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Growing Up

           for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose. (Philippians 2:13)

           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 the ways of childhood behind me. (I Corinthians 13:11) 

Once upon a time, I watched Captain Kangaroo and Bugs Bunny. I outgrew Captain Kangaroo much sooner than I did the Bugs. At one point, my favorite books were Clip Clop’s New Shoes and The Ugly Dachshund. There was a time in my life that I loved the song, “My Way.” I may have even liked the song “Imagine.” I briefly thought Cohen’s song “Hallelujah” pretty. That was before I heard the lyrics. Now, only the music is worth listening to, and I feel obliged to key people into the fact that the use of the word “Hallelujah” and the mention of David does not make it about faith, or even about anything positive.

My goal here isn’t to attack these shows, books, or songs. It’s to point out that God works in people’s lives to change them. I am not who I was last year at this time, at least in that sense. I was not then who I had been the year before that, or ten years before that. There are other ways in which I am precisely who I was in 2000, more’s the pity.

Now is a time when we need to be growing up quickly. That’s really what I’m talking about when I say I want to be more resourceful and self-reliant. But like all children, I tend to want to grow up in the ways I want to grow up, and that’s not always God’s plan.

 But if I am not what I think I should be, that doesn’t mean God won’t take care of all that, and as I grow up spiritually, those issues that were so important probably won’t be so. It also means that instead of launching into a debate, I should probably just look the person in the eye and say, “I’ll pray for you,” or “Can I pray for you?” That’s one of the areas where I probably have to grow up.

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