As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious. 1 Peter 2:2,3

Some of us can remember what it was like when we were new to the Christian faith; that’s why I always feel a little awkward thinking about “returning to (my) first love”. I’m afraid my “first-love” days were pretty uninspiring. But I’ve learned something along the way…

Returning to our first love isn’t so much becoming a Bible-ignorant newbie again, but growing in true and deep intimacy and passion for the Jesus we once had a superficial (though real) crush on. Babies aren’t supposed to be adults. They have diapers—lots of diapers. They are self-focused. They need constant attention and lots of milk—and spit up a lot of the milk that their caregivers so selflessly supply. That’s all as it should be—for babies. For spiritual babes, too.

But babies don’t just turn into adults one day—not without going through childhood and adolescence. Those teen years can be pretty tough…and when they finally find themselves out in the “real world” with “adult” plastered on their foreheads they’re still growing up, really.

As we mature as believers, we find out that our Christian adventure is all about being “childlike” after all—not like the narcissistic, diaper-messing baby we once were. But as children are innocent, and trust with pure, uncorrupted hearts.

To go before God as a child is to go before God stripped of our doubts, full of wide-eyed expectation that comes from total (though untried) faith. Is God going to come through when I need Him? A young believer might say, “yes”, not because they’ve been through many a fire with Jesus and not been burned, but simply out of confidence.

Spiritual adolescents, full of zeal and gratitude, haven’t learned to choose their races and so with misplaced confidence they go out to win them all. That isn’t faith, by the way, it’s presumption. Spiritual adolescence can be a difficult time because where God used to rescue us out of every pit we managed to stumble into in our starry-eyed, self-occupied presumption, now He actually expects us to step where He’s stepping…to follow his leading, even when we see so opportunities to do good things.

Adolescence is normal for growing Christians. It’s a time of learning that while we really can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, He’s less likely to strengthen us to do everything we want to do. As we fix our eyes on Jesus, more and more, we learn the lesson that His sheep hear his voice, and follow Him. And the path He leads us on is a lot easier than the one we would lead ourselves on; the rewards are far greater; the wins are more plentiful.

As I say, spiritual adolescence is normal. But many of us spend far more time in spiritual adolescence than we should. We still love Jesus, and do Jesus-type things. But our passions become focused mostly on over-cramming our lives with Christian events and doings rather than resting and being in Jesus. We’re so caught up in need-meeting that we aren’t Jesus-following. We may have the discipline to read our Bible and pray, but that’s what it is: discipline…not passion.

We end up looking and feeling more like the Pharisees. They never left spiritual adolescence and were still peer-dependent performers rather than lovers of God. Jesus was within touching distance of them and they didn’t bother to reach out. They couldn’t. They had too much invested in the path they were on. Too much riding on their religious system. They’d lose it all if they considered Jesus. It would ruin their ministry.

But Jesus doesn’t leave us there…He calls us back to our first love. More on that next time.