As a pastor, one of my great passions is to see people mature in their faith, growing in their walk with the Lord and becoming all that God destined them to be.

At a few places in the New Testament this same passion is expressed in terms of moving on from a baby diet of milk to a more mature diet of solid foods. Nobody wants to be a baby forever- except some christians who just consume and never give out.

In Hebrews 5:12-13 we read:

You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn’t know how to do what is right.

When we just look after our own needs we are acting like a baby. When church is all about me “getting fed”, or the music that I like or a nice message, that is just the milk of faith. You can be a christian conference junkie getting the best Bible teaching week after week, or spend three years at Bible College, and still be a baby, living on milk.

How do we move onto maturity and get the solid food? The writer to Hebrews says it is when we are teaching others. Teaching means passing on knowledge or skills. This does not have to be standing in front of a group of people giving a lecture.

It could mean

• praying with and for people in a cell group- that’s passing on your knowledge of prayer,
• helping the leader of your cell group through offering to take responsibility for some part of group life
• sharing the Good News with your friends
• being on the maintenance team at church
• singing or playing an instrument in church or cell group

The amazing thing is that when knowledge is put into action in these ways, we grow immensely because faith was never meant to be kept to ourselves. Church is meant to be a community where everybody brings their gifts and talents and uses them to help others. It was never meant to be a professional performance where the “experts” do it all.

I am often amazed by children in church. You ask them a question about walking with the Lord, and you get the mumbled answers and the standard answers, but then maybe 5% of answers will carry so much wisdom that you gasp and think, “Where did you get that from?” It says in the bible that even a child will lead them. (Isaiah 11:6)

Are you sill on the milk of faith? Are you for ever taking in and never giving out, like the Dead Sea? Or have you seen the power that giving to others actually grows you more than it grows them?

Move on from the milk and the childish ways of doing things.