Maturity is a term we’ve all heard at some point in our lives, but the word “mature” may bring up very different pictures in our minds, from gray hairs, to teens going through puberty, to the completion of a loan, to acting “grown up”.
The Life Model defines it this way “Maturity is about reaching one’s God-given potential. It means maximizing our skills and talents, and using them effectively, while growing into the full capability of our individual design.” (Living From the Heart Jesus Gave You, pg 33).
Maturity is not about having arrived, in fact it is a lifelong process. The goal is for our emotional and spiritual growth to track with our physical growth. Many people can mix up their maturity with their value and if they don’t have all the maturity possible for the current physical stage of life they can feel like they have less value. While the process of maturing is valuable, thankfully our maturity level is not connected to our value. Because there are specific needs and tasks at each stage of maturity, identifying where our strengths and weaknesses are in the stages helps us know where our foundation is shaky and needs repair and how much weight we can carry.
As Chris and I have parented our two boys (now 12 and 14) having the lens of maturity and the different needs and tasks for each age and stage has been invaluable to us as parents. We are currently in a transition where they are both becoming teenagers and need us to come alongside them more as coaches, letting them experience the joys, rewards, mistakes and consequences of being more independent and making more decisions for themselves. We are learning to help them think through decisions rather than making all of the decisions for them. While we are all on a lifelong journey of maturing, there’s nothing quite like raising kids to help us discover areas where we need to grow in our own maturity in order to be the kind of parents we want to be for our boys.
I encourage you to check out some of THRIVEtoday’s and Life Model Works’ resources on maturity and begin to see the big picture of life, where you have come from, where you are going, where you may have fallen into a pothole along the road and what is needed to keep moving forward.
Learn More!
- Maturity Podcast Episode: Listen in as our friend Josh, a husband, father, and pastor, shares how he recognized his maturity gaps and went on a journey of healing and growth.
- Visit our Skill 8 – Identify Maturity Levels web page: Here you will find a brief video from Chris Coursey about this skill and additional resources!
- Take the Maturity Skills Assessment from Life Model Works: This assessment provides a list of milestones for the different stages of maturity and helps identify areas for growth in our maturity. Don’t forget, as Jen mentions above, even though maturity is valuable, where we find ourselves has nothing to do with our value.
- Thrive Premier Training: If you want to dive deeper into developing your maturity levels you can join one of our upcoming in-person trainings.