Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Feeding Yourself


“In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us move beyond the elementary teachings about Christ and be taken forward to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about cleansing rites, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment.  And God permitting, we will do so.” (Hebrews 5:12-6:3 NIV)

In my years as a campus minister, one statement I hear fairly often is, “I was not being fed.”  And it comes from both students who leave our ministry for another and students who come to our ministry from another. Of course, this sentiment is not limited to college students; there are plenty of adults in churches who say the same thing.  It seems a lot of believers feel the need to be spiritually fed by someone else. 

The same attitude existed in the 1st Century church as well, and the Hebrew writer minced no words.  He basically called them out as spiritual adults acting like babies.  While they should be far beyond the elementary teachings of the faith and growing more mature, they have remained infants in their thinking and understanding.  They can only handle the basics of salvation, teachings on the Resurrection, and the facts involving eternal judgment—elementary school level subjects.  He’s telling them to grow up and learn to feed themselves.  

In a discipleship course I teach every year to students desiring to be leaders in our ministry, we talk about this very thing.  I ask them to imagine seeing a mother breastfeeding her five-year-old or spoon-feeding her 12-year-old.  There are always gasps of disgust.  Yet, isn’t this what we so often see in the church?  People who have been in the church for years still having their mouths wide open looking for someone else to feed them. 

The Hebrew writer told his readers, and is telling us, that it is time to grow up and learn how to feed ourselves. We need to move beyond the basics of the faith to teaching ourselves how to live righteously.  How?  By constant use, he says.  By digging into the Word daily and putting into practice what it says.  Sure, we will all need help in doing this, but the responsibility of maturing is on us.  A learner becomes adept in a subject or skill by applying himself, his attention and energy, to it.  And if it is important enough to him, he will do it.

Today, if you want to be spiritually fed, then open up the Word and start reading.

© Jim Musser 2013

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