A call to Spiritual Maturity

“You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right. Solid food is for those who are mature, who through training have the skill to recognize the difference between right and wrong.” Hebrews 5:12-14
I have no idea where you are at in your walk with God. There’s a huge number of people that could potentially end up reading this, some of you I know, others I don’t know, some of you have been Christians a long time, some may have found Christ more recently and others among you may not quite be there yet. So it is impossible for me to know where you are at in your personal walk with God. Only you and God know that. But I do know that, if you are anything like me, you aren’t anywhere as near as close to God as you should be.
We tend to get content with where we are at. We figure that we are doing enough if we go to church most weeks, read our ‘daily’ devotional every few days and fire up a few quick prayers each day. We think that what was enough when we first became Christians is still enough now. And I have a feeling the Holy Spirit wants to grab us and shake us until we realise that that is not enough. That we are settling for baby milk when there is a three course feast waiting for us.
So this is a call to spiritual maturity. A call to stop relying on the same (now somewhat stale) milk we have been getting by on for however long we have been a Christian for. A call to stop sitting back and enjoying the view when we have so much further to climb up the mountain of God and not very long to climb it. A call for us to move beyond the basics. But before we can move beyond the basics, we need to make sure they are in place.
We need to make sure we are rooting our faith in God’s Word, committing to read it on a regular (daily) basis. Which will be a step up for some of us, and will require diligence and persistence. And will be helped by coming up with a reading plan so that there is some sort of logic to what you read each day (maybe you want to read through the Gospels a chapter a day for starters…)
We need to be constantly relying on God through prayer, taking all our worries and concerns to him, and then we will experience his peace (see Philippians 4:6-7). And this may mean sacrificing time when we would otherwise be sleeping or facebooking. But it is through prayer (not a “new wall post notification”) that we connect with God. And it is through prayer that things get changed.
We need to be connected with others who share our passion for Christ. Church is a good starting point for this, but shouldn’t be our only port of call. Having a good group of Christian friends can encourage and inspire you when you are feeling down. They can support you through rough patches in your life. They can set an example that spurs you on to greater things. (For me it has often been seeing the faith of my friends that has convicted me that my own faith has been lacking.)
Those are the basics. The ‘spiritual milk’. Reading the Bible daily. Praying as much as possible. Regularly attending some form of church and having fellowship with other believers in between. So today take some time to suss out if you have them sorted, and then get ready to move on. For it is time for all of us to mature. It is time to move on to the rich feast of solid food that God wants us to enjoy. That is going to be our focus in these next few weeks, going deeper in each of our walks with God, growing in maturity and ceasing to be like ‘babies’. It isn’t going to be a straightforward, easy journey, but it will be rewarding. Are you ready?