What Does Spiritual Immaturity Look Like

1. What Does Spiritual Immaturity Look Like For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. Heb. 5:13

2. Spiritual Immaturity • New believers start out as spiritual babies with a world of learning and growing ahead. • No one is born fully grown. • But to remain a baby forever is unnatural. • We don’t want to keep our children as toddlers forever. They should grow as we should grow in the Lord.

3. Spiritual Immaturity • We grow spiritually into Christlikeness by the choices we make–whether to read the Bible and pray, to obey the Lord in a particularly difficult situation, to give our tithes when finances are tight, to share our faith when doing so might be uncomfortable, to resist temptation when its pull is strong, to forgive instead of fight.

4. Spiritual Immaturity I Pet. 2:1-2 • Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil. 2. As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby.

5. Spiritual Immaturity • When we make the wrong choices we choose not to grow. • When we feel lazy on Sunday mornings and decide to sleep in rather than fellowship with the Body of Christ; we are deciding not to grow. • When we decide to spend our tithe on ourselves rather than give it in church; we decide not to grow. • When we go weeks without serious attention to the Word of God; we are sentencing ourselves not to grow.

6. Spiritual Immaturity • Heb. 5:12-For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. • Heb. 5:14. But solid food belongs to those who are full of age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

7. Spiritual Immaturity • Spiritual Immaturity, is not only seen in new believers in Christ. • Can you name some individuals from the bible that may have acted in a spiritually immature way?

8. Spiritual Immaturity Signs of Spiritual Immaturity: • A spiritual baby looks and acts a lot like human babies. • They can be loud, messy, self-centered, helpless and impatient. • Spiritual babies need to be surrounded by a team of godly and mature members who will keep them on course with the things of God.

9. Spiritual Immaturity What spiritual immaturity looks like: • Spiritual infants are self-centered. They arrive at church thinking, “What can I get out of this?” Church is all about them and what they want. 2) Spiritual infants are noisy. They cry a lot, particularly when they don’t think their needs are being met. Ex. The children of Israel in the wilderness. One instance of griping and complaining after another.

10. Spiritual Immaturity What spiritual immaturity looks like: 3) Spiritual infants are messy. Toddlers do not clean up after themselves. That’s someone else’s job. On Sunday after everyone has vacated the premises, walk around the church building and you’ll know whether the congregation is mature or immature and have the heartbeat of the ministry to treat the church as if it’s their own.

11. Spiritual Immaturity What spiritual immaturity looks like: • 4) Spiritual infants are impatient. The crying baby cannot be told that the milk is warming and should be ready in a few minutes. He wants what he wants and he wants it five minutes ago. • “We were not having our needs met soon enough.” The church is there to provide a service not to worship and praise God.

12. Spiritual Immaturity What spiritual immaturity looks like: 5) Spiritual infants are defined by what they cannot do. They may have problems cooperating, submitting to others, reading and understanding the Word of God on their own without assistance. They have a problem apologizing and meaning it, and resisting gossip.

13. Spiritual Immaturity What spiritual immaturity looks like: 5) Spiritual infants are explosive, like to be seen and can “go off” at anything. They were in the hospital and the pastor did not visit them, so they drop out of church. • They worked hard on that project and got no recognition from the pulpit so they are ready to quit. • Quick to use spiritual gifts without the understanding of order or about loving and forgiving others.

14. Spiritual Immaturity What spiritual immaturity looks like: 6) Spiritual infants are irresponsible. They’re great at expecting a lot from others and nothing from themselves. They “know it all” they always know who is to blame for all that’s wrong in the church.

15. Spiritual Immaturity • To remain a baby forever is unnatural. Growing into maturity is the natural order of things. • We should feed and nurture babes in Christ, protect and care for them, they will grow.

16. Spiritual Immaturity • In our Christian walks we make a choice to grow in God or not. Spend time in prayer, the word of God, fellowship and in serving God and others. “12 You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word.You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. “ Heb. 5:12 (NLT) • But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” II Pet. 3:18

17. Spiritual Immaturity References: What Spiritual Immaturity Looks Like by Joe McKeever