Your Spiritual Diet

  An improper diet can cause problems.  Usually, when you go into a hospital, they determine what type of diet you should be on.  A person from the kitchen reviews the doctor's orders and comes to you with questions about what you would like to have to eat.  However, every now and then, a mistake is made.  My father had just had surgery for appendicitis  and was supposed to be on a liquid diet but a mistake was made in the kitchen.  For some reason, a tray was delivered with a steak on it.  When we arrived at the hospital, we were surprised to find my father trying to cut the steak as fast as he could through the rails of the bed feeling that someone would discover the mistake and try to take it away before he had a chance to eat it.  Spiritually speaking, we are also on a certain diet.  The Apostle Peter describes it as a diet of milk at the beginning.  First Peter 2:1-3 says, "Wherefore laying aside all malice, and all guile, and hypocrisies, and envies, and all evil speakings, As newborn babes, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby:  If so be ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious."  When a baby is born, it's first food is going to be milk.  Since it has no teeth, it wouldn't be any good giving it solid meat to eat.  Spiritually speaking, we need to be on milk at the beginning of our spiritual lives.  Every believer, as soon as they are born again, are needful of spiritual milk.  What is spiritual milk?   It contains just the basics of the Christian faith.  A believer needs to know just what happened at that special time and how long it will last.  They need to understand the salvation that just came into their lives.  They need to understand about prayer and fellowship and witnessing about their new found faith.  These are basic things.  As a person grows in the Word of God, they start understanding about being saved by grace and what it means to be a member of the family of God and how they can now bring their prayers to God the Father.  After they grow for a time, then they need to go on and to begin some of the items in spiritual meat.  You find that you may have to chew on the spiritual meat for some time before it gets into your  life.  We can, however, praise God today that He knows exactly what should be in our diet and His prescription always includes the Word of God.