Milk and Meat

            Confession: I really enjoy a tall, cold glass of milk. Not skim, 1%, or 2%. Give me the real, whole stuff with all the fat content. I like the richness, the way it satisfies. Even a full glass of moo doesn’t keep me going for a long time. I want and need some substance. Veggies are nice, and I’m fond of them. But I want my meat. Chicken, beef, fish. I’m there. Plunk it on my plate. When I eat meat, I’m not hungry for a long time.  Meat satisfies me.

            Now, you may be a vegan or hold your nose at my protein favorites. We can disagree on those, but I hope you are consuming plenty of spiritual meat. Spiritual milk is good for young Christians, as it is for infants, but it’s not to be our diet for long.

            This isn’t a new concept to me, and it probably isn’t to you either. What does a meat-eating Christian look like? What should I look like? I used to think it was enough to merely read the Word, and it would purify my life, like water from a stream washes a dirty bushel basket. That could be enough to clean the basket, but it’s not enough to transform me.

            Meat takes a good bit of chewing. Certainly I’ve chewed on the Word in my 49 years as a Christian. Still, I’ve also had more than my share of milk, too.  There’s more involved in chewing than drinking, isn’t there?  Meat is tougher, and our teeth get quite involved in working on a bite of meat. Teeth can exert as much as two hundred pounds of pressure, so that square of steak can get a good workover by the time I swallow.

            There’s no difference when it comes to spiritual meat, and I’ve been more committed to chewing spiritually lately. I know I won’t change any other way than by becoming a spiritual carnivore. Chomping on truth is transformational. Chewing—pondering, considering, applying, and most of all asking God to make his word into the muscle and sinew of my life.

            Something interesting happens when I feed on the meat of the Word. While I’m satisfied with God’s truth, as I am with a delicious steak, after a while I want more of that meat. And God keeps serving up more. Now and then I like a glass of milk, but spiritually I want to set the milk aside and focus on the meat. What’s on the table for you?

            But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. (Hebrews 5:14, NIV)