Week 6 – Spiritual Growth Development Part IV

Celebration of Discipline Bible Study
Prepared by: Rev. Willetta Ar-Rahmaan
Week 6 – Spiritual Growth Development Part IV

In our last lesson we talked about the Toddler stage. Toddler’s will look to see whose watching them as they do things they are not suppose to do. When you get a chance just observe a toddler and then reflect on what we discussed previously.

In this lesson we wanted to discuss the child/teenager stage of spiritual growth. As we have done in the past few weeks we took a look at the human side of a child development. This week we want to look at this stage from the perspective of preschool through adolescent. This entire stage is truly a child/teenager formative years of life. They learn about themselves, their abilities, their likes and dislikes. This is also the area where they recognize right from wrong, explore their sexuality, and make their own decisions about the type of friends they want in their life. Most of all the adolescent starts to enjoy the trust, freedom and independence away from their parents and spend more time with their peers. Since we are being real, this is when most adolescent start ‘smelling themselves’. Some were around the ages of 13-16 the adolescent will challenge their parents, disobey rules and become rebellious because of the discipline and boundaries their parents have set.

We all remember we had chores to do in the house and around the yard growing up, even down to the littlest one. We were given a curfew, responsibilities and a semi-social life. Basically we had boundaries and if we did not do or act responsibly there were consequences. During these formative years our parents were teaching us boundaries through discipline. There were reasons why we had to be in the house before the street light came one. There were reasons why “Miss or Mr. so and so” kept an eye on us knowing our parents were not home and yes they had permission to spank us, then we’ll get another one once we got home from our parents. Our parent’s goal was to prepare us for the real world, they allowed us to fall when we refuse to listen or ignore what they were trying to teach us.

As we move from the human side of this development let us turn our attention to the spiritual side of this development. The spiritual side needs discipline for spiritual growth. In the first two lessons we discussed in detail the discipline needed. Too often we see God’s discipline as punishment for not doing what is right. In the OT we noticed God ruled with a heavy hand as our elders would say, but it the spiritual disciplines are those habits that are necessary for spiritual growth (i.e. prayer, devotion, meditation, studying and etc). This is why Foster’s book is so important to us because they spell out how to carry out these disciplines, but some of us may feel we do not need these disciplines to grow spiritually and often enough we find ourselves being in that rebellious stage like a teenager. We know what we are supposed to do but we rather follow the crowd instead of using our own mind.

This stage on our journey could be between our 5th and 10th year depending on how you were being molded and shaped on the journey. Sometimes this could be as early as the beginning of our journey because we placed certain discipline in our lives when we had to do homework or show responsibility to our parents. This is the same discipline of obedience God is seeking from us. God want us to enjoy our freedom but be responsible. We know that rebellion is lurking around the corner just waiting to tell us that all that reading, praying, studying and fasting isn’t needed. We hear people tell us that since are saved by Grace it doesn’t matter if we sin God will forgive us. Most of the time these are the same people who are still on spiritual milk and refuse to grow up.
On this journey we want to grow and mature, we don’t want to be saying the same prayer, fasting the same way, reading and studying only when we want something from God. We want to mature in the spirit so we can be a witness to others about God’s goodness and capable of handling the dangers we encounter. We also need to remind ourselves that just because we are believers in Christ we are still tempted by world and what the world has to offer. This is why it is very important to us to live a discipline life so that we know how to handle things.

We must learn how to pray for ourselves and others, we must learn how to read and interpret what we are reading so we can help explain things to others. When we are rebellious we find ourselves unable to handle the attacks against us and slowly we may slip back into being led astray and sitting in doubt. However if we have some discipline we would be able to discern and see what is happening before we slip back in to the baby stage.

I gave you enough to think about but take the time to read these scriptures and reflect on this stage of the Christian Journey. 1 John 2:12-14 and Job 1:1-12. Both of these passages give us some insight as we live this discipline life. Dig deeper in your faith walk put up boundaries for yourself and for others around you. When we get to a certain age it’s time for us to grow up so why not do the same with our spiritual lives.


Going Deeper:

1. How faithful will we be the disciplines placed in our lives?

2. Are we willing to continue in the disciplines while others who are not discipline seems to be doing much better in life?

3. Are you able to tell if a person lives a disciplined life? If so, how?

4. Does your character and actions speak of your disciplined life?