One of the greatest joys I’ve experienced in youth ministry this past year has been watching spiritual maturity take root and grow in the lives of our teens. Many of the young people in our North Heights Youth Group are kids I’ve known for years. Since my family came to NHCOC back in 2016, we’ve watched families grow, kids blossom, and teens mature right before our eyes. Teens get taller, get their braces off, and begin looking more like young men and women right before our eyes. But, it’s been especially rewarding to walk more closely with them over the past year or so and see just how far they’ve come. Not just physically or socially, but spiritually. Have you seen the growth in the NHYG?
Maturity is something that should come naturally. We grow physically without much effort. We grow socially by spending time with others. We grow mentally by going to school and learning. But spiritual maturity? That’s different. It doesn’t happen by accident. It takes intentional effort. It requires a personal decision to connect with the Spirit of God and let Him shape our lives from the inside out.
The Apostle Paul said it this way:
“If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25).
If our life has been made new through the Spirit, and if He’s the source of our transformation, then our daily actions should reflect that. Walking by the Spirit means letting Him guide our decisions, influence our relationships, and shape our character. It’s not something passive. It’s an active, daily pursuit of God’s will.
Paul drives this point home in the next chapter:
“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap… the one who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Galatians 6:7–8).
In other words, if we’re planting spiritual seeds like prayer, obedience, service, and humility, then over time we should expect to see spiritual fruit. That fruit is described earlier in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. That’s the evidence of real spiritual growth.
And I’ve seen that kind of growth in our teens. Some more than others, but across the board, the Spirit is at work. While we’ve experienced exciting numerical growth in NHYG, what excites me even more is the spiritual growth. I see it when our teens make the hard right choices. I see it when they ask good questions, when they serve others without being asked, or when they lean into their faith during hard times.
Giving kids the opportunity to make their own decisions can be a little scary. Sometimes it would be easier to just make the choice for them and remove any room for failure. But if we always take away their choices, we also take away their chance to grow. Maturity only comes when they wrestle with real-life decisions and learn to walk by faith.
So what about you? Have you seen the growth in yourself?
When you’re faced with a tough decision, do you stop and ask:
Am I walking by the Spirit or by the flesh?
Do I even consider what’s spiritual in this moment?
How will this choice impact my growth and relationship with God?
Have you taken time lately to reflect on how much you’ve grown spiritually in the last year or two? If you’re walking by the Spirit, that growth will happen. And it’s something worth celebrating.
Let’s keep walking forward together on the path that leads to life.
In Jesus,
Alex Mills