Hebrews 5:12-14

“In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

Perhaps one of the most disturbing images I’ve ever encountered on my job happened with a client one afternoon. While walking around a yard, my client’s son came up and said “Mommy, I’m hungry, milk please.” Not wanting to get in the way of a hungry 4 year old, I insisted she feed the boy so we could work without interruption. I told her I’d start measuring things out – I had plenty to do. I stretched a tape measure, set up a drawing board, and walked past the large livingroom window. As I walked by the window, I caught a glimpse of a 4 year old child in his mother’s arms breast feeding! Yikes! I wanted to run out and buy the woman a gallon of milk and a sippy cup!

If all of our spiritual input is from others, and the only thing we do is occasionally hear the Word of God, we will stagnate in our relationship with Christ. 1 Peter 2:2-3 says to crave milk in order to grow. But when we’ve reached a certain point, we need “solid” food. That’s when we graduate from simply “hearing” the Word of God taught, to actually handling it ourselves. The next step is to read it on our own. At first, this can be as messy as a 4 year old boy in the pantry, but that’s alright! At some point we need to learn how to feed ourselves! In fact, you can generally track the maturity of a human by their food choices and preparation styles… milk, soft/baby food, cereals, veggies, chicken nuggets (a basic staple for kids – modern day manna), microwave meals — to the highly evolved stages of shopping, growing, hunting or fishing for one’s meal, cleaning, cooking and prepping that meal, and then serving up the masterpiece. These later stages require maturity but are some of the most satisfying activities of every day physical life.

List the benefits of being constantly in the Word of God.

Write a prayer of commitment to Christ regarding His Word – consider how He wants you to grow, just like any (normal) parent would want their child to mature.