How old are you?

How old are you? It seems like a simple—and obvious—question. But maybe it isn’t.

Last week I was privileged to observe a few hundred high school students in their classrooms. I was struck by something. They had their own culture. They had their own language (with some overlap with ours). They had their own hierarchy. They had their own identity. They are fully developed human beings.

Well, at least most of them think so. Of course, we might look at them and say this and this are fully developed, but to be mature they must develop in this way and this way as well. In fact, we believe this so strongly that these young people do not even have full legal rights. On more than one occasion I noticed this was very frustrating to the students, who often see themselves as mature—as fully grown—and therefore deserving of being treated as a an adult.

It strikes me that this is how God sees us. We think we are adults, and we even display some indications of adult thinking and behavior. But the reality is, before God, we are only adolescents (if we are that!). We want God to treat us as adults, but if He did, we probably couldn’t handle it. We are children. There are so many things we just don’t understand. There are so many things we do not know. There are so many things we can’t do—for ourselves or for others.

There was one incident last week that really drove this home. A young man had rebelled and brought on some consequences for himself. He started to make a scene and realized he was about to make things a lot worse, so he shut up, stomped to his chair, and sat there with his head in his hands, not quite knowing where to go from there. I have to say I was impressed with his teacher. She had just maintained a boundary with him he really didn’t like. She had just explained that if he made any more trouble, he would be getting a zero for his unit grade. She had just watched him do his stomping thing and throw himself into his chair while others were trying to concentrate. Then she watched him. Five to ten minutes later, she quietly walked over to him and whispered to him (I was close by and heard what she said). She said “It’ll be ok.” And asked if there was anything else wrong. She listened to him and then gave him some very practical instructions to get him started (Ok, for now, I think you should just do this…). Through it all, he looked at her like a child listening to his mom. He knew she cared, but he also knew she wasn’t going to just give in. In the end, he did what she told him to, and by the end of the class it was obvious their relationship had been repaired.

That’s what God does with us. He disciplines us and maintains boundaries. But just when we think He doesn’t care He checks in on us. He provides for us. He trains us. The Hebrew writer said if He isn’t doing this we don’t belong to Him. We aren’t really His. In fact, we are told that the fact He is doing it is proof that He loves us as His children. Not His adults, but His children. Because that is what we are.

Sometimes we kids need to hear that.

Know Jesus and Be Faithful!

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