Steps To Christian Maturity Series

There is one calling that every Christian has without exception,

and that is the calling to maturity. We are born into the household

of God as babes in Christ, but we are not to remain infants. We are

to grow up into the fullness of the stature of Christ. The speed with

which we achieve this goal is not determined by our age, but by our

understanding of and obedience to the Word of God. We make a

mistake if we think we must grow slow and waste half of our life

before we get down to business. Some years back it was announced

that St. Paul’s Cathedral in London was moving down Fleet Street

at the rate of one inch every hundred years, and someone remarked

that the church ought to be moving faster than that. They were

right, for the church was not made to be creeping along at a snail’s

pace.

Jesus did not build His church to be nursery of His kingdom.

He did not give His Word to be used as a pacifier. He built His

church to be the army of God, and He gave His Word to be the

Sword of the Spirit that through the church He might penetrate the

very gates of hell with the good news of salvation. Jesus wants

people of maturity, and we dishonor His cause by thinking it is good

to move in slow motion. A pastor in Chicago related a story of how

a man in Wednesday night prayer meeting prayed each time, “Lord,

take away the cobwebs.” Every week he would say the same prayer,

and finally one of the men who followed him in prayer prayed,

“Lord, never mind the cobwebs, kill the spider.” That is what God

wants. He wants people to get to the heart of the matter and not

beat around the bush. The world desperately needs Christians who

will get out of the toy department and get into the accounting

department, and start counting the cost of wasting their lives on the

superficial. Life is serious, and it is big business. It calls for all the

maturity our feeble minds can manage. Peter indicates that there

are three essential steps to Christian maturity that all of us must

take.

I. A SPECIAL DESIRE FOR THE WORD OF GOD.

Diets play a major role in our society, but it has always been

important in the Christian life. Your diet determines your destiny,

and also the shape of your character and life. Without food your

body will starve and become physically weak. Without truth your

mind will starve and become mentally weak. Without God’s Word

your soul will starve and become spiritually weak. God has given

His children a manna to sustain them as they pass through this

worldly wilderness of spiritual waste land. No Christian can be

mature if he does not nourish his soul with the milk and meat of

God’s Word. A healthy Christian will have an appetite for it. His

soul will get hunger pains if he does not feed on it.

Notice that Peter calls the Word pure spiritual milk. There is

milk in other books also, but it is not always pure, for men have

many ideas that they want the Scripture to support, and so they

twist the Word to fit their system of thinking. We are to have

mouths of our mind that drink in the milk of God’s pure message if

we are to grow in maturity. God’s Word is to be the basis on which

we evaluate all the words of men. Peter says if you have tasted that

the Lord is good you will desire more. If I say ground crempter and

mashed guilite it does not stimulate any desire in you. But if I say

prime rib and mashed potatoes it does stimulate desire. It is because

we have all tasted these things and know they are good, and so we

desire to have more. So it is with spiritual things. Only when a

person gets a taste of the goodness of God will they desire to feed on

His Word. The psalmist says, “O taste and see that the Lord is

good.”

Quite often you will see women in the supermarket offering

samples of different kinds of food. The philosophy behind this is

that once people get a taste of a product and find that it is good, they

will want more. This is good philosophy, and it works. It is nothing

new, however, for Peter says this philosophy is a key to Christian

maturity. Our tastes change over time. When I was young I never

cared for salad, but now I consider it a favorite part of the meal.

Books that once held no interest are now my favorites. Parts of the