Barking up the wrong tree

There is a lot of talk about becoming a mature Christian.  Have you ever wondered what that means?  I do.  I thought I knew what it meant but it turns out I was barking up the wrong tree.  Not just barking but growling, howling and yelping till I wanna throw up and the tree picked off its own fruit and began chunking it at me.  What I thought was maturity was definitely growth into something, but it wasn't Christ.  It would more be likened to learning to play the gong or clang cymbals really well.  I wanted to be the best damn cymbal clanger alive and I didn't care if you like cymbals or not, I was banging them to my little hearts content.


Looking back on my noise making days I realise that my motives were good but my technique was all wrong.  I wanted to help others grow but I was giving them teachings and doctrines to feed on when all the while I had the bread of Life to share with them.  I remember a time when I considered heavy doctrinal teaching to be a feast and today the only feast I desire is to feed on the body and blood of Christ.  There is a big difference.  One is is system of teaching designed to help us to live right with God the other is a living person inside of us empowering us to live in Him.  One way leads to death and the other to Life.  I speak from experience.

I've stated here before that listening to sermon after sermon is not the way to mature as a christian.  The reason I say that is because sermons (at least the one's I have heard) are mostly always about breaking down a passage of scripture in order to nail down some doctrines.  A solid doctrinal base does not equal spiritual maturity.  Contrarily, the more we emphasize select doctrines the more prone we are to arrogance and judgementalism toward others who don't see things the same way we do.  Rather than displaying maturity through our knowledge we get puffed up, seek our own glory and shame the name of our great and holy God.

Maybe I'm all alone in this, if so someone please straighten me out because the more I look at scripture the more I believe that doctrines are the things we do and the way we live not the systematic points we believe to be true.  Some say that you can know a persons doctrine by the way that they live.  I certainly agree with that .  Knowing a persons doctrine by the things they say? ...not unless their tongue sounds more like a noisy gong and they are not speaking from love.  Then it is pretty obvious that their doctrine needs a little more Jesus and a lot less knowledge.

So now, instead of spending all my time trying to mature in my knowledge of doctrine I spend my time maturing in building relationships with others.  I'm learning more through experience than I ever did in years of deep word studies and combing through commentaries.  Rather than letting my actions be dictated by intellectually contrived beliefs from scripture that are based on my own subjective understandings I'm letting the Spirit lead me where He will and I'm finding that the Bible objectively confirms His leadings as truth.

Maturity comes through experiencing the Life of Christ in us as we walk in the Spirit not through endless preaching and teaching of historical creeds and confessions.  If we want to mature we must have relationships with others who are more mature than us and imitate their way of life.  If we want to help others mature we must walk through life with them and live a life worth imitating.  But first we gotta stop barking up the wrong tree and decide instead to hike our leg on it and move on.