Monday, October 1, 2018

You Can't Drink Milk Your Whole Life

Every year I have ever played basketball, we begin each season with the basics. Even in college, you have to start somewhere, and we start with simple skills and drills. We don't walk into the first practice and expect to be playing 5 on 5 full court. That would be terrible. We would pick up awful habits right away. It takes a week or so to get to that point. We have to put in hours of the basics before getting to the real deal. Without the basics our team would never be a finished product. There always has to be a strong foundation. Stronger the foundation wider the pyramid right?

Another example of this would be the first week of classes every year. The first classes are always so boring and you're like why the heck do I have to go. You go to class the first week so you understand how the professor teaches the course and so you can learn how the class will work. Have you ever had that professor who likes to give a quiz over the syllabus? So dumb right? Not really. This happens all the time, a professor gives a quiz over the syllabus and someone fails the quiz because they were either not there or they didn't pay attention.

One last example. Think of relationships. When you start getting the feels for someone you will do absolutely whatever it takes for them to know that you dig them! You're extra in everything you do because you don't want to lose that person. You want to impress that person in the best way that you can. Fellas, you better always be doing that to your lady. We all know we don't deserve the women we have in our lives. As relationships progress, it's easy to forget the basics. It's easy to get comfortable. You think you have her in the bag and then crap, she's not digging you anymore because you forgot the basics. We so easily stop doing the things we should be doing because we get comfortable.

Friends, we are dull of hearing. What we have learned in our faith walk is so quickly forgotten. We learn a lot of the basics at a young age and as we grow older, we become more distracted and we forget the most basic things! It happens to us all. I'll come across something in the bible and be like...I seriously forgot about this story! How? When we learn the best by learning the basics. I believe that sometimes we get so comfortable that we just say screw the basics. When you stray away from the basics you forgot so many things that you have learned your whole life. You don't have that strong foundation you need to be a good basketball team. You fail your quiz and have no idea how the professor teaches the class. You get comfortable in a relationship and it could fall apart. You forget the basics and you have no where to go.

About this we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic principles of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food, for everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.  (Hebrews 5:11-14) 

...since we have become dull of hearing we need someone to teach us the basic principles of the oracles of God. We were supposed to be teachers by now. All of us. Can you imagine that? We should have the basics down so well that we could teach it to everyone. Remember we aren't perfect. We were not made to have all of the answers right now. That is why God is God. We are meant to grow, grow, grow, and grow some more. We are seeds, not fully flowered trees. That is how God wanted it so that we recognize that we NEED Him.

We need milk because we really don't know what we are talking about. Milk is for those who are unskilled in the word of righteousness. Milk is for children and that is where a lot of us are. We need that milk to make our bones nice and strong. We need the basics to make our relationship with Christ strong. We cannot get to the top and know everything without starting at the very beginning. That isn't how life works. Eventually, we get to the solid food. Solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil. I would hope that we all have a goal of solid food. Milk isn't bad, but you can't drink only milk your whole life. We will always need to know the basics and put a huge emphasis on them. We can't just be focused on that. We need solid food, we need growth, we need to be able to distinguish good from evil on a consistent basis.

We are dull of hearing. Bottom line. We forget what is simple because we think we know it all. When life hits us in the mouth, we feel like we failed. That's Satan making you feel like you don't know enough. Satan hates the basics. When we can get the basics down, things in our lives will begin to make much more sense. Everything will become more clear one step at a time.

I hope you were encouraged by this post. If I came across as harsh I am sorry, I wrote this with a little bit of fire because I am a firm believer that we as Christians have forgotten the basics and the simplicity of it all. My hope is that you were reminded of how important the basics are.

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