Childish Things: A Sunday Worth Staying For

You know the moment.

You're standing in line at the grocery store, and the four-year-old in front of you melts down because mom said no to the candy. The full theatrical performance — tears, stomp, the slow limp slide toward the floor. And you smile a little, because it's almost cute.

Now picture the same scene with a forty-year-old man.

Same lip. Same stomp. Same fit.

Suddenly it isn't cute. It's unsettling.

Here's the question we're going to ask Sunday: what if some of what we still carry around — the way we talk, the way we read other people, the way we keep score in our own heads — is the grown-up version of that grocery-store fit? What if some of the patterns we've stopped noticing in ourselves would be embarrassing if we saw them on any other adult?

Paul says it in 1 Corinthians 13:11. "When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish things."

And think about it — that verse sits right in the middle of the love chapter. That's not an accident.

This is week four of our May series on maturity. We've talked about milk and solid food. We've talked about pressing on when we haven't arrived. Last Sunday, we sat in the forge and watched God use trials to shape us. But there's a side of growing up we haven't touched yet — and it's the harder side.

Adding new disciplines is one thing. Putting down the old ones is something else entirely.

This Sunday, we'll look at three places where childishness has a way of hanging around long past its welcome. We'll see why Paul tucked this verse exactly where he tucked it. And we'll find that what he's calling us out of, love has been calling us into the whole time.

Don't worry — this isn't a scolding. It's an invitation. Every grown-up Christian has a few of these still lying around in the corners. The question is whether we've got the courage to look at them honestly.

Come hungry. Come honest. Come ready to put a few things down.