I turned fifty last year. I’ve probably peaked. A strange thing starts happening in your forties. Weakness happens. Eyes can’t see the words on the menu. Gray hairs multiply. A lot of us start snoring. No matter how much I swore I’d never snore, I snore.
I used to have 20/16 vision. If you don’t know, that’s better than 20/20. But around the age of forty-two, I found myself working hard to see the words in my Bible. I’d been increasing the font size on my Kindle for about six months. I finally broke down and bought a pair of reading glasses. I was relieved to be able to read again but also low-key mad that after four decades of being proud I could read a sign a mile away, I was holding papers out as far as my arms could reach if I wasn’t wearing my glasses.
- It isn’t a coincidence that both weakness and maturity come with age.
When you are young, you aren’t completely wrong to believe you have the agility, energy, and speed to get away from an animal chasing you in the woods. You might walk through a dangerous area of the forest where a wild animal could probably take you down, but your confidence in your own strength convinces you you’ll be okay. You don’t stop to consider reality and risks. Think I’m making this up? I’ve had teenagers, y’all. Teenage boys. I also remember/experienced my own overconfidence.
There is a direct relationship between weakness and maturity. The flat-out inability to do something cancels out any delusions that you can do it. If you live long enough, you will grieve someone who didn’t assess their own weakness and vincibility correctly. As my son’s doctor said when he turned eighteen, “At your age, disease is pretty rare. Most life-altering or life-ending medical events at your age happen because of bad decisions.”
For years, I didn’t understand spiritual maturity. It felt ambiguous and difficult. I could recognize it in others, and I trusted their input because they seemed to view situations as God does. I wanted to be like that, but making a habit of studying the Bible scared me. I knew “good Christians” read the Bible and prayed at the same time every single morning, but my attempts at trying to do that had failed.
When I was invited to a hard-core Bible study, I was afraid. I loved God. I loved Jesus. I loved thinking about, talking about, and learning about God, but I was scared to study the Bible. It felt like it would be a lot of work, and that was overwhelming. I was smack-dab in the middle of my Mom Brain years. I was busy dealing with preschoolers. Studying didn’t appeal to me. Homework frightened me. I really wanted my kids to be part of the children’s program I’d heard so much about, though, so I decided to suffer through for their sake. I planned on enrolling my kids in the program and coasting through my own Bible study part.
Much to my own surprise, I fell deeply in love with studying the Bible. Through reading the Bible on an almost daily basis, I changed. I began to think differently, understand differently, and react differently. I was maturing spiritually.
I learned that spiritual maturity is not a test we study to pass. It’s not something we can achieve.
Spiritual maturity is what happens when we trust the Holy Spirit to give us understanding of God’s Word and show us how to apply that understanding in our lives.
Studying the Bible was never supposed to be memorizing a bunch of facts. It wasn’t academic. The Holy Spirit wants to work in us, through God’s Word, to give us understanding. It’s not about me deciphering the meaning. Spiritual maturity is given to us by God. The Holy Spirit does the work, not us (1 Corinthians 2:12).
When I started studying the Bible as a nonacademic endeavor, reading God’s Word almost every day, I experienced how the Holy Spirit works. I saw how mind-bogglingly applicable what I was reading in the Bible was to my life in the moment when I was reading it. As I learned more about God and how He works, I was able to relax. I saw the purpose of my weakness and the absolute pointlessness of my efforts at control. As I allowed the Holy Spirit to work in me, I matured spiritually.
God Is in Control
My level of spiritual maturity is the level of control I’ve given over to the Holy Spirit. It’s the opposite of an achievement. It’s knowing and accepting the truth that anything I understand, I understand only because God’s Holy Spirit gave me that understanding. First Corinthians 2 is an excellent chapter to read on this subject, especially verses 12–13:
What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words.
The week before I wrote this chapter, I came across one of my very favorite examples of God using weakness for His purpose. In the New Testament book of Hebrews, Paul talked about the role Jesus plays as High Priest, giving us access to God the Father. He talked about Jesus being the be-all and end-all Priest because He is God. He is eternal and He is perfect. Sinless.
But Jesus also understands weakness. Hebrews 4:15 says,
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have One who has been tempted in every way, just as we are — yet He did not sin.
This is part of the value of priests, and it’s why seeing Jesus as our Priest reminds us that He understands our struggles. Hebrews 5:2 says a priest is
able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness.
There’s purpose in the human weakness of the priests. God-designed weakness. That weakness gives them the ability to relate. To deal gently with others who are weak. Jesus is God incarnate. God in the flesh. This was so He could die for our sins but also so He could deal gently with us. He knows what it’s like to be human. I have come to understand this in a deeper way as I’ve come to accept that God created me to teach overwhelmed people how to declutter. I understand the need because I understand the pain. I understand the bewilderment, and I understand the excuses.
Again and again, I hear that my understanding of people’s excuses is the reason they can trust and follow my advice. Like Tammy said in a review of How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, “There are so many things she brings up in her book that have come straight out of my mouth and mind (especially when it comes to excuses).” Or Catrina’s review: “This book truly eliminates the excuses and gives you the practical steps to get out from under without the guilt.”
- The power of being understood can’t be underestimated. I’m no priest, but God designed my weakness for this purpose.
Saying “God-designed weakness” might give you the heebie-jeebies. I get it. Please feel free to dive into Scripture to prove me wrong. In 2 Corinthians 12:7, Paul wrote,
Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
No one knows what Paul’s thorn was, though many have guessed. We each have a thorn. Something we wish or pray would go away. Something embarrassing or frustrating or painful. My natural bent toward debilitating disorganization of physical stuff is my thorn.
Paul was given a thorn in his flesh, a real and ongoing struggle, that he referred to as “a messenger of Satan.” And yes, I believe his thorn, his weakness, was God-designed. I believe it was God who gave him the thorn because Paul stated that the purpose of that thorn was to keep him from becoming conceited. To prevent pride. That thorn continually reminded Paul of his inability to be self-sufficient. God’s answer to Paul’s plea that this thorn be taken away was (in red letters, so it’s Jesus talking):
My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness. — verse 9
Since this thorn was given to Paul for the purpose of preventing the sin of conceit, I believe God gave him the thorn. Satan seeks to lead us into sin, pushing the buttons of the struggle. But the struggle, the weakness, isn’t the sin. Our weakness isn’t a design flaw; it’s the actual design. We were designed to need God. Needing God is not the result of sin. Sin is the result of thinking we don’t need God.
Spiritual maturity comes from accepting that we can do nothing on our own.
God has already accomplished everything that needs to be accomplished. We have the conscious possession of adequate resources because we have Jesus. We have peace because we trust God.
God isn’t asking the vast majority of you to go public about your messy houses or your panic attacks or your feelings of failure or whatever weakness you try to hide. But He is asking you to give Him your heart. To trust Him fully and completely with your weakness, to not expect Him to “take it away” but to do with it as He sees fit. To heal you or cure you or not. Maybe He’ll use your weakness as a way to help you depend on Him more than you would if life were easy and smooth all the time. Maybe He’ll use it to give you compassion for others who struggle. Maybe He’ll use it as a way for you to encourage someone else that they aren’t alone.
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Excerpted with permission from Jesus Doesn’t Care About Your Messy House by Dana K. White, copyright Dana K. White.
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Your Turn
Whether you’re struggling to tame a messy house or you’re battling a different struggle, give Jesus your heart. Seek Him. Stay close to Him. Lean into Him and you’ll find that you begin to mature spiritually through your weaknesses. ~ Devotionals Daily