To Encourage You

Hebrews 5:12 “For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food.”

Some years ago, while I was hunting on the mountain next to the home where I grew up, I ran into a friend of my father’s.  As we chit-chatted for a few moments, the conversation turned to my dad.  My dad’s friend said this: “Boy, I wish I had faith like your dad!”  To which I replied, “You could, if you wanted it.”  That’s the way it is in the Christian life.  At the moment we believe, the Lord opens to us vast resources to guide us in life. In Him resides infinite power, infinite wisdom, infinite joy, and infinite love.  He has told us who are His children, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7). 

You see, although the Lord loves us deeply, He doesn’t force Himself upon us.  He doesn’t cram His truth down our throats if we don’t want it.  He tells us to ask.  He wants us to want Him. If our love for Him is real, we will desire to be with Him, to listen to Him, and to glorify Him.  Thus, the rebuke of the verse above.  There is no reason for any Christian to stay in one place, spiritually.  Though each and every one of us starts our Christian walk as a “baby,” spiritually speaking, none of us are meant to stay there.  But we must want to grow in order to do so. 

While my father’s friend expressed a wish to have a stronger faith, if he was really serious about it, God’s Word has this answer: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).  The Word of God is something we should hunger for like a newborn baby longs for milk (1 Peter 2:2), but then we are told that if we actually feed on it like this, we will grow by it.  The Bible is like nothing else in that it meets us where we are.  It is simple enough that a child to grasp its concepts, but it is deep enough that the most brilliant mind that ever existed can never fully plumb its depths.  It’s full of “milk,” for the baby Christian just starting out, and it’s full of “solid food” for the spiritually mature. 

So, what about you?  Where are you spiritually?  Are you a person that has attended a church for many years, but to have a serious discussion regarding the Word of God, you would be lost? If someone asked you what would happen to them after death, could you tell them and show them from God’s Word?  Are you able to preach the gospel to an unbeliever and teach God’s awesome truth to believers who perhaps haven’t known the Lord as long as you have?  If not, why not?  It’s surely not because you don’t have someone to teach you, for Jesus has promised us that “the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things” (John 14:26). 

You see, if we know Christ, we have a resident Teacher with us every moment of every day in the person of the Holy Spirit.  He is willing and ready, more than we can possibly understand, to reveal His wonderful Truth to us as we study the words He has given us in the Bible.  And He has provided pastors and teachers to help us if we will avail ourselves of their help.  The question is, how much do we want to know? How much do we want to grow? Do we hunger and thirst for Him like the psalmist who said, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1). And do we hear this cry of Jesus in the words He spoke concerning the Jews to Whom He came? “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Matthew 23:37). 

So, are you on milk or solid food, spiritually speaking?  Are you stuck in one place, or do you desire to move on and grow?  If you sincerely want to grow, the way is wide open for you, for the Way, the Truth, and the Life wants nothing more than to draw you to Himself and instruct you in His ways – that is, if you really want Him to, and if you will ask, seek, and knock as if you want nothing more in this world than to know Him