“… You need milk, not solid food!” (Hebrews 5:12 NIV)
Have you ever wondered why some believers live in a state of perpetual
spiritual infancy and never grow up?
[What they take in spiritually] is
at the heart of the problem. First Peter 2:2 gives us God’s nutritional
guidelines
for spiritual growth: “Like newborn babes, crave pure
spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation.”
Many pastors know the frustration of trying to help people //who claim to
have been Christians for years yet have all the maturity of a bunch of
toddlers //who get upset /when someone takes away their crayons.
[Believers
who don’t continually drink the pure milk of the Word of God] remain
babyish and unstable
/because they are neglecting the spiritual food //that
will help them grow.
How cruel it would be to deprive a newborn baby
of milk and cause him or her to suffer horribly as a result.
But think
of all of God’s “newborn babies” who are stunted in their spiritual
growth /because they deprive themselves of the pure milk () their spirit craves.
* stunted의 정의: prevented from growing or developing to the usual size: 성장저해 받다
This principle goes deeper still /when we contemplate the multitudes //who
drink “spiritual milk” but never get off the bottle. How ludicrous it
would be to see a thirty-five-year-old person sucking on a bottle and
eating a jar of baby food.
But that’s exactly what can happen
spiritually if we don’t maintain a balanced spiritual diet. The apostle
Paul warned the Corinthian church of this danger: “I gave you milk,
not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are
still not ready” (1 Corinthians 3:2).
There was more for the
Corinthians to learn /than just the first principles of Christianity, but
the believers there were too immature and worldly to digest “solid
food” from God’s Word.
To grow into spiritual maturity, we need to be conscious every day of
the needs of our inner man and the scriptural reminder //that “it is good
for our hearts to be strengthened by grace” (Hebrews 13:9).
God’s grace comes in different forms and through various channels, but
the truth remains the same. When we neglect such things as Bible
reading, prayer, worship, and fellowship with other believers, problems
of one kind or another will ensue /as surely as night follows day. How
can we ever be other than what we take in?
To be continued...
-Pastor Cymbala (excerpted from The Church God Blesses)
Read Hebrews 5:11-14.