Maturity

MATURITY
May 26, 2014

Maturity is
the ability to control anger, and settle differences without violence or
destruction.
Maturity is patience, the willingness to give up immediate pleasure in favor of the long-term gain.
Maturity is perseverance, sweating out a project despite setbacks.
Maturity is unselfishness, responding to the needs of others.
Maturity is the capacity to face unpleasantness and disappointment without becoming
bitter.
Maturity is humility. A mature person is able to say, “I was wrong”. And when he
is proved right, he does not have to say, “I told you so.”
Maturity means dependability, integrity, keeping one’s word.
Maturity is the ability to live in peace with things we cannot change.

SELF-RENUNCIATION
We must learn to give up not only our wrongs
but even our rights. It is a little thing that
we should turn from sin. If we are to follow Christ and His consecration, we must turn also from things that are not sinful, and learn the greatest lesson of self -
renunciation, even in rightful things.
There are many things which are not wrong for you to keep and hold as your own, but which, if kept, bring loss to Christ and even greater loss to you.
Abraham gave up his Isaac and received him back with a new touch of love–as God’s
Isaac now. We shall findthat most of the lives that count much for God had somewhere in them a great renunciation, where the dearest idol was laid upon Moriah’s altar, and from that hour there was new fruit and new power.
(Gen. 22:2)
A. B. Simpson