Maturity Requires Honesty

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Without honesty, you'll never have maturity.

Pretending to get along and pretending unity is way different than maturing into holiness.
Holiness requires truth. Babylon/confusion/discord requires everyone towing the line. One language and one speech. Mostly, we settle for superficial unity.

Pretending to love is different than speaking the truth and letting God mature love.

Most communities of people would rather impatiently try to cover over differences than patiently unfold them, because maturing is an awkward process.
Preteen and even teen years are awkward. The toddler years seem innocent, but life isn't meant to stay there.  Maturity is beautiful if it's found in truth, faith hope and love.  But, the in-between  that spans childhood and adulthood is just awkward.

If the church is going to be pure and spotless... For real, not just in pretense... before Jesus returns, it is going to have to go through the awkward phases of maturity.

Speaking truth is the only way to maturity. We have to learn how to see things differently, and hold each other accountable to Jesus' heart standard without blowing up, dividing, and breaking relationship.

Ephesians 4:11-16 NKJV — And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ— from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.

This has to start with me, not "them." Most people will just dance around what is true erroneously believing Jesus is fine with their politeness.  He isn't if it isn't mature love.

If I am willing to look at people as they really are, not gloss over their selfishness and selfish ambition, jealousy, shame, and pride... And still love that God made them and is maturing them, then I can be helpful, invested, and engaged without being false and surficial, which is indifferent.

You know you are  indifferent and lacking love when you are really kind to someone who is struggling in their personality, but glad to not have to deal with them when they aren't in front of you.  Indifference is the counter to love.

Can we be true and still committed to relationships where we, and those God has put us with, actually need a savior?

You know you love when you can face the truth head on and ask God to help you speak, see, and engage like He does with the other person Infront of you. Jesus isn't indifferent to the personality flaws that will prevent us from being with Him forever. He gave everything to expose and change these issues in our hearts.

This narrow road of truth and love takes the Holy Spirit. This is the point of church: to learn to see, speak truth to, and love people like Jesus does.

Hebrews 10:22-29 NKJV — let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching. For if we sin willfully after we have received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries. Anyone who has rejected Moses’ law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?

The Spirit is given to mature us into love. Without truth...and the conflict it brings... There is no love.

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