Week of Prayer and Fasting - Day 3 - What Are You Eating?

Growth - What Are You Eating?

We all know what mom says!  If you want to grow you have to eat well!  So pull out the salad and wash off the fruit!  Make sure you cover the 5 food groups and all the essential vitamins and iron!

This is a fast week and were talking about food!  Please have compassion!

No really we are talking about spiritual food.  The Bible talks about it.  It encourages us to feed and be strengthened.  It also encourages us to be self-controlled  and careful that if we eat or drink or whatever we do then we should do it to the glory of God.

So what kind of spiritual food should we be eating?

Well the first type of food the Bible talks about is milk!  Some people like milk others do not.  Some people think milk is for kids and babies and others regularly enjoy a tall cold glass of the stuff.  But whatever the case the Bible talks about milk.

In 1 Peter 2:1-3, Peter writes

1 Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, 

2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, 

3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.

Desire the pure milk of the word that you may grow by it!  Now some people might think... well milk isn’t for me.  I am not a newborn.  That is not Peter’s point here.  He is saying that if we want to grow then we have to start with a sincere desire for God’s word.  Mother’s milk for the newborn is about the best thing a baby can get!  There are so many good things about it.  It has the good things the body needs.  It gives the drinker the protection and benefit of the mother’s immunity to sickness.  It is easy for the body to process and digest this milk.  There are all kinds of benefits that come from mother’s milk and there are all kinds of benefits that come from the milk of God’s word.

Peter is writing to believers here in the first of 2 letters and over and over in these letters he reminds them of things that they already know and have already been taught.  Why?  Because they are important!  They are a foundation.  If they are forgotten or neglected then there is danger to the believers and to the Church.  So he tells them, have a sincere, earnest desire for God’s word.  Are we hungry for God’s word or is it just something we fall back on when we have a problem, a need or a few moments to rush through a chapter or short passage?  Where is the Bible in our list of daily priorities?

Now the Bible also contrasts milk to solid food.  Just as we hope a baby will, in the proper time, move from milk to solid food there are those things in God’s word that are basic and foundational and there are those things that are more complex or difficult.  The Bible though is not saying that one is better than the other.  It is simply saying that both are necessary and one must come before the other.

For example 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 says,

1 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. 

2 I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able; 

3 for you are still carnal. For where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?

It was not that the Corinthians had not had milk... it was a matter that they had not mastered it yet.  In other words when we haven’t really learned a foundational truth then we have to go back and master it.  It is important to the process of our growth.

In Hebrews 5:12-6:2

12 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. 

13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 

14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. 

1 Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, 

2 of the doctrine of baptisms, of laying on of hands, of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment. 

We see that there is a time to progress but sometimes there can be regression as well.  Sometimes there needs to be a reminder.  Solid food comes with time but time is also no guarantee that we are ready.  There needs to be another principle of growth, which we will talk about later, exercise!  In chapter 6:1-2 we see the some of the “elementary principles” that the writer is talking about.  Sometimes we need to go back, look again, be reminded.

That is why Peter is not afraid to remind his readers again and again.  When we earnestly desire the Word of God we will grow.  And the hope then with having both milk and solid food is that we will grow up into someone “...who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”