Christian Family Services Ministry

4-13-2021 – A Word to the Wise – This is one passage I find myself using extensively in counseling. I want to share it along with an explanation of why I find it so important

When I was a child,

    I spoke like a child,

      I thought like a child,

       I reasoned like a child.

        When I matured,

 I put aside childish things

 (I Corinthians 13:11)

There are several reasons this passage strikes a note in my thinking. I suspect growing up in an abusive situation we develop some interpretations of life which influence our relationships and beliefs. Truly, as children we speak, think, and reason like a child because we lack the world view necessary to process the experiences. So let’s work with an example.

It’s September 1955. Ten in the evening. The family was just finishing the devotional chart. The night was disturbed by the ringing of the phone. No one ever called this late! For years to come a phone at night was a fearful thing.

Mother answered the phone and I crawled under the dining room table, Fearful; mother did not say much ended the conversation with ‘we will come in the morning.’ I knew something terrible had happened. She was very somber.

We all stood around her, and she softly said. ‘that was the Nelson’s who rent your dad’s apartment in Oklahoma City.  The body of your father was found this afternoon, he had been dead for some time.”

I was not close to my father. He was partial to my sister, my mother partial to my brother. There are many things to say but I want to reduce it to two events that fit this passage.

The first event was the funeral. Many were there, most I did not know. No one spoke to me, which to, be honest, fine with me. But what made me angry, the one thing that disturbed me greatly was all these people standing around laughing and having a great time visiting.

Even to this day, I remember the phone call and those people having such a good time.

So a few years ago the Lord brought this passage to mind to process. Even at that time I spoke of it like a child, felt only the fury a child may experience, reason? Reasoning? out the window.

The Lord said ‘you’re mature now, it is time to put aside the childish perception and process this as an adult.’ To be honest it was 60 years later and I did not want to do that. The Lord would not be put off.

Remember, Jerry jumping up and down on that grave and crying we are even now? Yes, Lord. Even for what? Not rescuing me from my horrible situation. “But child look at how many have profited from your experience, look at where you are now, and how you got here.”

That is all that was said, yet the mature view yields a much different experience.  

A closely connected experience that merged with the above experience was my name. I always hated my name, I figured it took some really foolish thinking to give me the name they did. No doubt probably an unexpected twin and unwanted he deserved the name, the reasoning must have gone.

Most have no idea why I would think that way until they remember it was 1943. My name was the same slang term used to apply to the enemy, how stupid!

Ten years ago the Lord changed my name, but five years ago I discovered the meaning of my birth name. “When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child,” yet I had lived my whole life not knowing what that name meant and that indeed I had lived its meaning. Swordbearer.