Growing Older And Growing Up

Growing old is inevitable, but growing up is an option. My youngest granddaughter is going on 10 months old. I was looking at some pictures yesterday of my 3 year old grandson from that same period of his life. Watching these two little ones grow up has become the joy of my life. My oldest will soon  be graduating and the two middle ones are growing quicker than I want to realize. If the Lord doesn't come before then, they will be like their parents and us, their grandparents. It is inevitable that they will grow older everyday.

To bad that growing older doesn't always guarantee that people grow up. I shared with someone this week that the church has often lost its vision of Christ's calling to win the lost because too many Christian's are expecting people who come into church to look and act a certain way. As a child I can remember people who didn't look like us holiness people who came into church and were not judged because of what they looked like and we were a whole lot stricter in our teachings them. Now days if they don't match what the 50+ crowd think they should be like they're not always made welcome.

Isn't it a shame that many churches treat people who need Jesus the most in a bad way just because they don't fit in with the "saved crowd". The older some people get the more judgmental they become when it comes to sinners. I remember the day when the drunks would stagger in off the street and be convicted by the Holy Ghost and run to the altar. The older I grow, the more I urn for that same move of the spirit in our nation and communities today. I've grown older, but I've also grown up to realize the same God that saved my forefathers from a horrible life of sin can do the same for people who commit horrible sins today. Jesus has not changed, but we sure have.

We should desire the meat of the Word and not the milk. Older believers should be grown-up believers. They should remember that, "Save for the grace of God, there go I," when they look at the harvest, no matter what they look like. It is time to grow-up and recognize if we don't reach the unreachables, regardless of how they have lived or how they look, our churches will die. So remember it's not how old you are that makes you a better Christian or how long you've served the Lord. it's how you mature in His grace that can make the difference in people's lives.