Growing up with Your Kids

In many ways, the role of the father is to help his children become mature like an adult.

This maturity takes many forms:

• emotional stability
• spiritual growth
• social awareness
• financial stewardship

As your children mature, you expect to see growth across the spectrum of human experiences. You expect to see less emotional outbursts and more thoughtful responses. You expect to see more control and balance and wisdom.

Biblical Expectations

The book of Titus describes this mature goal for a young man.

Likewise, urge the younger men to be self-controlled. Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. (Titus 2:6–8)

Notice the key ideas: self-controlled, model, integrity, dignity, and sound (i.e., healthy) speech. Many of these character traits focus on visible conduct.

These characteristics, however, flow from a common core of true spiritual maturity. It’s no wonder that many of these same words show up when Titus describes what he expects from older men.

Older men are to be sober-minded, dignified, self-controlled, sound in faith, in love, and in steadfastness. (Titus 2:2)

God’s Work in Us

God’s work through us starts with God’s work in us. Before we can help our children grow into this kind of spiritual maturity that flowers into self-control and integrity and dignity, we must first root ourselves in that same rich soil.

But how do you grow spiritual maturity? Let me offer just three recommendations about spiritual maturity that we see in the Bible as a starting point.

1. Enjoy the Lord Your God

The central text in the Old Testament for Christians is found in Deuteronomy 6:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart.” (Deut 6:4–6)

Notice that God’s central instruction is not about behavior or speech or cultural dignity. His central instruction is a heart perspective on God himself. As you may know, Moses continues by instructing fathers that this same personal perspective on God should carry into the home.

“You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” (Deut 6:7–9)

Growing into spiritual maturity requires a heart-deep enjoyment of God himself, not a focus on behavior, community expectations, or cultural norms.

Sinking your roots into the nature and character of God so that you love him with all your heart, soul, and mind produces fruit that looks like maturity.

2. Embrace the Means of Grace

God has given us means of grace, avenues to receive His grace. Let me mention just two: Bible meditation and prayer.

There is no Christian maturity without a rich practice of Bible meditation. God’s Word reveals God to us as we behold his face (Ps 119:105; 2 Cor 3:18).

And now I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all those who are sanctified. (Acts 20:32)

Do your children know that you saturate yourself in the Word? Do you read your Bible in front of them? Do you reference the Bible outside of correction times? Would others describe you as a man of the Word? Christian maturity comes through Bible saturation.

God also matures us through prayer. Prayer is God’s means to distribute help to us.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Heb 4:16)

When Jesus wants to help us, he intercedes for us (1 John 1:2; Luke 22:31–32) and the Spirit constantly prays for us (Rom 8:26).

When you become a man whose impulse is prayer, you also become a man whose impulse is dependence. And true Christian maturity looks like dependence on God.

3. Embed Yourself in the Local Church

On this point, God is very direct. If we are to mature, we must be embedded in a local community of faith.

Ephesians 4:11–16 describes how God gifts us with other Christians so we will be “built up” and expects that building up to continue…

until we all attain … to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, so that we may no longer be children… [rather] we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ… (Ephesians 4:11–16)

Biblically, there is no true maturity without Christian community. Show me a man who is a silo Christian, and I will show you a man who is an immature Christian.

Conclusion

Protect yourself and your children from surface maturity. True Christian maturity is one over years and decades of faithful saturation with God himself.

Refuse cheap substitutes. Practice your faith in public. Point to God himself and entrust your maturity and your children’s maturity to the Father of grace.