Get Out of the Crib

Hebrews 5:11-14 - "We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 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."

1 Cor 3:1-6 - "Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly—mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, "I follow Paul," and another, "I follow Apollos," are you not mere men?
What, after all, is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants, through whom you came to believe—as the Lord has assigned to each his task. I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God, who makes things grow."

1 Cor 13:11 - "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me."

I’m afraid that our nation is one of primarily children. Not physical children, but rather spiritual children, or even more accurately, infants. Now, we are all children of God and would be good to be called as such until and after we reach Heaven. But it has occurred to me that our mighty nation, when you remove the lens of physical reality and instead look through the lens of spiritual reality, is a nation relying on infants to guide the way. Our minds are so limited to God’s possibility, and so ignorant of the presence of His Spirit in and around us (I certainly fit this description). We are still drinking the milk for a newborn instead of moving to solid food. Solid food is a jolt to the newborn’s system and cannot be tolerated, so we must feed infants with the milk they can digest. But at some point we must grow. Think about it: how ever old you are, you are still your parents’ child. Even if you’re 100 and your parents have long since passed, you are still their child. So we see that it is possible to grow into adulthood while still being a child. There is a real benefit of being a child of God, not only in this way, but even in immaturity and innocence.

Luke 10:21 - "At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure."

Children have some the freshest perspectives and have yet to falsely learn that some things are impossible. Nothing is impossible to a true child of God (Luke 1:37). However, I think God provides us with the inner movement of the Spirit to maintain that innocence and attitude while growing into adolescents and even adults in His Word and living it out for Him as if it is so controlling and such a part of us as our very DNA. That just breathing every day and everything we did and every thought we held captive glorified Him (2 Cor 10:5)…not just in the fact that His creation glorifies Him by their very existence, but that additionally, we would consciously and very intentionally glorify Him. We each need to take the milk that has been given to us and grow. Then as we begin to accept more solid food, new truths in the scripture will be revealed. And as we become adults, released into the world of those who do not yet recognize our Father, we can live for Him and be in the world and not of the world.

Jesus in John 17:14-18 - "I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world."

Unfortunately, too many of us become in the world and of the world, at least for a time…and for way too long. Others of us never seem to leave our cribs, content with a diet of milk and to be sheltered from the difficulty of the world, but also impaired in the good that we might bring it via Jesus Christ.

Get out of the crib! Desire something more than you have now—desire to know God more, desire to love Him more. To know Him more is to love Him more…they are synonymous.

1 John 4:7-19 - "Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
We know that we live in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in him and he in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us.
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment, because in this world we are like him. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
We love because he first loved us."

The great thing about our Heavenly Father is that when we go out, He is with us at all times.

Matt 28:19-20 - "Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."

We must embrace the opportunity to grow and become spiritual adults. Only then are we fit to have our own children entrusted to our care or to help lead a group or nation. Otherwise, we are infants at the wheel of a vehicle with passengers in addition to ourselves.

If you’re feeling terribly inadequate right now, take heart—the good news is that God knows exactly what you need and will be a solid rock by your side.

2 Samuel 22:2b-3, 47 - "...The LORD is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield and the horn of my salvation. He is my stronghold, my refuge and my savior—from violent men you save me...[47]The LORD lives! Praise be to my Rock! Exalted be God, the Rock, my Savior!"
Matt 7:24-25 - "Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock."

God truly loves you and will keep you in the way that is most effective and generates the most love between us and Him. Go forth not knowing if you’ve grown…go out knowing that you are feeble and inadequate…but trusting God…and see what amazing things He will do with you and me: weak, but willing servants. Along the way, you’ll find you’ve grown, and God worked perfectly with you and around you at each stage of growth. God’s adults do more than read the Word, or speak of the Word, or think about the Word—in addition, they simply live the Word of God.

James 1:22-27 - "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like a man who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world."

How can you live it today?