Are You Craving?

Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation (1 Pet 2:2)

We are to be like newborn infants, craving the pure spiritual milk. Have you been around a hungry baby? Believe me, they let you know that they want to be fed. They’ll scream if they need to, all to get the milk they need to grow.

Yet how little we are like them. It amazes me when I learn how little some Christians do. I always see how far short I personally am falling, and sometimes I seem like I am boasting, when really I am doing the opposite, telling people how far short I am falling – and all because they are falling even further short. Like recently when I discovered that all but 4 people in my small group at church (and I was one of the four) were praying for less than 10 minutes a day at the end of the day, often falling asleep. The two leaders’ quiet times were usually about half an hour long in total. Only my housemate and myself went above half an hour a day. And I look at myself and I can hardly believe the small amount of time I spend in prayer, in the Word.

Babies get hungry every few hours. They feed for quite a while. They even wake throughout the night because they want more milk. They don’t eat for 5 or 10 minutes before bed. They spend most of their waking time consuming what will make them grow, and then, as they get bigger, they spend the rest of their waking time using their growing muscles, building their strength and agility.

We need to be craving the pure spiritual milk of the Word multiple times throughout the day, not just for a few minutes. We need to be praying often. We need to be more like babies.

Our lack of spiritual nourishment is the cause of our lack of spiritual strength.

We cannot give out when we have taken nothing in. And so few of us take nothing, or next to nothing, in.

Make a plan to read the Bible. You can read the whole Bible in a year by reading only 3 chapters a day! I read the Bible in 40 days once, and it was one of the best things I ever did. You don’t have to do that, but you can read a little more, and read throughout the day. Memorise one verse a day – even one verse a week will mean that you will have over 50 verses memorised by the end of a year! Several chapters of the Bible are far shorter than that! Memorise just 50 verses, and you could have 10 psalms memorised, verses, and you could have 10 psalms memorised, yours forever, even if you don’t have access to a Bible.

CRAVE the Word. Long for it. And consume it, day in, day out, that we might grow to be mighty warriors of the faith.