What is your goal in life? What is it you are really looking forward to? Is it financial security? Grown happy children? Retirement? There is only one thing we should be striving for, and that is spiritual maturity. That is the place where God can release all the blessings that He has for you. It is the place of perfect contentment, of a real sense of purpose in life. Be careful! You can be on the road to maturity, and actually fall back spiritually. Look what the writer of Hebrews says:

Hebrews 5:11-14

11 Concerning Him (that’s Jesus Christ) we have much to say, and it is hard to explain, since you have become dull of hearing.

12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, (they had been believers for a while) you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food.

They had been learning for a while, but had fallen away from it. They became undisciplined in their Christian life. When that happens, you become incapable of understanding advanced principles and yearn for the basics again.

What’s wrong with that?

13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant.

What about being an infant? A baby can’t take care of itself; it depends on other people to get them through. They have to be entertained all the time. It’s the same with immature believers; they want the spectacular! Here is the key to maturity:

14 But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.

They key is the word practice. It’s the Greek word HEXIN, and it means habit or routine. To stay on the road to spiritual maturity, you have to develop habits related to the Word of God. It must be a routine.

Then you can fulfill this mandate:

1 Corinthians 14:20

20 Brethren, do not be children in your thinking; yet in evil be infants, but in your thinking be mature.

God wants you to be spiritually mature. As we look more at this principle of maturity, I’m going to go into more detail about how it happens, and what happens to you when you get there.