Infants or Adults

DEVOTION HEBREWS INFANTS OR ADULTS Heb 5:11-14 11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. 12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. NIV Does this speak to us about just being Christians and not growing in our faith? Can we afford to be known as infants? How long should we be a believer before we are able to teach others? How long does to take to become a mature believer? Does one year, five years, ten years, fifteen or twenty years in the faith make us mature? Or is it a matter of how many times we have had a meeting with God? Is it based on how much time we have spent in the Word of God, how many hours of study and prayer, listening to the Spirit speaking to our hearts? Surely it is not how many times we have attended church. Being mature has to be about how many times we have attended to our relationship with God. It has to be about having trained ourselves by the Word of God to be able to distinguish good from evil. If we have done that then we are not only able but qualified and expected to teach others. This life as a believer is not always about ourselves, always thinking about self, and how we need this or that, or what problem we need God to fix, or even about how we are growing. We need to be focused on what does God expect from us in our relationship within the body or Christ to other believers. If we have trained ourselves and have become mature believers, then according to this passage, we need to be teaching others. Why are some many believers not being teachers? Why are some many believers just coming to church, singing the songs, praising God, listening to sermons, even some attending a Sunday School class and then just going home, to repeat that the following Sunday? Is there that many infants? Why, when some many believers gather socially, talk about anything else other than the Word of God? Why aren’t they teaching someone about righteousness? Too many questions and not enough answers. It would appear we each need to ask ourselves these questions. Are we infants or adults?