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Podcast
Maturity
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Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dave DeWitt, and today I'd like to talk about the subject of maturity.
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First I'd like you to visualize three circles, one on the left, one in the middle, one on
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the right.
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They don't touch or overlap.
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The one on the left, put a minus up front sign on it.
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The one in the middle is zero, and the one on the right a plus.
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The left side is chaos, the center is order, and the right side is maturity.
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It's my contention that all development moves from chaos to order to maturity.
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I believe biblically I can give examples and directives about chaos to order and order
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to maturity, but the double movement is only my personal observation.
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So feel free to object to the double movement, because though I think it's a biblical idea,
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I cannot find a passage that describes it.
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In this podcast, I'm going to make ten observations about maturity.
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First observation number one, if you're in chaos, you need order.
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If you're orderly, you need maturity.
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You can go from chaos to order and from order to maturity, but you cannot go from chaos
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to maturity.
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If you're in chaos, you must first develop some kind of order.
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For example, if you're a drunk, you have to use some sort of rules to get sober before
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you can function as a mature Christian, say as a Bible teacher.
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Biblically, much of the Mosaic Law, Proverbs, 1 Corinthians, and James focus on getting
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your chaos to order.
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Much of Psalms, Ecclesiastes, the Gospels, Hebrews focus on getting your order to maturity.
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I just want to say one other thing about this before I move on.
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A lot of the secular world especially says you go to maturity by blending the two, some
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chaos and some order.
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That's never the case.
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If you blend the two, you just compromise your order and prevent getting to maturity.
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The second observation I want to make is that order comes through discipline.
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Maturity comes through creativity, but creativity should never be applied to chaos.
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That's what I was just mentioning.
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The way to establish order is very different than the way you establish maturity.
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There's an old saying that says 90% of life is maintenance.
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We seem to spend most of our time maintaining things.
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I call it going from minus to zero.
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For example, when a natural disaster hits a town, the people want to rebuild it.
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We all understand the need to go from chaos to order.
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It's a form of progress, but it's only progress to zero.
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Going from zero is important because you can't creatively develop anything on chaos.
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You can't build new factories in a town just leveled by a hurricane.
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If you apply creativity to chaos, you risk disaster.
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Creativity applied to the chaos of sexual promiscuity leads to abortion.
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Creativity applied to the chaos of the dysfunctional families leads to suicide epidemics, the second
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leading cause of death among teens.
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Chaos requires order, not creativity.
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Observation number three, maturity, not order, is the goal of the Christian life.
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The word most often translated mature in the New Testament is teleos, and it means having
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attained an end or purpose, complete or perfect, or fully developed in a moral sense.
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First Corinthians 2.6, yet we do speak wisdom among those who are mature, a wisdom however
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not of this age nor of the rulers of this age who are passing away.
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First Corinthians 14.20, brethren, do not be childish in your thinking, in your thinking
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be mature.
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Ephesians 4.13, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of
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the Son of God to a mature man to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness
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of Christ.
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Colossians 1.28, and we proclaim him admonishing every man and teaching every man with all
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wisdom that we may present every man mature in Christ.
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Colossians 4.12, although laboring earnestly for you in his prayer that you may stand mature
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and fully assured in all the will of God.
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First Timothy 1.9, realizing the fact that the law is not made for the righteous person
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but for those who are lawless and rebellious.
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Hebrews 5.14, solid food is for the mature who because of practice have their senses
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trained to discern good and evil.
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Hebrews 6.1, therefore leaving the elementary teachings about Christ, let us press on to
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maturity.
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My fourth observation is the downside to order is that it tends to see itself as an end in
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itself.
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The state of orderliness will usually settle into systems and organizations that support
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those systems and oppose everything but themselves.
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They oppose chaos, but they also oppose maturity, seeing it as a threat to their order.
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They will also spend much of their energy opposing other order systems.
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Just as chaos will tend to hold you down into itself, so will order.
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And although God's order systems like the Mosaic Law and the Apostles' Directives were
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perfect, ours are not.
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Ours is established order, but they are not inspired of God's systems.
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Observation number five, generally speaking, we move from chaos to order by joining some
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group which gives us a sense of community or accountability and structure, but we move
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from order to maturity individually.
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The nation of Israel is to keep the Mosaic Law, but no national law-keeping could write
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the Psalms or teach the Sermon on the Mount or go on missionary journeys.
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Tendency of order groups is to defend their group, Catholic versus Baptist, Lutheran versus
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Pentecostal, and so on.
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And sometimes this is necessary, but it will not lead any individual to maturity.
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Maturity comes by individually pursuing what holiness means in the Bible, which only comes
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through creatively expanding beyond what our order systems have taught us, what we've learned.
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For example, if someone makes a case that the fundamentalists are right and the charismatics
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are wrong or vice versa, I want to say, okay, but understand that discussion will not lead
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either of you to maturity.
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Observation number six, order is at best boring and at worst burdensome.
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If growth is only defined in terms of order, there'll be little motivation for it.
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That's often why people slip back into chaos, left to themselves.
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All areas of our life will tend to move to the left, that is towards chaos on my graph.
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Order and maturity require effort.
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Observation number seven, we're all in different places in different areas of our lives.
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Some aspects of our lives are chaotic, some orderly, some hopefully, but not necessarily
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are mature.
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Mozart was creatively mature in the area of his music, but from most reports about him,
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it seems that he drank himself to death at age 35.
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Most of us are not as capable as Mozart was in music, but we're good at something which
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does not need order, but creative development.
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In some areas, we easily bring our chaos to order, in others, we're constantly struggling
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with our chaos.
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If Mozart brought his chaos to order, he might have produced music for another 35 years.
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Paul said, so then on the one hand, I myself with my mind, I'm serving the law of God and
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the other with my flesh, the law of sin.
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Order number eight, a mature person is not someone who is mature in all or even most
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areas of his or her life.
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A more general maturity may have been true for Noah, Daniel, Job, and perfectly true
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of Jesus, but usually even for the more mature of us, we're only mature in a few areas.
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The other areas require constant effort to keep our chaos to order.
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Observation number nine, the areas where we easily tend toward chaos should receive only
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enough attention to get them to order.
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Ordered chaos can be maintained through habits, laws, and traditions.
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Get it to order and forget it.
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I'm not athletic in any way, so I walk with hand weights legalistically three times a
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week for one hour and five minutes, the time it takes to walk the path that I walk on.
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We should not spend much time outside of our mature areas, only enough time to get our
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chaos to order, so we're not a burden to ourselves or others around us.
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Life is most rewarding, exciting, and motivational in the area of maturity.
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Observation number 10, maturity comes through creativity, which always involves something
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new.
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God used newness in the Bible as a tool for growth and development of his people.
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New opportunities, Noah building an ark, new direction, Abraham entering Canaan, new hardships,
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Moses' leadership over Israel, new conflicts, Elijah with the prophets of Baal, new priorities,
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Peter welcoming the Gentiles, and new experiences, Mary impregnated by the Holy Spirit.
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David said, sing unto the Lord a new song.
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Well thank you for listening.
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My paper on this subject and my book, The Mature Man and one on the Mature Woman are
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available through our website relationalconcepts.org.
