Milk or Meat, Maturing in Your Faith

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. - Hebrews 5:12–14 

   Writing to Jewish Christians, the author of Hebrews is basically saying, by now, you should be mature in your faith but unfortunately you’re not even close. Kind of pointed, in your face Scripture, don’t you think?

   We can spend weeks dissecting that conclusion and identifying what contributed to them being in that state. That may be a future study. For now, I think it might be more applicable and of more value to walk through how we can move from milk to meat. Or more specifically, how to move from having a general head knowledge of Scripture (in my opinion, milk) to gaining so deep an understanding of the Scripture (meat) that it becomes embedded deep within your heart. An added characteristic of maturing in your faith is your thoughts are focused more on glorifying God and Christ than anything, or anyone else.

   Let’s consider the claim, What you pray for you get.

  There are some who believe, without exception, that if you ask God for anything he will give it to you. I personally know someone who lost her husband to cancer and her pastor at that time told her, in her distress, she must not have prayed hard enough for her husband’s healing. 

   When that belief is claimed, it’s typically based on Matthew 7:7-8

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.- Matthew 7:7-8

   If you are ‘immature’ in your faith, what that means is you are young, new, just starting to learn, etc. But like anything else you tend to become more mature over time. Mature is meant to mean deeper in your understanding, more knowledgeable, and more experienced in your reliance on something. With regards to faith that takes an intentional effort.

   Back to our Scripture. On a surface basis the scripture says quite simply, “Ask, and it will be given to you…for everyone who asks receives.” Pretty straight forward if all you did was read that verse on a plaque somewhere…Milk. 

   However, if you expand what you are reading to include the verses before and after these to put the verses into the context of the verses preceding and following, you would better understand Matthew is writing about relational things, do not judge others, treat others the way you want to be treated, how a father gives to his child, how to get to heaven, and being persistent in your requests: ask, seek, knock. Now you are starting to develop the ability to go deeper, to start eating solid food.

   Let’s delve a bit deeper. Verses 7-8 and the other verses are saying there are prerequisites to getting what you ask for. The main one being a relationship with God denoted by the verses about the narrow gate and of the relationship between a father and his son. And going a bit further in verses 21-23, where Matthew talks about those who did good deeds but never had a relationship with Christ, never accepted him as their Savior. 

   From here we need to look at other verses which expound on this concept of asking and receiving namely, 1 John 5:14-15, and John 14:12-14…

And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. - 1 John 5:14-15 

“Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. - John 14:12–14

   Here we see another prerequisite, our reason for asking. 1 John 5:14 specifically says, ‘ask anything according to his will’ where ‘his will’ is a reference to Christ’s will. And in John 14:14, he says to ask in his name, in the name of Christ. Your request should be from the perspective of honoring God and according to what he wills to be done. 

   When we pray we don’t always know what God’s will is, for example we may be praying for healing but don’t know if healing is what God will do. In that instance it’s okay to ask for what you want, but know what you want may not be in line with what God wants. So, ask in his name and will, “Lord, if it’s your will, please provide physical healing, it is in Christ’s name I pray.” Paul knew this approach well. 

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” - 1 Corinthians 12:7-9

   Paul pleaded for the issue to go away, and God said, “No” every time because he wanted Paul to remain humble and to always rely on Christ and not himself.

   Another example of asking with the wrong motive is found in James 4:1-3. In these verses we see the added insight of how asking with the wrong motives can cause even greater tension 

What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. - James 4:1–3

   Lastly, let me provide some comfort in that you don’t need to be perfect in your request, nor do you even need to request anything. Sometimes you simply need to say, "God I don’t even know where to start except to say I need you."

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. - Romans 8:26-28