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In this episode, we finish our discussion about physical and spiritual maturity and how God has designed each stage of life to have a specific purpose. In the last episode we discussed from birth to young adulthood/adolescence and in this episode, we focus on early adulthood, middle age, and being elderly. In early adulthood, we establish our household and our place in the world, in middle age, having established ourselves, we are able to reach out and have an impact beyond our home in the broader world, and in our final stage of life, we focus on establishing the next generation and handing over the responsibilities that we have taken on to those who come behind us.

As in the last episode, we also look at this from a spiritual perspective and consider how in the stages of spiritual maturity those young in the faith grow into adulthood, finding their place in the church body, reaching outside in faithful duty to have a ministry that others can depend upon, and then nurturing, teaching, and committing to those who are the next generation within the church. Please join us as we discuss this often-overlooked topic.

Watch part 1 of this episode here:
https://theconqueringtruth.com/2023/10/from-birth-to-childhood-building-toward-physical-and-spiritual-maturity-ep-142/

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

We all know that there are stages in life, and because God is a God of order, we know that they have a purpose that He designed. But often, because of sin, it can feel as if we are scrambling through life without understanding what we should be doing along the way. We are born, we spend time as children, we are thrust into adulthood, we have families and careers, we have grandchildren, we retire, and then… we die. But looking back, we can see how we did not use our time properly, and how certain periods were suited for specific growth and purpose. It would be good if we could understand their purposes before we entered into them. It would be good to be able to better prepare our children.

And from a spiritual perspective, God has given us this image of being born again and becoming children of God who are trained up by Him in his household. But scripture does not spend a great deal of time talking about what that process of spiritual maturing should look like. Instead, God points us back to what physically maturing and growing should look like, insisting that those physical stages of maturity are a metaphor for growing spiritually. From Scripture, we can see five basic stages of life. In Hebrews, it talks about children before they are weaned and the writer is rebuking the people for still being like babies that they are not yet able to feed themselves solid food. Then as with the picture of Samuel being brought to the temple to server, there is childhood which extends until puberty. There is youth which goes from puberty to thirty when the priests would start their ministries like Christ. Then the ministry of the priesthood which goes from thirty to fifty. Finally, there are elders who are older than fifty. In each of these stages, there are both specific and general steps that are taken in the process of maturing, with each new stage building on the last. And these physical stages parallel spiritual maturity.

In this episode, we are going to cover the first three stages of life. From conception to birth, from newborn to around five years old, and from five to thirteen. We want to talk about how God designed each of those periods to accomplish specific things as we physically mature. And then we want to tie that to the corresponding picture of spiritual growth so that we can better understand what we should be looking for in ourselves and others as we mature in Christ. Please join us as we discuss this very important topic.

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

In early October, soldiers from Hamas invaded Israel. They killed babies in their beds, kidnapped wives and grandmothers, and in general, attacked without any moral constraints on their behavior, deliberately and intentionally attacking non-combatants. Over 1300 people were killed and hundreds were taken hostage. Naturally, Israel is responding and firing upon Gaza. The media almost always reports on this story the same way, saying that Israel has a clear right to respond, but that since the Hamas soldiers hide in civilian housing, the Israelites are killing children. And while it is true that Israel’s counterattacks do result in the death of women and children, the question is, how should they respond when their enemies hide behind women and children. What should a nation that is trying to be moral do when enemy combatants use children as shields?

In this episode, we discuss the challenge of responding righteously when your enemy has no regard for the innocent. In particular, we talk about the often-overlooked fact that Hamas is the elected government of Gaza, and has strong support from Palestinians living there and in the West Bank. When you consider that Hamas is very open about both their hatred for Israel and their tactics of attacking from positions where they are surrounded by civilians, who should we hold to blame for the children that are killed? Does that not fall on the parents who chose Hamas? This is worth pointing out, because Christians often try to play games when it comes to difficult moral situations. We like to absolve certain parties of guilt, and in doing so, we shift the blame to someone else. And God is never ok with this. He says in Numbers 14 that while he is abundant in mercy, forgiving the iniquity and transgression, he by no means clears the guilty.
And we as Christians should remember this. When we choose evil in our land, God will bring judgment upon us, and it will not just affect us, it will affect our families. If we do not wage war against evil, not with flesh and blood, but with the sword of the spirit, against principalities and powers, then in that day, when when God hands us over to evil men and our children lay dead and dying, we must not weep and say, “Why has this injustice come upon us?!?” We chose it. And God is doing exactly what he promised. Please join us as we discuss this vital topic.

Past episodes:
Is the Israel-Gaza War Just?
https://theconqueringtruth.com/2021/05/is-the-israel-gaza-war-just-ep-21/
Is Israel Still God’s Chosen People? https://theconqueringtruth.com/2021/07/is-israel-still-gods-chosen-people-ep-27/

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

Would you be surprised to know that over 460 years ago, a group of missionaries left Geneva for Brazil to preach the gospel? Or that by 1562, missionary efforts based out of Geneva and other similarly minded cities had planted over 2000 churches in France?

In this episode, we consider how God’s work in the lives of the men and women of the Reformation resulted in missionaries being sent out to the entire world. And while this early mission movement had similarities with what we think of as modern missions, there were also some key distinctives that the modern American church seems to have forgotten.

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson

We live in a culture where people almost throw temper tantrums when they don’t get their way. Where adults want to go back and live with their parents and be taken care of by them. Where people think that others should compensate for their incompetence. But Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:11 that when he became a man he put away childish things. So, what is childishness, and how should we think about it?

Production of Reformation Baptist Church of Youngsville, NC
Hosts – Dan Horn, Jonathan Sides, Charles Churchill and Joshua Horn
Technical Director – Timothy Kaiser
Theme Music – Gabriel Hudelson