It’s normally around age eleven or twelve when the BIG FIGHT happens. Parent and child square off in an epic battle of the wills and minds. It’s happened with every kid in our house. It’s an awkward time in their life anyway: pre-teen/middle school/not a kid/not a teen either. The BIG FIGHT is never about anything really important. It’s about something minor like staying up late, watching a movie, or staying out with friends. But the BIG FIGHT is always about something deeper.

“You just don’t trust me. You treat me like I’m five!”

I wish that Amy and I had made a banner to hang in the kitchen:

You will be treated according to the maturity level in which you behave.

Parenting wasn’t (and still isn’t) easy: deciding what battles to fight and what battles to avoid, when to step in to rescue them from themselves, and when to just let it all crash down around them.

“When you decide to make adult, grown up decisions, we will treat you as an adult. If you keep acting like a petulant child, we will treat you like one – regardless of what your birth certificate says.” I am pretty sure that God functions with this standard as well. There are blessings and opportunities that He would love to give us, but…

At some point, we have to decide to grow. That doesn’t mean become boring. It doesn’t mean quit laughing or joking around. It means making God-centered decisions, decisions that consistently put Him first and put us in the best position to be on His mission: love people, serve people.

I’ve had a lot of coffees where this inevitable truth becomes the topic. It starts off talking about being a better dad or husband or wife or mom or kid or leader. But it all comes back to whether they are ready to choose to grow. It’s on this topic that things can get incredibly complicated as well.

Books, movies, studies, sermon series… How much material has been produced with a focus of growing us up? It’s countless. And overwhelming. Who has the time or energy to add sixteen more things to their life that are supposed to help?

That’s why I’m so excited about this series. What if I told you that it’s been condensed to only five questions that you need to nail down and wrestle with. That’s it: one handful, five.

Don’t confuse simple with easy. Nothing about growing up is easy. It just doesn’t have to be complicated.

So make it a commitment to be here Five Sundays in a row. Take the challenge. Each week you’ll learn one of the five core choices. After the series, you’ll walk away with a handful of values and choices that could make 2017 the best year of your life.

See you Sunday.