12/27/21 SPIRITUAL MATURITY

12/27/21 SPIRITUAL MATURITY

Our campfire meeting gave rise to something I have been missing for a couple of years. I have missed the verbal inter action with the children and youth of our church for some time. Some of the most stimulating, most interesting and most insightful conversations I have are with children and young people in our church. They understand so much more about basic Christian truth, and living Biblically than most of the adults I meet.

It is great to converse with people who actually think deeper than the obvious and speak beyond chit chat level understanding. Their conversation is not simply parroting information or formulas. They speak from the depths of their being and their personal knowledge and relationship with Christ.

I have missed these conversations over the past couple of years. We had more of these exchanges in our house church setting than we had when we met in our store front building and more than we had on ZOOM meetings. I don't blame either the store front or the ZOOM setting. It is that we lost some of the closeness during that time that we had enjoyed previously. As I pointed out, this recent conversation was around the campfire, but it use to take place regularly in our church gatherings. I want the young people to feel more free and open during worship, study and fellowship times, in the building as well as around the campfire.

This kind of interaction also opens doors of personal inquiry and introspection, which in turn leads to a greater awareness of Biblical and Holy Spirit truth. It helps maintain a humility level that too many adults have lost on their way to "perfection." But, as I have tried to communicate in the past, our world is changing so quickly that all of us need to be hungering for truth and adjusting our communications skills to the social winds of change.
I try to allow for the fun things in life. In fact, I enjoy the fun things of life. I try to recognize the need for young people to just be young people together.

However, there is more than enough time for people to pursue the mundane and the frivolous. When we get together I want our young people and children to think and talk about the real issues of life.

This kind of activity needs spiritually established, mature believers to lead the young people. Without spiritually mature leadership the valuable opportunities will be reduced to exercises in futility.
But this is a whole other subject to be addressed at another time.

There is much more I can share concerning the importance of adult leadership of young people in spiritual issues, but not tonight.