Milk and Meat

I love the Bible study by Henry Blackaby that I did years ago. It is still a great influence in my life. The study taught me many, many things but the overall theme of the study was this: To experience God you have to have the “eyes to see where He is working” and then “GO”. Go get involved. Go do God’s work. Meat is needed here. Accomplishing God’s will for your created purpose requires more than surviving on “spiritual milk”. It involves throwing away “the bottle, the pacifier, and the blanket!”

As adults none of us crawl around on the floor having never learned to walk or run. In many ways though as an adult in my 40’s, that is what I looked liked spiritually. I was “crawling and sometimes walking but stumbling as I went”. I came to an “aha” moment realizing I wasn’t dead and God wasn’t done. Yep, His desire was for me to “eat the meat of His word,” to “ingest it”. “To dwell on it” and to throw away the bottle and RUN. Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is alive and ACTIVE. Sharper than any double edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart” [emphasis added].

Basically, for me to run spiritually meant God calling me to be a “WORD GIRL!” Yes, to read and study it…and TO DO WHAT IT SAID. Seeking Him…..knowing my behavior would not be perfect…but also knowing that God is perfectly able to give me a heart that desires to seek and experience God!

Basically…learn from me…Until you come to a point of wanting what God wants for your life every day…and not what you want… you cannot go from spiritual milk to spiritual meat.

You cannot rely on man…or yourself…it is God. His word is clear. I love the Old Testament. We learn from 2 Chronicles16:7-9, “Because you relied on the king of Aram and not on the Lord your God, the army of the king of Aram has escaped your hand. Were not the Cushites and the Libyans a mighty army with great numbers of chariots and horsemen? Yet when you RELIED on the Lord he delivered them into your hand. For the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth to STRENGTHEN those WHOSE HEARTS ARE FULLY COMMITTED TO HIM!” [emphasis added].

To be fully committed to God…Psalm 24 teaches “we must have clean hands and a pure heart” in order to become a “word girl or a word man”. We can do what is visibly right while our hearts are far from God. God called out the Pharisees in Matthew 23:25, “Woe to you teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisees! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.”

God does not look at what man looks at…HE looks at the motives and desires of why we do what we do.

To fully surrender to God…you are saying…Not my will but Yours…and then Doing it. “Throwing off the blanket and pacy of comfort”…to become uncomfortable…and stepping so that we RELY on God to lead and to shine the light of direction. Relying on his MAP and GPS.

For me to get to this point………I had to have a meeting with myself and God every day…asking Him to shine the light on my heart…not in a condemning way but in a way that “shows me the imperfections of my thoughts….that led to wrong behavior”. I’ve had to allow Him to redirect. I could not let the pacy or bottle or blanket become an excuse for not going deeper with God.

Oh, just to encourage you…I do not think I am perfect. Far from it. I feel very much like Paul in Philippians 3:12-14, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind me and straining toward what is ahead. I PRESS on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” [emphasis added].

God’s desire is for us to grow…to change…to accomplish His perfect will for our lives. We cannot do this by crawling and relying on spiritual milk. We have to read, absorb and apply the “meat of His word”. It is there we learn to “shed our will for HIS WILL” so that we can experience God’s fullness and accomplish our created purpose.

He designed a path for all of us. There is ONE map…His word. There is one voice…His voice. There is one Shepherd…that is God.

If you find yourself in a place of being unsure? lost? confused? Realize….you have to fully surrender to a HOLY God…not just outwardly but inwardly…and take hold of God. Truly living in the growth mindset of Philippians 2:13, “for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.”

Being a “Word girl” is by far the coolest, most exhilarating thing I have ever done. More cool than being a wife, a daughter, a mother…or wearing an earthly crown. Relying on God is a JOY RIDE…not easy…but exhilarating for sure.

God takes your failures, shortcomings and challenges and makes them your story.

Don’t allow them to be your excuses.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *