memorization or pew seniority doesn’t denote christian maturity

There is much more we would like to say about this, but it is difficult to explain, especially since you are spiritually dull and don’t seem to listen. 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. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong. (Hebrews 5:11-14 NLT)

There should be a certain amount of maturity that comes with the years of service to him that is sadly lacking in most Christians. They know some scriptures, sure, and can usually justify their pet doctrines, but the real meat of Christianity is beyond them because of immaturity. 

People really think that memorization or pew seniority denotes Christian maturity. It doesn’t. 

I believe that one cannot be spiritually mature if one has not read the scriptures and spent time in God’s word. Nor do I believe that one can be spiritually mature if that person doesn’t come to church.

But those things alone do not make one mature, any more than attending a lot of school makes one competent to do something.

The only way to do something is to do it. You need the background, but you also have to have the time spent in actual doing. 

That is a problem however. Reading and studying are one thing, doing is another.

When I went back to college, it amazed me to see men who had spent their lives studying about preaching and ministry, getting advanced degrees and such in them, yet had never pastored a church. They taught pastors, yet had no real idea of what they were teaching.

As one who had been preaching for about ten years, I cold tell that their knowledge was purely academic, was based on nothing more than things they had heard others say or that they had read.

They had no experience, yet were teaching others.

One teacher went on a “missionary trip”. This consisted of going to a foreign place, carrying along a lot of students to do his work and speaking every night. When he came back, he was acclaimed a missionary.

My thought was, as one who had been on a mission field, was that he was full of baloney. He was an expert in a field of which he knew nothing.

Many Christians are the same way. They have spent so much time doing nothing for the Lord that they think that is a normal state of affairs.

And if someone comes along who disagrees with them, that person is wrong. After all, they have been in this church for forty years and know how things are done. But, as the writer of Hebrews says, they are almost as ignorant of the will of God as they were the day they were first brought into the church building.

What a shame.