“Endure suffering as a good soldier of Christ Jesus.” 2 Timothy 2.

“…you need milk, not solid food…” Hebrews 5.

How is Jesus going to get soldiers if he always babies his saints?

I recall as a child hearing that it was time to wean the calves. The goal is to transition the calf from a milk drinker to a food eater. The calves bawl and bawl but it’s time to grow up so there’s no helping them. Being ignorant of the definition of weaning, and seeing that the calves were in one pen and their moms far away in another, I asked one day when we were going to “wean the calves.” The answer came back, “we are, right now.”  I imagined some horn removal activity which is lively and bloody, but, this process was simple and pain free.. except for the emotional toil.

We too need weaning in order to grow up from the milk of the elementary things into the food of Christ that he is. But preaching salvation and preaching feelings and never examining Christ as the confrontive inward life does indeed fill seats but ensure childhood. God would gain soldiers in his warrior king Jesus. We would remain the defenseless infants if allowed.

But in his goodness he weans us off milk. But sadly there is far too much milk available and we just go find another teat. The end of the age will involve a certain amount of separation, segregation if you will, so that we come to him and learn to eat the food that builds muscle and exerts Life. This food builds the saint into a warrior queen capable of defending the nations from certain doom, if they will walk in the path and endure the process of growing upward into Christ.

Perhaps it is time to read the Bible for ourself, to pray for our own relationship with God, and to ask God to mature us in the Son into a son of the Man who commands angel armies. Then, expect hardship and don’t recoil from it.