Growing Up: What It Really Means to Mature in Faith

Growing Up: What It Really Means to Mature in Faith
There is a difference between growing old and growing up. One happens automatically, marked by gray hair, wrinkles, and the slow accumulation of years. The other is a choice, a journey, a daily decision to move toward something deeper and truer than where we started. Spiritual maturity is not measured by how long we have been sitting in a pew. It is measured by how willing we are to let go of the things that keep us small and step into the expansive, sometimes uncomfortable, always life-giving freedom that genuine faith offers.
The apostle Paul captures this tension beautifully in 1 Corinthians 13:11-13. He reflects on the shift from childhood to adulthood, describing how he once spoke, thought, and reasoned as a child, but eventually put those childish ways behind him. He then points toward something even greater, acknowledging that our current understanding is partial and incomplete, like a dim reflection in a mirror, but one day we will see and know fully. And through it all, he anchors everything in faith, hope, and love, with love reigning as the greatest of the three.
This passage is not simply about getting older. It is an invitation to examine how we are growing.
Childlike Versus Childish
There is an important distinction worth sitting with: the difference between being childlike and being childish. These two words may sound similar, but they point in very different directions.
To be childlike is a gift. Children approach the world with wonder, curiosity, and a genuine hunger to understand. When a child asks a question, it is almost always for the purest of reasons: they simply want to know. There is no hidden agenda, no attempt to score a point or prove someone wrong. They just want to learn. That quality, that open and honest pursuit of knowledge, is something worth carrying into adulthood.
Being childish, however, is something else entirely. Childish behavior is self-centered. It wants what it wants, when it wants it. It struggles to make room for others and tends to see the world in rigid, black-and-white terms. A childish faith demands that everyone believe exactly the same things, practice faith in exactly the same way, and walk in lockstep with one another regardless of where God may be individually leading each person. It mistakes uniformity for faithfulness.
Paul's encouragement to put away childish things is not a call to abandon wonder. It is a call to abandon the rigidity, the self-centeredness, and the narrow thinking that prevents us from growing into the full stature of what God intends for us.
A Faith That Makes Room
Mature faith is flexible. It is patient and kind. It makes room for others to become who God has called them to be, rather than insisting they become who we want them to be. This does not mean that everything in faith is up for negotiation. There are things that do not change. The centrality of Jesus Christ as Savior, the presence and guidance of the Holy Spirit, the authority of Scripture as our primary witness to who God is and what God has done, these are not fluid. They are the bedrock.
But the songs we sing, the traditions we hold dear, the specific ways we express our devotion, these things can and do shift from generation to generation. A mature faith recognizes the difference between the unchanging core and the changeable expression. It passes down to the next generation not a rigid set of customs to preserve, but the tools to remain faithful to God through all the complications of life.
A good parent does not raise a child to be dependent on guarantees. Life does not come with warranties. It never has. Part of growing up, spiritually and otherwise, is learning to trust without requiring certainty. It is learning to say, no matter the circumstances, no matter what seems to be falling apart around me, God is still God. That trust is not naivety. It is the hard-won conviction of someone who has seen God work in the middle of uncertainty and come out the other side with their faith not just intact, but stronger.
Looking for the Good
One of the most quietly powerful habits of a mature faith is the discipline of looking for what is good. It is remarkably easy to find the negative. We are drawn to it. We seek it out, sometimes without even realizing it, and when we find it, we dwell in it until it colors everything around us.
But the negative, for all the attention we give it, represents only a fraction of the whole picture. God did not create us to live as collectors of bad reviews, about life, about others, or about ourselves. Mature faith trains the eye to look for God sightings, those moments large and small where grace shows up unexpectedly and the goodness of life becomes undeniable.
This is what it means to rejoice. Not to pretend that difficulty does not exist, but to refuse to let difficulty have the final word. To look at a hard season and still find evidence of renewal. To look at a broken relationship and still believe that God is not finished. To look in the mirror and recognize that something good was made there.
The Invitation
Spiritual maturity is not a destination you arrive at after enough years. It is a posture you practice every day. It is the choice to ask honest questions, to hold the unchanging truths of faith with conviction while holding the expressions of faith with open hands. It is the willingness to live without guarantees, trusting in the love and faithfulness of a God who has never once let go.
Paul reminds us that one day we will know fully, even as we have been fully known. Until then, we walk by faith. We grow. We put away what is childish and hold fast to what is childlike. We look for the good. And we trust that the God who made us is still, always, making something worth celebrating.