When God grows us from childhood we are transformed from glory to glory. He is the author and finisher of our faith. continue to seek Him and follow His promptings and He will make alive in you the beautiful transition from childhood to sonship. There are many notable differences.
A child is a delight and a joy to watch as they grow and take mastery over themselves. A child must be hemmed in to not cause harm to himself or others – even if the harm is inflicted innocently. A child must be given all basic needs (food, clothing, shelter) for survival. The child can display temper tantrums when not getting his way and evidence tendencies toward selfishness, distrust, anger, and envy. These are all growing pains. When at last the growth gives way to maturity then a new delight is evidenced. The child becomes a mature son/daughter.
Being a son or daughter of the King is a position with authority and honor. The son/daughter can go on adventure, seek out food, be trusted with more responsibility, and have deeper conversations/communication/fellowship with the Father. Though a child is much loved and tenderly cared for, a son or daughter can be trusted with carrying out the Father’s will while enjoying full fellowship. The maturing son/daughter can care tenderly for others, for he can now be concerned with meeting the needs of others instead of having others meet his own needs for survival. Some marks of sonship is also evidenced in patience, humility, and even the willingness to love and lay down one’s life for another that they may also come to know what it means to be a son or daughter of the King.
What a marvelous metamorphosis as we transform into His image and draw nearer and nearer to the next promotion and become the beloved Bride of Christ.
Psalm 131:1-3
“Lord, my heart is not haughty, nor my eyes lofty. Neither do I concern myself with great matters, nor with things too profound for me. Surely I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with his mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me. O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time forth and forever.”
I Peter 2:1-5
“Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 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. Coming to Him as to a living stone, rejected indeed by men, but chosen by God and precious, you also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”
I Corinthians 13:11-12
“When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”
Ephesians 4:11-16
“And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, in the cunning craftiness of deceitful plotting, but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head – Christ – from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by what every joint supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share, causes growth of the body for the edifying of itself in love.”