Seasons: Summer — Monday
1 Peter 2:1-3
So get rid of all evil behavior. Be done with all deceit, hypocrisy, jealousy, and all unkind speech. Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation. Cry out for this nourishment, now that you have had a taste of the Lord’s kindness. (NLT)
Most people think about senior year of college as the last time you get to live with all of your best friends before you become “real adults.” My senior year of college, I lived with my married friends while they were walking through the birth of their first child. While this was a really strange season of life, I definitely grew a lot. During the nine months I lived in that house, I adopted a cat, decided to go into full-time ministry, and for the first time in my life, I got to witness a real human, Finley, grow through his first six months of life. I had never really been around a newborn before, but from the time he was four days old, we were roommates.
Straight from the womb, he knew that when he was hungry, he needed to cry. While it might have been incredibly frustrating to be woken up at 3am by a hungry baby, I knew he was just doing what he needed to do. He didn’t need words to express his needs. He would scream out into the night, and his mom would wake up, feed him, and then rock him back to sleep. This cycle is what kept him alive.
Peter says that all we as Christians need to do is cry out for the nourishment of spiritual milk. While most people probably wouldn’t want to be compared to a baby, I actually appreciate this analogy he uses. Every human on earth started as a newborn. Though we don’t remember the late-night cries for milk, that behavior was set in us before we were born. The spiritual milk Peter speaks of is the Word of God—the wisdom and truth He has given us in Scripture. And in the same way a baby craves the milk it needs to survive and grow, we must truly crave God’s Word and “consume” it as our spiritual life source. Because when we regularly meditate on and memorize the teachings of God, it changes us, and we're able to grow and experience the fullness of salvation He intends for us.
Monday’s Reflection
I don’t know about you, but I would love to experience the fullness of salvation every single day. Are you crying out for the Word of God? Are you trying to experience the fullness of salvation?