Why Spiritual Activity Isn't the Same as Spiritual Maturity

The Illusion of Spiritual Maturity

What if I told you that you could go to church every Sunday, attend Bible study, serve on the worship team, teach Sunday school, give faithfully, and still be spiritually immature? Not because those things are bad, but because religious activity isn't the same thing as spiritual formation. Spiritual activity can create the appearance of spiritual maturity without actually producing spiritual maturity.

And I know that to be the case because I lived that way for decades. And I believe that's a problem we're not talking enough about.

Hey, welcome to the Biblical Film Room, a place where we slow down, reflect, and let Scripture examine our lives so we can grow in truth, walk in freedom, and live out our identity in Christ. I'm Michael Jerome, your host. I want to thank you for joining the show. I appreciate you being here.

In the early episode, episode one, I shared my faith crisis and how personal time with God restored and renewed my faith. In episode two, we talked about belonging before becoming. In episode three, I introduced the grace framework.

And today we're going to look at the problem that can keep us from actually living out that framework: emotionally unhealthy spiritual formation. Or as Second Timothy describes it, having a form of godliness, but denying his power.

A Space for Grace

Hey guys, we're gonna jump right back into the show in just a moment. But did you know that biblical counseling is a great way to impact pain points?

At a Space of Grace Counseling, I offer a complimentary 30-minute discovery call where we discuss your story and see if biblical counseling is the right fit for you. There's no obligation, just a safe space to begin the conversation. You can find the scheduling link in the show notes. Now back to the show.

Last episode, I introduce you to the Grace Framework. God loves you just as you are, refuses to leave you there, affirms your identity, calls you to commit to truth, and empowers you by his spirit.

But here's what I've discovered. Understanding grace isn't enough if nobody teaches you how to actually live out the C and the E, which is commit to truth and empowered by the Spirit. I was taught a lot about what to do.

I wasn't taught as much about what was happening underneath the surface of me. And I've discovered that I'm not alone. Because there's a lot of us, a lot of you that can identify with this.

And one of the things I've learned through counseling is pretty simple. It's pretty clear. People generally do better when they are taught better.

So I wasn't taught poor, incomplete theology by people who necessarily had bad intentions, but I wasn't taught everything I needed to know about spiritual and emotional development. I was taught a lot about what to do. I wasn't taught enough about what God wanted to do in me.

A Different Standard of Measurement

So, in my experience, the body of Christ can confuse activity with maturity. Why is this? Because churches naturally measure what they can see, and we all do that: attendance, giving, volunteering, Bible class participation, ministry involvement, programs, baptism, Sunday school classes, membership.

None of these things are inherently bad. They're good for us. You know, churches need these things to be healthy, okay?

But what are we measuring that tells us whether people are actually becoming more like Christ? That's the point. That's the thing that we want to get to.

And so in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 11 through 13, Paul challenges this church with a different measuring standard after hearing about spiritual immaturity. In verse 11, he says, My brothers and sisters, some from Chloe's household have informed me that there are quarrels among you.

What I mean is this: one of you says, I follow Paul, another, I follow Apollos, another, I follow Cephas, still another, I follow Christ. Is Christ divided? So these people were believers. They had spiritual knowledge, they were part of the church, and yet they were arguing over personalities and leaders, which is silly.

And Paul essentially says, You're behaving immaturely. Film room question for you right now: What if Paul walked into our churches today? What would he measure?

Well, he wouldn't measure attendance or contribution, financial contribution, or ministry positions, whether a ministry position is being held in the church. But I think he would measure how do we handle conflict? Can we receive correction? Can we admit when we're wrong?

Do we tell the truth when the truth costs us? Can we forgive? Can we sit with sadness? Can we acknowledge anger?

Can we admit fear? Do we have integrity when nobody's looking? Okay? Those questions I think he would be asking us.

Because those things tell us far more about spiritual maturity than whether someone is attending a small group Bible study on a Wednesday night. So film room insight for you: Church participation is evidence that you're participating in church. It isn't necessarily evidence that you're being transformed by Christ.

The Gap Between Gifting and Character

Let me give you a sports example because this is where the film room analogy becomes really clear. Okay. Think Johnny Manziel. Johnny football.

He was an incredible college football player. He won the Heisman Trophy at Texas A&M. I mean, this guy was electric.

He could make plays that very few players could make. So when the Cleveland Browns selected him in the 2014 NFL draft, they weren't drafting somebody who lacked talent. They were drafting somebody with extraordinary ability, quite honestly.

But here's what makes his story relevant to what we're talking about. Talent wasn't the only question. There were already questions about his off-field behavior, work ethic, leadership, and preparation.

NFL scouts and coaches were trying to figure out whether the person they were getting could handle the demands of being an NFL quarterback. And eventually the gap between his ability and his maturity became costly.

ESPN later reported that the Browns coach acknowledged the team may not have understood how deep rooted Manziel's issues were when they drafted him. His two seasons in Cleveland were ultimately marked by off the field struggles and limited success, and the Browns waived him two years later.

Now, I'm not bringing up Johnny Manziel to shame him. Okay? I'm bringing him up because the NFL is a great picture of something we often do in the church.

We see talent. We see gifting. We see charisma. Ooh, that guy is very charismatic.

We see somebody who can preach. Man, preach the word, brother. Somebody who can sing.

Somebody who can teach. And somebody who can lead. They can draw a crowd, they can get people fired up.

And we can assume that because someone is gifted, they're mature. But gifting and maturity are hardly the same thing. And ability and character, they're not the same thing.

And knowledge and emotional health are not equal. And being able to perform publicly doesn't tell you what's happening privately. And that's the problem in all the major sports leagues in America right now.

We can draft people based on their gifts without examining their formation, their character formation. And sometimes we do the same thing in the church. We put people on the platform because they're gifted before we've taken the time to ask whether they're emotionally and spiritually healthy enough to carry their responsibility.

And sometimes we do it to ourselves. And this was true with me. We look at what we're able to do for God and assume that means we're becoming like Christ.

But the real question isn't how gifted I am. The real question is who am I becoming? Yeah. Being taught is not the same thing as being formed.

The Danger of Spiritual Infancy

And there's a danger there. And the Bible discusses this danger, calls it being a perpetual infant.

In Hebrews 5, verse 11, I'm going to read a couple verses here in Hebrews 5. He says, We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you are slow to learn. You need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again.

You need milk, not solid food. Anyone who lives on milk, still being an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.

Hey, the writer here says, You should be teachers by now, but they still needed milk. He said, You're slow to learn. You need to be taught again.

I mean, they had been around long enough to know better. But exposure hadn't produced maturity.

I once met with a guy in counseling who knew a lot of Bible verses and would immerse himself with worship and would hang out at the church and do other Christian activities with other believers, but he didn't know how to show up for his wife and address her pain points maturely. He would just shut down and not talk. And you know what? It almost cost him his marriage.

That's spiritual infancy right there. Because time around scripture doesn't automatically equal transformation. Because you can be in church for 20, 30 years and still respond to conflict like a child.

And you can quote scripture and still be unable to apologize. And you can lead worship and still be controlled by people's approval.

And you can teach Bible study and still avoid your own wounds. And you can preach grace and secretly live under shame. And you can serve everyone else and never allow anyone to know what's happening inside you.

That, my friend, that's the picture of arrested spiritual development. That's spiritual activity without emotional, spiritual character formation. It lacks emotionally healthy spirituality, which is important.

Defining Emotionally Healthy Spiritual Formation

So, what do I mean by emotionally healthy spiritual formation? Emotionally healthy spiritual formation means learning to honestly recognize, process, and bring our emotions under the truth and lordship of Jesus Christ.

During most of my adult life, I struggle with identifying and processing my emotions. And I see men and women today struggle doing that very thing. And I want to identify the big three: sadness, anger, and fear.

Sadness: Instead of, "man, I'm hurting," we say, "God is good all the time." Well, yeah, but both can be true. That we're hurting and God is good too.

Anger: Instead of exploring what happened to me, which we should do that, we immediately spiritualize. "I just need to forgive." Hey, forgiveness matters, but sometimes we need to understand the wound before we can meaningfully process forgiveness.

And one thing I will say about this, man, there's things that happen to us in life because we live in a fallen world and they create layers of stuff. And sometimes forgiveness is like peeling the onion. So it's like one layer at a time.

You know, forgiveness 1.0, forgiveness 2.0, forgiveness 3.0. It's just like updating the software, so to speak. You're just having to forgive in layers. That's meaningfully processing what's going on instead of just saying, "I just forgive" and moving on.

That keeps people stuck. And the third thing, Fear: Instead of acknowledging, "I'm afraid," we say, "I just need more faith."

Well, scripture doesn't require us to pretend fear doesn't exist. And quite frankly, some of us need to learn, need to be taught how to bring fear, anger, grief, confusion, sadness, and lament to God.

Here's some film room insight. Sometimes we don't use God to run toward God. We use God to run away from what we're feeling.

And let me tell you this: some of you probably struggle with not processing your feelings. And listen to me, man, you have to learn to sit there. Self-awareness.

And feel the feels. Self-reflection. You sit there so you can be aware and feel what you're feeling.

Feel what you're feeling so you can reflect. Then you are ready to respond rather than react. Because you have a responsibility to God and others.

And responsibility is the ability to respond. That's maturity, the ability to respond, you're being responsible. Because a person that just reacts is just a sign of immaturity.

Clashing with Christ-like Formation

We talked about when unhealthiness clashes with Christ-like formation, okay? What happens when unresolved emotional patterns collide with Christian expectations? Hey, when that happens, you can get really one of these six types of people:

1. The people pleaser: I need everyone to like me.

1. The performer: I need everyone to think I'm okay. Got it. They have to think I'm okay.

1. The secret keeper, the hider: I can't let anyone know what's really happening.

1. The conflict voider: Man, that's me. If I confront this, they'll reject me. They won't like me. They'll leave me. They'll abandon me.

1. The controller: If I can control everything, I won't get hurt.

1. The spiritually inconsistent person: Sunday me and Monday me aren't the same person.

And this is where spiritual immaturity becomes dangerous, my friends, as I talked about earlier. Because you can look healthy on the outside while becoming increasingly unhealthy underneath. And there are some consequences in play when looking spiritually healthy clashes with actually being spiritually healthy.

The High Cost of Performance-Based Spirituality

I want to look at an example in the story of a couple named Ananias and Sapphira in Acts chapter five. So yeah, let's examine what happens when looking spiritually healthy becomes more important than actually becoming spiritually healthy.

In Acts chapter 5, verse 1, it says, Now a man named Ananias together with his wife Sapphira also sold a piece of property with his wife's full knowledge. He kept back part of the money for himself, but then he brought the rest of it and put it at the apostles' feet. Now the Holy Spirit alerted Peter to this fact.

So Peter confronts Ananias and he says, Ananias, how is it that Satan has so filled your heart that you have lied to the Holy Spirit and have kept back part of the money that you received from the land? Didn't the land belong to you before it was sold? And after it was sold, wasn't the money at your disposal?

He said, What made you think of doing such a thing? You have not lied to men, but to God. And when he heard this, the Bible said he fell down at Peter's feet and died.

Then three hours later, his wife came in, not knowing what had happened. And Peter asked her, Is this the price that you and Ananias got for the land? And she said, Yes, that is the price.

Then Peter said to her, How could you agree to test the spirit of the Lord? Look, the feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also. And then she fell down at his feet and she died.

The men came in, buried her beside her husband, says, Great fear seized the church that heard about these things, and all who heard about these things. So, hey, they presented one reality publicly while concealing another reality privately. But it cost them their lives.

Now, obviously things like that don't cost us our lives today, but it costs us something. And that's the danger of performance-based spirituality. Because there's a cost to that.

So film room insight: When image becomes more important than integrity, we can end up protecting the appearance of transformation instead of pursuing transformation itself. Okay?

Why the Church Often Misses the Mark

So, why do churches miss this spiritual formation aspect so that it produces emotionally stunted, spiritually immature believers? Well, I don't believe churches intentionally create emotionally unhealthy Christians, okay? I just think we often emphasize what's easiest to see.

Why? Because numbers are measurable. Right?

Yeah. Heart transformation on the other hand isn't. Attendance is measurable.

Emotional maturity isn't as easy to measure. Giving financially is measurable. Character is harder to measure.

Volunteer hours are measurable. The ability to receive correction, process grief, establish boundaries, confess sin, and love difficult people is harder to measure. I mean, we can build a church that looks healthy on paper while the people inside it are quietly struggling.

And that's the overlooked problem that nobody's really talking about. And I was one of them. That's part of my story, guys.

I don't say any of this from the outside looking in, standing on some kind of platform with a bullhorn. Hey man, you guys know my story. I was serving and giving in the church, gave my life to ministry.

I was praising and worshiping, doing benevolent work, visiting the sick, praying over people, but my marriage and family were deteriorating at the same time. My internal world wasn't matching my external ministry life. My church experience, guys, exposed something I hadn't fully understood yet.

That is, I had been taught how to do church. I hadn't been adequately taught how to let Christ transform me. That's why my six-month journey became so important.

I had to stop performing long enough to actually examine what was happening inside of me.

The Replay: Lessons from the Film Room

So let's rewind the tape. Okay? What did we see today?

Well, church activity doesn't automatically equal maturity. And Bible knowledge doesn't automatically equal transformation. And suppressing emotions isn't the same thing as spiritual maturity.

And serving others can sometimes become a way of avoiding ourselves. And grace must move beyond G-R-A into C and E: commitment to truth, empowerment by the Spirit.

Hey, if you're listening to this and realizing, "I've been doing a lot of Christian things, but I'm not sure I'm actually becoming more like Christ," I want to invite you to take the next step. Through a space of grace counseling, I offer a complimentary 30-minute discovery call.

It's an opportunity to talk about your story, identify where you may feel stuck, and explore whether biblical counseling is the right next step for you. There's no pressure and there's no obligation, just a graceful space to begin unpacking your pain points. You'll find the scheduling link in the show notes. Now back to the show.

The Path Forward: Reflection and Prayer

All right, let me give you this closing challenge as we wrap up this episode. Ask yourself these three questions, please:

1. Am I doing more Christian things? Or am I actually becoming more like Christ?
2. What emotions am I afraid to bring honestly before God?
3. What part of my life looks healthy on the outside, but needs attention underneath?

And don't answer those questions too quickly. Okay? Man, sit with them. Pray about them.

And if something uncomfortable comes up, don't run from it. Don't push it away. That's probably where the work begins. That's likely where you need to start.

All right. Want to go ahead and segue into our locker room prayer. So let me pray over you at this time.

Father, give us the courage to stop measuring ourselves by what we do and begin examining who we are becoming. Search us, Lord. Show us the places where we're performing instead of transforming.

Show us the emotions we've buried, the wounds we've avoided, and the places where we've used religious activity to hide from what's happening inside us. Teach us that sadness, anger, and fear don't make us faithless, but teach us what to do with those emotions. Help us bring them into your presence, Lord.

And Holy Spirit, empower us to do the work we cannot do in our own strength. Make us whole on the inside, not impressive on the outside. In Jesus' name, amen.

So if emotionally unhealthy spiritual formation is the problem, what does it actually look like to become emotionally and spiritually healthy? We want to get that. What are the things happening beneath the surface that keeps us stuck?

Because here's what I've learned. You can't heal what you won't acknowledge, and you can't transform what you refuse to bring to the light. And that's where we're going next.

The hidden cost of staying stuck. Because there is a cost of staying stuck, the hidden wounds behind the way we relate. Because let me tell you something: how you relate determines what you create.

So hit that subscribe button so that you don't miss our next episode. And please drop a comment in the chat. I would love to hear from you.

And as always, please share the podcast. It may bring clarity to someone's spiritual direction. Thanks for joining me today.

Hey, go be a world changer, but not a stranger. So I'll see you next time in the biblical film room where God's word becomes the replay that changes your life. Adios.

---

Ready to move from activity to transformation?

[Schedule your free 30-minute discovery call here.](https://spaceofgracecounseling.com/contact/)