Hebrews 5:11-14 (CEV)
11 Much more could be said about this subject. But it is hard to explain, and all of you are slow to understand. 12 By now you should have been teachers, but once again you need to be taught the simplest things about what God has said. You need milk instead of solid food. 13 People who live on milk are like babies who don’t really know what is right. 14 Solid food is for mature people who have been trained to know right from wrong.
When we get babies, we expect then to grow and mature up. We expect that soon enough they will start making noises and that will grow into simple words and then they will be able to talk. We expect that they will soon be able to sit up on their own, and then they will begin to crawl and stand up on their own. Soon enough they will start taking baby steps and then they will be able to walk on their own and eventually we will be overjoyed when we hear their happy feet running all over the house.
Sadly it is not necessarily so in the house of God. The writer of Hebrews warns us against being content with immaturity. Some of us ought to be teachers by now but we still need to be taught some of the simplest things that God has said. We still need the milk of the word and we reject solid food. We are like babies who don’t really know what is right and wrong yet we have been born again for years.
Who is responsible for your maturity? You are! No one else can take up that responsibility.
Maturity has to do with taking responsibility. Mature people teach others, meaning they take responsibility. My friend Anthony Gitonga taught me that “To teach another is to learn better” The more I take on the responsibility to teach someone else the more I learn because I have to prepare meaning I gain even more understanding.
Many are being led astray today because they have simply refused to grow. They have refused to learn the basics of the faith and because they have abdicated their responsibility to grow to someone else, they are moved about like a reed with every wind of doctrine in the name of a “New revelation.”
Do you crave the meat or the milk of the word? Do not stay on milk for too long for if you do it will be easy for you to stray away. Grow and mature up in the things of God. Be grounded in the word, take on the meat and the responsibility to be a mentor to the younger ones, find someone you can teach!
