I do not like being told I heard wrong or thought wrong. I want to be right. After all, I am grown up now. I have raised four children. That should count for something.
How grown up do I have to be before I have enough wisdom to prove that I am right?
It seems, however, that maturity has less to do with age and accomplishments and more to do with recognizing that we still need help along the way.
There have been times I’ve caught myself thinking, How long until I am taken seriously? How old do I have to be? In those questions lies another conundrum. When we are young, we lack the life experience to be taken seriously. When we are older, we risk becoming irrelevant.
So it seems that for about thirty minutes of our lives here on earth, we possess both the age and the wisdom to be heard.
Evidently I’ve passed those 30 minutes.
Wisdom personified
Jesus, wisdom personified, lived this reality during his short stay on earth. He was rejected in his own hometown, misunderstood by His earthly family, and crucified by those He came to save. Yet, His hand still reaches for you and me to connect with Him.
How eager He is to reveal Himself to us, yet we still pull away. Why is that?
It would be impossible to fully unpack this in a short blog post like this one. But what I do want to touch on is how our need to control and understand can hamstring us when it comes to hearing God’s voice.
God is always speaking. We are the ones who fail to draw near and listen. Instead of calling on Him first, we reason our way through every situation until we have exhausted our own understanding.
Then, as a last resort, we think, “Well, all that is left is for me to pray, so I’ll give it a shot.”
Thankfully, God holds no grudges. He understands our tendency to cling stubbornly to our independence, and He patiently waits for us to come to the end of ourselves.
Only then, after we have done all we think we can do, do we finally call on Him.
We grow but never outgrow
As parents, we strive to teach our children to become independent, to live as responsible adults who can care for themselves and their families. While it is important to teach and model this for our earthly children, because they do grow into adults, we never outgrow childhood in God’s family. We are forever His children and will never outgrow our need for His guidance.
Take time today to listen, to hear what God is saying. He is waiting for you. While His answers may come slowly, He will be found in the waiting.
