Every Monday, the apprentices and staff of CGA get the opportunity to listen to a guest speaker. This week, Bill Swan, who is the Director of the World Race and one of my house mentors (his wife, Katie, is the other one), spoke to us about Hebrews 5:11-6:3. To summarize, this passage talks about how we reach a point in our walk of faith where we need to become teachers. In other words, we need to graduate from drinking milk like infants to eating solid food like adults.
This was a good reminder for me and aligns with how I’ve been spending my quiet times. I’ve been trying to have more intentional time actually in the Word. In particular, I’ve really connected with a few of the psalms. The first is a classic: Psalm 23. What’s really hit home for me is the line that says:
He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.
He refreshes my soul.
What an encouraging line! This semester has been wonderful, but I definitely feel like I’ve walked through a lot of self-discovery. There have been times where it has felt overwhelming, and I’ve found myself asking the question of “How could there possibly be more to work through?” Sometimes the Lord gives me more than I may feel like I can handle (even though with Him, I can) in order for me to become more dependent on Him. It’s in those moments, when I stop and think that there is simply too much to process through, that I find myself re-focusing my attention back to Him who has all of the answers.
It’s been a humbling experience, but it’s also helped me to recognize that the Lord is showing me more of where I’m going. There is this sense of needing to do this heavy lifting work right now, in order to clear the way for what’s coming. My inheritance in His kingdom is glorious, which brings me to the second psalm that has spoken to me: Psalm 16. In the midst of restoring my soul, the Lord is also revealing my inheritance:
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance.
While it’s abundantly clear that we cannot earn our inheritance by doing works, we are asked to be obedient to participating in the work the Lord is doing in our lives in order for us to become more of the people we were created to be.
The positive consequence of this obedience is that we move from drinking milk to eating solid food. With new food comes new experiences that sometimes require us to do some chewing in order to receive everything available to us.
From infancy to adulthood.
From milk to solid food.
