***Read the Transcript***
Certainly, there’s a private side to life. Not everyone has the right or privilege to know every aspect of our lives. At the same time, privacy is not living a secret life where we have to hide and sneak around…where part of maturity is having the freedom to let others know in so many words when something is none of their business.
Immaturity is hiding
Where it’s a mark of immaturity when we feel like we have to hide and sneak around like a little kid getting the cookie out of the cookie jar…where part of maturity is we are free to get the cookie where we don’t have to hide and sneak. That if we want the cookie and willing to deal with the consequences of eating the cookie, then we’re free to do so…that we don’t necessarily have to broadcast it from the mount tops as it were, but we don’t have to hide and sneak to get the cookie either.
If other people have a problem with us eating the cookie, in some ways, that’s their problem and not our problem. We’re responsible for determining should I eat this cookie or not. But once I’ve sorted through my own inner world, my own inner values and beliefs, and decided that this is a good thing to eat this cookie, then I’m free to eat it. And I don’t have to sneak and hide to do so.
Maturity allows for freedom
That when I feel like I have to sneak and hide around, then I’m diminishing my freedom and not living in the fullness of the maturity that God has given me to live. Again, this is not disregarding others and their opinions, and it’s not feeling like I can do anything that I want without consequences. But I shouldn’t have to, as a grown man, have to sneak around in my own life, have to hide things in my own life.
That part of maturity is simply the freedom to enjoy eating the cookies when I want to eat the cookies. I don’t have to sneak around. I don’t have to hide.
