Growing

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.  – Hebrews 5.12

A key part of Christian living in spiritual growth and progress and service. God did not save us for us to sit still and stay stagnant. As we grow we are to become involved in the great work of teaching and sharing and edifying. We need to get to the point where we start to give and not just get.

We have been involved in watching our children and now many our grandchildren grow and develop from birth. Even now we have a nearly unbroken succession of 15 descendants at various ages of growth from a 35 year old son to a five month old granddaughter. It is interesting to watch children grow and develop in various ways.

All of them, without exception, have started their lives  needing one food. All they needed was milk. As time goes on they start to eat semi-solid foods. Then they grow on to ‘real foods’ and get to the point when they can eat and enjoy almost anything. Eventually they all get to the point where they can help to feed the younger babies their food.

It would be a tragedy if any child just stopped at the point where they only took in milk and always had to have someone there to feed it to them.

And it is just as tragic when believers never move beyond the baby stage where they need someone to bottle-feed the milk of God’s word.

We must move beyond that. We must get to the point where we not only move on to feeding ourselves on the meat of the word but to the point where we can begin to teach others.

No one is born as an adult. We all need to grow and we are going to vary in our growth. But if we stay spiritual babies there is something wrong. It is time to start growing up. It is time to start feeding instead of being fed. It doesn’t mean we all have to preach or even teach Sunday School or whatever, but we all need to grow to the point we can start helping others to grow as well.