“This is God’s Message, the God who made earth, made it livable and lasting, known everywhere as God: ‘Call to me and I will answer you. I’ll tell you marvelous and wondrous things that you could never figure out on your own.’“(Jeremiah 33:2-3 MSG).

I think I’ve figured out a lot of the process of sanctification and maturity.

It’s when you look back over a time when you felt like you were completely the injured party and justified in all those things you said and did and realizing, “Well, that was stupid. I shouldn’t have done and said that. I should probably never do that again.”

Maturity is realizing that the one who needs growing up most is me. Sanctification means that the log in my own eye needs to come out first before I start nitpicking about all those splinters I see in other peoples’ eyes. It means I’m the one who most needs to change.

You can never control how others will treat you. You can never make people understand how  hurtful those things were that they said or did to you casually without thinking. Some people are just so good at making and having new friends they never learn to treasure the ones they already have.

You will learn that passive-aggressive is not the way of a child of God, nor is boycotting everyone who slights or offends you. You will also learn that what you intended and what they interpreted won’t always be the same thing. You will learn above all that there is no such thing as too broken or too far gone or too lost or too hopeless for the God who raises from the dead.

You can only control you. You can only forgive the brokenness in others as you come to see your own brokenness. You can’t ever go back and unsay and undo those things that cost friendships and sleepless nights. You can move forward and behave differently from now on.

Above all, you can give yourself grace. You’re not who you were then and you’re not yet who you will be. You’re allowed to fail and make mistakes so that you can learn from them and grow and not make them again in the future.

If you listen long enough and are even the slightest bit honest with yourself, you’ll hear God revealing aspects about you that aren’t your best self. He’ll show you your flaws not so that you can beat yourself up, but so that you can become a better you. He will not only show you, but He will change you if you are willing.

That’s called growing up.