Our three-year-old grandson, Raphael, left today and took his mother with him. It was a great visit of five days enjoying their company, along with Darcy’s best friend, Janene, and her three-year-old daughter Chloe. It was a wonderful, noisy, fun few days.
What’s fun is to see the maturing process within Raffi. When he visited when he was crawling, we had to put plugs in all the electrical outlets because he loved finding all of them. They were on his level–near the floor, and absolutely fascinating. Why–I don’t know.
Then as he got older, he lost his fascination for those but could reach the dishes in the kitchen cabinets. So I had to put up anything breakable or anything dangerous. At this visit, he didn’t open a single kitchen cabinet.
But all the goodies in the pantry were still attractive this visit. But unlike other visits where he would constantly head there, he only tried to go there maybe–4 or 5 times. Our telling him he couldn’t go in there became more effective. He was learning self-control, knowing he wasn’t going to be successful.
As I think of this progression of being fascinated by certain things early on and now not even noticing those “no-no’s,” I think of sanctification. Sanctification is the process of becoming more and more holy. And in our early Christian lives, we find every “no-no” attractive and seem to have little self-control to overcome those urges.
But hopefully, if we’re growing in maturity and love for the Lord, the early “no-no’s” become less attractive and we are responding to God’s call to resist more and more. What’s wonderful is when we notice that the things that were attractive to us early on, now have absolutely no draw. We can’t even comprehend how that was ever important. Our minds and hearts have been transformed and we almost can’t figure out how it happened. But it happened. That’s sanctification through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Can you think of something that held your interest early in your Christian walk and now it doesn’t seem as important because your love for God has become more important? The “draw” could be “good” or “bad.” Let me know in the comments section what it is (at www.KathyCollardMiller.blogspot.com if you’re getting this separate from the website). I bet it’ll help us all as we read. Thanks!