Hebrews 5:11-14 TLB
[11] There is much more I would like to say along these lines, but you don’t seem to listen, so it’s hard to make you understand. [12-13] You have been Christians a long time now, and you ought to be teaching others, but instead you have dropped back to the place where you need someone to teach you all over again the very first principles in God’s Word. You are like babies who can drink only milk, not old enough for solid food. And when a person is still living on milk it shows he isn’t very far along in the Christian life, and doesn’t know much about the difference between right and wrong. He is still a baby Christian! [14] You will never be able to eat solid spiritual food and understand the deeper things of God’s Word until you become better Christians and learn right from wrong by practicing doing right.
Good Morning!
Remember some of these old slogans from TV commercials?
• Got Milk?
• Milk, it does a body good!
• Beef. It’s what’s for dinner!
What’s for dinner?
We all have a very specific growth pattern in our lives that God has ordained. We are born as infants and require milk for sustenance because that is all we can handle at that point in our lives. We grow a little and then are given baby food because we can’t yet chew but require more than just milk. As we grow older and our teeth start coming in, we are able to eat foods that are more and more solid until finally we have all of our teeth and can chew all kinds of food.
In a like manner, our spiritual walk should be the same way. God doesn’t want us to remain as infants, just drinking milk and being spoon fed “soft foods.” He wants us to continue to grow and develop “all of our spiritual teeth” so that we can get sustenance for our souls. If we want to grow spiritually, we can’t just keep drinking milk as that does not nourish our souls. We must continue to dive deeper into God’s word, develop patterns in our lives that give time to God in prayer and devotions, and give Him our daily praise and worship that He deserves as the creator of all things. God wants us to grow. He enjoys seeing us develop into mature Christians, just as loving parents enjoy watching their children grow up.
As we continue on this journey of life, it is only natural for us to continue maturing. We all will some day grow old. That is just part of life. With age comes wisdom just from life’s experiences. As the Bible says in Proverbs, “the gray hair of experience is the splendor of the old.” This should also be our spiritual journey in life. We should all yearn to develop “spiritual gray hair,” as that means that we are mature in Christ and God is giving us His wisdom to share with others. As mature Christ-followers, we are able to do what God has called us to do — to go and bear fruit. That is God’s plan for all of us, that we should make disciples that make disciples, spreading His love continually, bearing fruit. And hey, you can only bite into a piece of fruit with a full set of good “choppers.” 🦷
As Christ-followers, it is up to us to graduate from milk and baby food into “eating steak.” That is what’s for dinner at the table of The Lord (spiritually speaking). Unlike when we were infants and our parents bottle-fed us and spoon fed us, to mature as Christians, we must take it upon ourselves to graduate to solid foods. Take the time each day to consume God’s Word and you will soon see in yourself growth and maturity that is beyond what you could have ever imagined.
What’s for dinner? That is up to us individually to grow each day in The Lord to eat at His table.
I love you and am praying for you today.
Dad