It is amazing, both in the Old Testament as well as the New, how many times followers of God are referred to as "Children of God." The Apostle Paul even calls new Christians "babes" or "infants."

When we are born into this world physically, we start out not being able to do anything for ourselves.

We can’t walk or talk or feed ourselves; even having to wear diapers. As we begin to grow and mature things change. We begin to crawl then walk and then run, falling down a few times along the path of learning.

We start out not knowing how to talk but soon are able to say dada or mama and then are able to carry on a normal conversation. We learn how to read, write and work with numbers and so on.

As Christians we also are expected to grow up. We are expected to mature and become stronger in our faith, our ability to battle temptations, our ability to live holy lives and our willingness to serve. In other words we may fall down a few times but we get up and learn to walk and then to run.

There is one key difference however in the Christian life versus the physical.

After we are born into this world and grow up in maturity we are expected to become independent of our parents; meaning we should be able to make it on our own.

This does not mean that we stop loving them and respecting them. As children of God, our spiritual Father, we never come to this place.

Honestly the opposite is true; the farther we advance in our Christian walk, we more dependent we become on God. As we become more mature in our faith we walk and run with or heavenly Father with us all the way.

We get into trouble when we think we can live this life on our own.