Pip: Preacher's Point asks the question most of us quietly avoid: are you still spiritually crawling, or have you actually learned to walk?

Mara: That's the territory preacherspoint covers this week — the markers of spiritual immaturity, what growth actually looks like, and the two practices the Bible points to as the path forward. Let's start with how the Bible maps the stages of spiritual maturity.

Spiritual Maturity Stages

Mara: The post opens with a framework borrowed directly from Scripture — terms like babes, young men, and fathers — and uses them to argue that God expects Christians to grow over time, just as we expect children to grow physically. The question the post is really asking is: what does stunted growth look like, and how do you fix it?

Pip: The anchor verse here is Paul's rebuke to the church at Corinth, and it lands hard. The setup is that he couldn't teach them anything beyond the basics — "I have fed you with milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it, neither yet now are ye able."

Mara: So the upshot is that remaining a spiritual infant isn't neutral — it's a failure mode Paul names directly. A church that can only receive elementary teaching is a church that has stopped growing, and Paul treats that as a problem worth confronting.

Pip: The post identifies two clear signs of immaturity before it turns to solutions. The first is that inability to receive stronger doctrine — the Corinth problem. The second is doctrinal instability, which the post illustrates with a concrete example: Christians who circulated a predicted rapture date based on a star alignment in Revelation 12.

Mara: The post is pointed about why that spread so easily. Ephesians 4:14 gets cited — "That we henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness whereby they lie in wait to deceive." Running with a claim without personal study or pastoral counsel is, the post argues, a textbook sign of immaturity.

Pip: And the Revelation 12 passage, for the record, refers to Israel — not the rapture. Which the post calls spiritual meat, as opposed to the milk of simply knowing Christ said no one can know the day or hour.

Mara: The solution the post lands on is built around one verse: Psalm 84:7, "They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God." Appearing before God means two things — Bible study and prayer. Not reading casually, but studying deliberately, chasing questions, digging into even the parts that feel tedious.

Pip: There's a quiet illustration buried in Numbers — working out the tribal formations around the Ark of the Covenant and realizing the aerial shape is a cross. The kind of thing you only find if you're actually looking.

Mara: Prayer gets equal weight. The post closes by calling Jesus a Christian's best friend and urging readers to bring Him not just troubles but questions — the meatier parts of Scripture included.

Pip: Growth is less a destination than a direction — and the markers of where you are matter.

Mara: Milk versus meat, instability versus rootedness — the post gives you a real diagnostic, not just encouragement.

Pip: Next time, more from Preacher's Point on what it looks like when the growth actually takes hold.