God has a spiritual relevance and perspective that we cannot map into our reality. So like a child with God as our parent we try to map our reality onto God's. Because moving a child to maturity is a process, we allow and give toddlers things early in the development that would be wrong later on in development. Similarly God is working with Christians. He does not want to destroy you only keep you moving to spiritual maturity.
So even if we could get a perfect picture of Spiritual maturity it would be wrong for us to try and copy it, just like in society worldly maturity is based on a process of emotional scars and those without them are called spoiled. Likewise spiritual maturity is based on the cross, which is the realization that God is allowing and sometimes orchestrating pain in our lives to bring us from our spiritually childish ways towards his maturity where we can enjoy His riches.
We have to let God move us on from early childhood, which is more difficult without many examples. Churches have spent all their training on birthing and the "terrible twos" thus are little help to us at this stage. The letters to churches in the bible are to churches going through the "terrible twos" it is not a complete guide to Christian maturity but a guide through the early stages.
God and the Holy Spirit have a custom plan for each of us just like our parents did for us. He does not want carbon copies so don't look to follow someone else's journey. Don't get tied up in time frames as this is also relative to your age. This is why days go slower for kids then for adults. Our minds view time as a perspective of what we have lived. God sees eternity so our whole life is very short to him, but His patience for us is also viewed in the same way. So waiting a life time for us to figure it out is not that long to God.
For those that have not had a two year old or maybe forgotten, they have not learned how to be grateful. They have decided they "need" much more and that the world is unfair. We as adults understand that hours drag on forever for someone that has only lived two years and that in some aspects the world is unfair. But over time they will have an opportunity to have many enjoyments, candy, toys and fun. We understand some times are good and some are bad and we are looking to make the best of both. We also understand that they can grow emotionally from the bad times. Spiritually we often see God as the same unfair as our kids see us. Kids try to rationalize rules to their advantage. But many of the rules are to keep us safe until our reason and logic develops. Hold an adults hand when crossing the street and don't talk to strangers are for kids not adults. For Christians it to keeps us from the childish delights of the world so that we can develop a relationship with the Holy Spirit. A child has to mature to know when it is best to cross the street or how much candy to eat before it is a problem. It's the parent's responsibility to let them make mistakes that are not too costly without any real damage to the child. Each kid has his own personality and background and requires a customized approach to parenting. God and the Holy Spirit are doing the same with each believer and Church.
God is working on developing the bride which is currently outside of our grasp of understanding. He gives us spiritual gifts and blessings in order to mature the bride.
