Milk and Meat

 Greetings to you all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,

     First Peter 2:2-3 says, “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.”

     What things do you long for the most in your life?  When I think back on my life, there have been certain things that stand out as so desirable that I would strive to get them no matter what was going on.  One of the first things was the Red Ryder BB gun that resembled a 30.06 lever action rifle where you could pour in a tube of 50 BB’s and head out to conquer the world.  Things then began to change as I entered my teenage years to certain clothes, girls and the list goes on.  I would long for the last day of school and welcome the chance to run in the fields, woods and ponds around the township in which I lived.

     Adult years would have the same pattern until a day came when I met the Lord Jesus Christ.  That was the day I was born again and suddenly, my desires changed.  Worldly things grew less important while the desire for spiritual things became more prominent.  In 1975, a big decision took place in which I had no more desire to pursue a career in the “professional” world but  sought to learn more about God and to train for His purpose for me in this new found relationship.  I found that the purpose statement for my life changed to “to know Christ and to make Him known.”  That was the purpose statement for the Navigators back in my younger days.  The new direction was caused by a new life, that is, I became born again and was then at the “infant” stage in my spiritual life.  I didn’t start out understanding the “meat “ of the Bible.  Quite the contrary, the more I studied the Scriptures, the less I knew as each day would bring out more things about God that I had never thought of before.  I became aware of the “milk” of the Bible first, as does a baby in the physical realm.  I knew that God loved me so much t hat He sent His Son to die for me.  That was the milk of John 3:16.  I thought that heaven existed and hell existed but that was all I knew about them.  That was more milk.  I knew about “Faith is just believing what God said was true.”  That was milk.  The meat come in such things as trying to understand the sovereignty of God, or the omnipotence of God, or the Trinity, or predestination and the adoption.  The list can go on and on and how are we going to answer these questions that keep coming up in our minds?  We answer them by fulfilling the new desire that we have and it it the spiritual food supply that is now present in our lives, the Bible.  If you claim to be a believer and yet have no desire for reading or listening, or meditating on, or memorizing the Word of God, then something is amiss.  I would reexamine your profession of faith as it sounds like you are just trying to please men and not God.  There has to be a love and a yearning to know more about Him and that is through His Word.  If there is no love for the word, you are starving your spiritual growth.  Praise God that He has given us a copy of His Word.  May we read it and put it into our lives.