1 Corinthians 3: 2I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?
I loved putting models together when I was a kid. Planes cars, battleships, it did not matter the type. My favorite part was painting them. Since that is what I enjoyed the most, it would be the first thing I did. Well I never could seem to wait until the paint was dry to start putting them together, so as you can imagine, I ended up with fingerprints in my paint….you know they never smooth all the way out? I just got ahead of myself, there is a reason why you paint last. As I got older, I still seemed to struggle with the same problem, I wanted something, so I would go get it. Oh never mind I did not have the money, I would just finance it on a card…there I go again getting ahead of myself. It took me running several models, and amassing a huge amount of debt to begin to understand that Life is a series of steps, and you need to take the first one before you go on to the third one. The older I get, and the more people I talk to, I see that we tend to do the same in our spiritual lives. I put the NIV text at the beginning of this, but the KJV makes it a little clearer, it states in verse 2 “I have fed you with milk, and not with meat” Now the word meat seems easy enough to understand but when we look at the Greek word actually used in the text we see it is: bro’ma bro'-mah; food (literally or figuratively), especially (ceremonial) articles allowed or forbidden by the Jewish law: - meat, victuals. Why is that important ? What Paul is telling them is that I am teaching you the basics of Christ, because you are not ready to get into the bigger issues yet, you are still mere men…..worldly men. You are not ready to argue the points of right and wrong on a large scale (such as what is and is not allowed by law, and getting away from Mosaic law). You are not ready to do these things until you have accomplished the basics of Christ within yourself. You have to drink the milk of the Lord, before you move on to the meat. The interesting thing about the milk, it is a lot harder than it sounds. The milk deals with changing yourself. It is one of the reasons we as humans want to jump right into the meat. It is always easier to tell others to change, than to change ourselves. We are still sometimes very much mere men and women. We have to fix ourselves, before we can go out and start fixing others. A story I am sure I have told before, but it is worth repeating is about the man who wanted to make a change. He wanted to change his family, so he became very involved in their lives, telling them what to do, how to do it, and when to do it. He was not successful, so he thought he would try to change his community, so he ran and was elected to city council, yet here again as hard as he tried, he could not make the changes he was working for, so he thought maybe a higher office, maybe I can change the country, and that will change my community, and as a result change my family, so he ran and was elected to the Senate. While there he passed many laws, and worked on behalf of the people, he never could reach the core, he never accomplished the change desired. It was not until he was an old man, retired, and reflecting on his life that he realized. He never achieved the change he was looking for, because he never changed himself. Had he started with himself, he would have shown his family how to live, and they would have changed. That changed family would have gone out into the community, and changed it, that community could have changed the state, then the country……and a force like that can change the world. It starts with you, you have to drink the milk, you have to change yourself, you have to let Christ into your life, and learn how you can be the person He needs you to be. Once you have the milk down, then you can, not just make a change to meat, you can be the change in the lives of those around you. To set the world on fire, it does not take a match. It takes the fire that burns inside of you. Be the change, drink the milk of the Lord.
God Bless,
Brian Thetford
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www.thenewcovenantchurch.com
www.theworkweekwithchrist.blogspot.com
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