8 Sermon Illustrations on Spiritual Maturity

If steel is to be used in a reliable manner, it must be tested and proven. So must the servant of Christ. Someone describes his visit to a steel mill as follows: "All around me were little partitions and compartments. Steel had been tested to the limit, and marked with figures that showed its breaking point. Some pieces had been twisted until they broke, and the strength of torsion was marked on them. Some had been stretched to the breaking point, and their tensile strength indicated. Some had been compressed to the crushing point and also marked. The supervisor of the steel mill knew just what these pieces of steel would stand under the strain. He knew just what they would bear if placed in a ship, building, or bridge. He knew because the testing room revealed it." It is often so with us as God's children. God doesn't want us to be like vases of glass or porcelain. He doesn't want us to be hothouse plants, but stormbeaten oaks; not sand dunes, driven with every gust of wind, but granite rocks withstanding the fiercest storms. To make us strong He must bring us into His testing room of suffering. Better the storm waters with Christ than the smooth waters without Him.

"Sometimes truth is like a keen weapon in a child's hand, it maketh little impression because it is weakly wielded." Do not therefore blame the truth, but the weak hand. In many cases of controversy the apparent victory of error has been due to the unfitness of the warrior who championed truth. It may for some men be their truest service to the good cause to leave it in stronger hands. We do not send women and children to our battle-fields, nor do we march our recruits to war before they have been trained; neither should we expect raw youths and timid maidens to put on armour at once and face the adversaries of the gospel. It has happened times without number that a blustering infidel has posed a new convert with

his sophistical arguments, and then he has shouted as if he had gained a triumph over the truth; whereas his boasting only proved the weakness of his cause, or the childishness of his own mind. He who could crow so loudly over so slender a success must be conscious of inherent feebleness, and therefore he is astonished and elated at the semblance of victory. Let us all pray to be strengthened, that our inner life, growing day by day, may reach a fulness of stature and a firmness of strength worthy of the heavenly weapon which the Lord has put into our hand. O, sacred Spirit, make us strong in the Lord and in the power of his might!

A spiritual mind is one to which the Bible is something better than a dictionary, and to which the sabbath, with its exercises, does not bring the sense of drudgery. It is a mind clear-seeing and keen-hearing; a mind of quick perceptions and prompt emotions; a mind to which the Saviour stands out a living person, and for which heaven is waiting, an expected home; a mind so sensitive, that sin makes it writhe with agony, whilst it finds holiness a true deliciousness, and in God's conscious favor an elevating joy.

— Dr. J. Hamilton

A beautiful flower, the wood-sorrel, grows among the trees in the sylvan scenes of England. It has shining green leaves, and transparent bells with white veins. When it is gathered roughly, or the evening dew falls, or the clouds begin to rain, its foliage closes and droops; but, when the air is bright and calm, it unfolds all its loveliness. Like this sensitive flower, spirituality of mind, when touched by the rough hand of sin, or the cold dew of worldliness, or the noisy rain of strife, hides itself in the quietude of devout meditation; but, when it feels the influence of sunny and serene piety, it expands in the beauty of holiness, the moral image of God. P. J. Wright.