How Can You Find Spiritual Maturity?

From time to time I have people ask me what they need to do in order to achieve spiritual maturity.  These kinds of questions always humble me, because I feel as though I haven't figured out my own spiritual journey enough to answer them well.  

But still, because I'm a pastor, the questions come, and I do my best to offer whatever wisdom I've picked up along the way.  

Lent seems to be a time of year when questions of spiritual maturity come up more often.  I think many of us think about spiritual matters more during "liminal" moments--the in-between seasons of our year.  

Many of us feel as though we are trudging through this wintry, grey, in-between journey from Epiphany to Easter with a serious degree of weariness.  We long for shortcuts to get us quickly to Resurrection.  

We don't want to engage in the work of trudging through this Lenten journey.  What we want is to experience spiritual highs, revelations that come to us like lightning and the peace that comes from figuring it all out at once.  

Putting one foot in front of the other as we follow Jesus, isn't the kind of thing that we relish.

But it's in the ordinary moments of following purposefully behind Jesus that He reveals to us the greatest truths about ourselves. If we run down the path trying to get ahead--we miss them.    

Richard Rohr once wrote, "God comes to you disguised as your life."   

So take the time to slow down during this Lenten journey and see where Jesus is at work all around you in the "every day" and the ordinary.  And when you do, you will discover as author Kent Dobson did that: 

"Just living becomes a sacrament.  Every living room is a temple.  Every person is a high priest.  Your body is the palace where God dwells. The tulip is the robe God is wearing." 

This, then, is spiritual maturity.  Discovering God in Christ all around in your journey of moving deliberately and courageously forward to what comes next without losing any of the beauty of the present.  

May the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always. Amen.