Prayer for spiritual maturity.

The fastest way to grow in spiritual fruit and spiritual maturity, is prayer.

I know; there are a number of works on fruit and maturity, and all of ’em recommend we grow that stuff by practicing it. You wanna be more loving, love people. You wanna be more gracious, work on your kindness. You wanna develop more self-control, practice self-control; start with small things and work your way up. Learn by doing. And that’s not bad advice, but it only gets us so far. If we wanna get farther, we gotta talk to the Holy Spirit who grants us the power to grow fruit. We gotta pray.

What do we tell the Spirit? The obvious: Grant me good fruit. Remind me to practice good fruit instead of my usual knee-jerk reactions. Show me where the opportunities lie to practice it. Show me where I’m missing those opportunities—places in my life where I should obviously recognize I can be more loving, gentle, peaceful, but for whatever reason I’m overlooking those things. Rebuke me if you gotta; snap me out of it.

Yep, we gotta pray for our own spiritual growth. Because we’re showing the Spirit we’re onboard. We want to grow. (And if we kinda don’t wanna grow—because we’re immature, of course—we need to ask him to change our attitudes about that.)

We can’t just presume the fruit will grow on its own, just because we’re Christian, just because we have the Holy Spirit. It can, but if we never take the initiative, it’ll either grow slowly… or, if we’re resistant to what the Spirit’s trying to do, we’ll stifle it from even growing at all. We gotta do more than simply permit the Spirit to do his thing, or generically tell him, “Lord, have your way in me,” like we sing in popular worship songs. He doesn’t want passive followers anyway. He wants us to tell him, “Lord, let’s do this! Make me more like you.”

And telling him is, of course, prayer. Telling him often, is a good basis for a prayer life. Asking for his help regularly, is a good basis for a life dependent on the Spirit’s leading. If you were ever wondering how certain Christians always seem to have something to pray about, this is how: They’re actually doing the work, and they’re naturally asking for help. Join them!

“God is looking for praying people.”

It’s funny: Recently I was re-reading a book on prayer, in which the author—whom I’ll call Arnaud ’cause I’m gonna refer to him a bunch—began by saying, “God is looking for praying men.” (Really God’s looking for praying men and women, but the author was sexist… but let’s ignore that for now.) Why is God looking for people of prayer? Well, explained Arnaud, prayer develops mature Christians. Develops our character. Molds God’s character traits upon us; makes us self-denying, compassionate, meek, wise, heroic, saintly.

Yeah, but how? Because I’ve known people who’ve been Christians for decades, been praying for decades, and they’re jerks. They don’t have any of those fruitful character traits; they’re as selfish and immature as any pagan. They do pray—sometimes a lot—but their prayers are selfish and immature too. What’re they missing?

Like I said: They gotta pray for spiritual maturity. They’re not. They presume they have it already, because they’ve been Christians for decades, and know lots of bible verses, and certainly how to behave like a Christian. But they’ve never once prayed for more love, more joy, more peace, more patience, more gentleness, more goodness, etc. They think they don’t need to; that all that stuff grows spontaneously in Christians; nevermind the fact it hasn’t really grown in them any.

Arnaud never wrote “You need to pray for spiritual maturity,” probably because he presumed his readers already were praying for spiritual maturity, already were asking Christ Jesus to remove their flaws and make them like him. But y’know, when we don’t realize we’re broken, we’re never gonna ask to be fixed.

God is looking for praying people—but he wants us to voluntarily, eagerly pray for what we ought to pray for. Who pray, “Your will be done,” and are aware of the fact God’s will is for us to conform to the image of his Son. This includes good fruit. We gotta pray for our fleshly character traits to be replaced with Jesus’s divine nature, so that we constantly exhibit God’s good attitudes, and find sin and temptation easy to resist.

That’s how praying people become mature Christians. It’s not just prayer in and of itself. It’s not about praying for a long time, or multiple times a day, or learning rote prayers and praying them constantly, or even practicing God’s presence. It’s about seeking that maturity, and getting it ’cause the Holy Spirit absolutely wants to give it to us. Become that kind of praying Christian.

How quickly should we see results? Pretty quick!

Arnaud commented it took 20 years to develop the sort of mature Christians he was imagining. Somehow I missed that comment the first time I read this book; it made me stop for a second and think, “20 years?” Because no it doesn’t take 20 years.

In the scriptures, in the book of Acts, Jesus was raptured, and his kids had to lead his church right away. They didn’t get 20 years’ instruction under Jesus; they didn’t get 20 years before it was time to start preaching about God’s kingdom; they had to grow up immediately. Circumstances demanded it. So the Holy Spirit empowered it. And largely they did all right!

I’ve seen plenty of cases where someone had to step up, and did; where someone had to exhibit the sort of spiritual maturity necessary for Christian leadership, and humbled themselves before God and pulled it off. The Holy Spirit can empower some really rapid growth when necessary.

But we gotta pray for it. We gotta recognize we need the Spirit right now, and badly, and depend on him—and stay in prayer like the first apostles did. Yeah, we’re gonna make mistakes; everybody does. But following the Spirit means he’s gonna help mitigate and minimize those mistakes. Just keep talking to him. Stay in prayer.

Tell him what you need. Don’t just complain about the people who bother you, and ask him to get rid of them; ask him to help you convert them, and get ’em to help you instead of hindering you. Ask him to show you how to win them over. Ask him to show you if you’re doing anything wrong, and help you be rid of those character defects. Get specific. Listen for the questions the Spirit will ask you in response, as he gets you to realize any problems you might have. Be honest—after all, the Spirit already knows everything, and already knows you inside and out, so you’re only fooling yourself if you think you can slip a dishonest answer past him. But remember, he’s kind; he is here to help us after all.

This is how spiritual maturity happens through prayer. It’s a lot better than developing spiritual maturity through trial and error! Learn it from a loving God, not lousy circumstances. And you can get started now.