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The Questions of Twenty-Somethings
The twenties are a time when one asks, What will I do with my life? What is it that I really want in exchange for my life’s labors? Most denied that the key desire of life was for material wealth; t... -
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Work, Relationships, and Personal Maturity
Sharan Merriam and Carolyn Clark, in their fine study Lifelines , effectively show that life is fundamentally about two things—our work and our relationships. And maturity is found in having the c... -
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The Maturation Process of the Soul
The human soul is like a fine wine that needs to ferment in various barrels as it ages and mellows. The wisdom for this is written everywhere, in nature, in scripture, in spiritual traditions, and in ... -
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Slinging Chow and Fruitless Trees
An empty-nester friend of mine was recently reflecting on the long days at home with a growing family. “You just gotta keep slinging chow,” she said with a laugh. I laughed too . . . but not quite as ... -
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Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world. -
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The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we ... -
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One of the truest tests of spiritual maturity is seeing the miraculous in the monotonous. -
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Climbing the Stairs of Quality in Art
[Speaking about art] As you climb the stairs of quality, you’ll meet individual works that you’ll need for the rest of your life, works that will thrill you, energize you, lift your soul, soothe you, ... -
scripture guide
Scripture Guide, Ephesians 4:1-16 (Guide A)
Background to the Letter and Passage Paul’s letter to the Ephesians was probably intended for wider distribution and use among the various churches around Ephesus. As such, there is no particular cri... -
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The desperate need today is not for a greater number of intelligent people, or gifted people, but for deep people. -
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No Silver Bullet to Progress
The animal behavior scientist Temple Grandin, who achieved significant success while struggling with autism, has this to say on the subject of progress: People are always looking for the single ma... -
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Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty. -
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I long to put the experience of fifty years at once into your young lives, to give you at once the key to that treasure chamber every gem of which has cost me tears and struggles and prayers, but you ... -
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The key to maturity is time and community. Discernment and godly wisdom develop in a community that spans generations. The church is called to be this place where the [God's] Spirit uses normal pa... -
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I have a lot of growing up to do. I realized that the other day inside my fort. -
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Good people will mirror goodness in us, which is why we love them so much, Not so mature people will mirror their own unlived and confused life unto us, which is why they confuse and confound us so mu... -
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Growth Through Suffering
Contrary to what might be expected, I look back on experiences that at the time seemed especially desolating and painful with particular satisfaction. Indeed, I can say with complete truthfulness that... -
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God’s Spiritual Growth Plan
Imagine a doctor’s office where every patient is told, “Take two aspirin and call me in the morning.” If I have a headache, that is great advice, but if my appendix has just burst, I will be dead befo... -
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Our business in the world is not to succeed to but to continue to fail in good spirits. -
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Most people don’t grow up. Most people age. They find parking spaces, honor their credit cards, get married, have children, and call that maturity. What that is, is aging. -
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[Maturity is] the ability to delay gratification. Delaying gratification is a process of scheduling the pain and pleasure of life in such a way as to enhance the pleasure by meeting and experiencing t... -
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Maturity comes from obedience, not necessarily from age. -
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Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity. The measure of your maturity is how spiritual you become during the midst of your frustrations. -
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The Face they Deserve
The author Oscar Wilde once remarked that by the age of forty everyone has the face they deserve. This is a truly profound, if painful, truth. But it really applies to the “within” expressed by the fa... -
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Maturity is achieved when a person postpones immediate pleasures for long-term values. -
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6-Inch Sharks
I met a young man not long ago who dives for exotic fish for aquariums. He told me that one of the most popular aquarium fish is the shark. He explained that if you catch a small shark and confine it,... -
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I often found myself preferring the company of people outside my congregation, men and women who did not follow Jesus. Or worse, preferring the company of my sovereign self. But soon I found that my p... -
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Without transformation, you can assume you're at a high moral, spiritual level just because you call yourself Lutheran or Methodist or Catholic. I think my great disappointment as a priest has bee... -
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Trials come to prove and improve us. -
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Wrestling with the Devil or God?
Maturation is a lifelong journey with different phases, human and spiritual. And it has many setbacks. What can be helpful is to have a grasp of the natural seasons of our lives and how these interfac...
![[Maturity is] the ability to delay](https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1460788150444-d9dc07fa9dba?ixid=M3w1NzU0OTZ8MHwxfHNlYXJjaHw3MHx8aGFwcHl8ZW58MHwwfHx8MTcxMjk1MTI5N3ww&ixlib=rb-4.0.3&q=80&auto=compress&fit=crop&w=200&h=200)
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