that and treat each other well.
Too many of us are content to stay playing with the baby toys. We enjoy our immaturity and never grow out of it. That’s not cool. It’s not healthy. As Christians, as humans, we ought to strive to grow. Who we are next week should not be the same person we were last week. Eventually, we put away the Duplos and pull out the more complicated stuff. It’s part of growing up. Even when we recognize the need to grow up, it’s not always easy to do. So I’ll end by giving a few practical tips on how you can move towards maturity:
- Read. Read voraciously. Reading gives us knew information, power, and the ability to be better than we used to be. Magazines, books, blogs, whatever. Find ways to develop what you know. You can’t implement new ways of behaving if you lack the knowledge of what you need to be like.
- Find a coach, mentor, pastor—someone who can help you in the process of maturation. It’s easier to do when you have someone who has walked the path help you along.
- Mentor or teach someone else. Nothing solidifies knowledge in your head as much as teaching that information to someone else.
It’s time to put down the baby toys. It’s time to grow up. Stop acting like an immature Christian, and start behaving the way responsible adult believers are supposed to behave.
C’mon, we’ll build a neat-o Lego set together!
- The Book of James: The Cool Kids Club (James 2:1-13) - August 18, 2024
- The Book of James: Listen Up, Shut Up, and Simmer Down (James 1:19-27) - July 26, 2024
- The Book of James: Surviving the Tough Times - July 19, 2024
