Today's Reading:
Job 12:1-15:35
Hebrews 5:1-14
Psalm 122:1-9
Click on Text Link to Read Online
Focus Verses: Hebrews 5:11-14
11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. 12 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! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
Insight:
Spiritual
maturity requires a desire and an effort to understand. We must
cultivate an appetite for deeper understanding. Deeper understanding
will require chewing on things with more substance. The milk of
elementary beliefs and ideas is a good starting point for being a
Christian, but a willingness to wrestle through the bigger questions of
life demands perseverance and effort. The simple things that nurture us
in our Christian infancy are sweet and good, but we will need a much
more nutritious and complex diet if we are to mature into Christians
able to live out the gospel in a complicated and demanding world.
Response and Action:
My
spiritual maturity requires my effort. A desire to grow is essential to
growing. While I need to long for the pure spiritual milk that gets me
started, I must not be content to live on milk alone. I must press
forward for deeper things. I must wrestle with bigger questions. I must
become more and more familiar with the scriptures. I must discuss and
think and respond to more demanding aspects and concerns of what it
means to follow Christ Jesus and live for him.
The way
of spiritual maturity is more than a sweet and simple belief; it is a
rigorous and demanding path that requires my best thinking, my deepest
desire, and my wholehearted effort. Spiritual maturity results from more
than belief and surrender; it requires diligent pursuit.
O
God, give me a desire for maturity. By the power and grace of your Holy
Spirit, lead, teach, transform, shape and strengthen me, that I might
delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your Name.
Grant me the wisdom and the will to guard my heart, to feed my spirit,
to stimulate my mind, and to care for my body. Help me to press on and
to strain forward that I might know you more and more. Help me to take
hold of the maturity and purpose you have in mind for me. Through
Christ, I pray. Amen.
Spiritual Formation Verses: Philippians 3:13-14
13
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold
of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining
toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for
which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Resources:
Life with God: Reading the Bible for Spiritual Transformation
by Richard Foster
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