WHEN I WAS A CHILD

1 Corinthians 13:11

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

After teaching and preaching a dynamic revelation on the Love of God, Paul began to sum it all up with the statement in verse 11. To me this is a clear indication that the level of our growth and development in the Love of God is the real proof of spiritual maturity. When we cultivate the Love of God in our heart and begin to obey its voice our lives become a testimony of true surrender.
Paul declared, when I was a child, I spoke, understood and thought as a child. To speak like a child when you are a child is very appropriate but there comes a time when we need to leave that stage of our lives. Speaking, understanding and thinking like a child when you should be at a far more advanced stage of your life is devastating. If you walked up to a 45 year old man and he began to talk to you like a 2 year old child, you would most likely think he was mentally retarded.
The word retard means to slow or delay the progress of something. In this 45 year old man’s case, somewhere doing his growth and development years, in or out of the womb of his mother, he stopped making progress.
A person who is experiencing the proper growth at the right seasons of their life know when to put certain things aside because they have no further use for them anymore. The mind set and thought life of a 45 yr. old and a 2yr. old should be light years apart. This holds the same principle for spiritual growth and development; we should be making progress not regressing to our former way of talking, understanding and thinking