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We Put Away Childish Things, November 19
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish
things.
1 Corinthians 13:11
.
We are not always to remain children in our knowledge and experience
in spiritual things. We are not always to express ourselves in the language
of one who has just received Christ; but our prayers and exhortations are to
grow in intelligence as we advance in experience in the truth. The language
of a child of six in a child of ten years of age would not be pleasing to us,
and how painful would it be to hear expressions of childish intelligence
in one who had arrived at years of maturity. When a person becomes of
age, we expect from him a corresponding intelligence, according to his
years and opportunities.... But if we expect this manifestation of growing
intelligence in the child, as he advances in years, should we not also expect
to see the Christian grow in grace and experience? ...
God has given us many advantages and opportunities, and when the
last great day shall be ushered in, and we shall see what we might have
attained, had we taken advantage of the helps that Heaven vouchsafed to
us; when we see how we might have grown in grace, and look upon these
things as God looks upon them, seeing what we have lost by failing to
grow up into the full stature of men and women in Christ, we shall wish
that we had been more in earnest
God does not desire you to remain novices. He needs in His work
everything that you can gain here in the lines of mental culture and clear
discernment. He desires to have you reach the very highest round of the
ladder, and then step off it into the kingdom of God.
The Lord desires you to understand the position you occupy as sons
and daughters of the Most High, children of the heavenly King
[331]
39
The Youth’s Instructor, June 28, 1894
.
40
The Youth’s Instructor, May 10, 1900
.
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