It's been a quiet two days. Been spending the time after work blog-surfing, reading Wikipedia and reading the book Social Intelligence. Fascinating stuff - I'll post more on it in due time.

Hmm. Just want to thank God for His grace. =) Today was a quiet day, but the weather was very beautiful. As I walked out of the building, I looked up to the skies, and was reminded that this is the day that He has made. So looked up to the skies and smiled my best smile as I could to my Daddy in heaven. :D Hee hee!

Been also reflecting on this verse the past few days: "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

I've been reflecting on my being emotional - or 'emo'. Having been ticked off for that recently, I've come to see the value of maturity more and more - and also realised why I've been refusing to let go of this 'emo' side to me.

Personally, over the years, I've been pretty much put off (to put it mildly) by the idea of maturity. Somehow, it had this disgusting connotation that one day, you'd join the ranks of the 'mature', start putting on affected 'mature' mannerisms and act more seriously - which looked seriously senile to me.

And most of all, there seemed to be the sour smell of joylessness - that frightening, Alzhemier-like inability to take joy in a randomly-seen flower, smile at a child's smile, dance under the sky to God just because you could. Like how Jesus had knelt before his Father in child-like delight, saying:

Luke 10:21
At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure.

In the course of my ten years as a Christian I saw some people who started acting more serious and more "mature" - especially after they started serving more - and to me, they started looking more haggard and tired. Joyless, in the end. So inwardly, I told myself that I don't want to grow mature, if this is what maturity looks like. Wrinkly sourness that looks better on a dried prune than on a child of God!

But now, through the Word, some very good Christian books and the exhortations and examples of my dear family in Christ, God has been opening my eyes gradually to see what really is true maturity. And how I have let my mindset become biased, till I miss seeing the value of it.

I learnt that maturity is not always the same as growing old.

That there are mature people who have never grown old. And there are old people who have never grown mature.

And this phrase that I read from "The Life You've Always Wanted" melts the heart like a sorbet: "It may be that God is the most joyous being in the whole universe... For we all have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we." True maturity is sweet, like a bottle of aged wine!

So something that struck me while I was reflecting on the above verse was the ordering of the words: "When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."¹

Not, "I put childish ways behind me, then I became a man."

Metamorphosis to Maturity
Thus, I realised from this verse that true maturity must start from inwards. That is, the nature of someone growing in maturity requires a metamorphosis, like a caterpillar to a butterfly. Likewise, it's very very hard for someone who hasn't seen the value of maturity to live as a mature person, because his nature is still that of a child.

And something, someone, somehow, must produce that necessary metamorphosis in the heart, the soul, the spirit, the mind, in order to cause the child to grow into a man.

Values -> Attitudes -> Behaviours
In short, as the pyramidal diagram that Peter showed me regarding growth, behaviours result from attitudes, which in turn result from values. He took me on a rigorous examination of what really are the true values that I hold in my heart. Then he asked me to go back and think it over some more. "That's your homework to do for the week."

Think I have a better understanding now of the meaning and importance of maturity. A caterpillar can't fly - but a butterfly is able to. And they are one and the same creature. Maturity makes all the difference.

And how I can grow in biblical maturity in all its different aspects is to let the values and principles in the Bible take more and more root in my heart. To discard my old outdated and obsolete values (they never worked well in the first place) and to replace them with the shining pearls in God's Word.

And to let God bake me after I imbibe His words of wisdom. Bake me through repeated tests. James 1 - to consider it pure joy when I go through hard times... so that perseverance may complete its work in me, that I may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

And that I think God is telling me that He's really going to test me emotionally the next 2 or 3 weeks - that is why He's been speaking to me so clearly through many ways - and has finally confirmed it through His Word.

God! This is going to be tough, but prepare me anyway. This is BMT for the soul... because You know that I went through the same kind of test before, and didn't make it - almost gave up - but You pulled me out and saved me. And now You are pushing me back into the ring.

Sounds like a WWE wrestling match, but when You've got God the Father as the Referee, Jesus as your Tag-team Partner and the Holy Spirit as your Coach... Hee hee! It's going to be a hell of a wrestling match, but "no, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us."

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

And that is the true emotional maturity and solidness of confidence that I want as my ultimate prize in this life. Amen!

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¹:(Surprised, and especially so, since I don't think Paul was really writing a how-to-grow manual to the Corinthians, but rather, using that analogy as a passing mention - almost like it was one of those "everyday" statements with that inherent expectation that putting aside childish ways when you grow up is so expected. Similar to Jesus saying, "WHEN you fast..." since, according to Richard Foster, fasting was done so often by so many cultures that it was an expected cultural, if not religious, norm during Jesus' time.

But I daresay that today's increasingly liberalized cultures have pretty much discarded the idea of delayed gratification, what with the Shrine of the Golden Arches, and also the idea of "mature responsibilities", with the advent of the "Twixters" generation, raised by "helicopter" parents who hover super-protectingly over their proteges - "Spank them? OMG! You child abuser!!!". And it seems from East to West, North to South, from China to the USA (to a little red dot in between) - parenting is getting increasingly protective - till it reaches that point where the kids don't have a chance to practise living or thinking for themselves.)