Like newborn infants, desire the unadulterated [pure] spiritual milk, so that you may grow by it in your salvation.

(1 Peter 2:2)

I recently spent three months helping my daughter care for her newborn twins, and I am smiling as I recall how carefully we planned each day around Ellie and Ramsey's feeding times.

One of the first challenges we faced was attending my son-in-law's graduation from law school at a large church. The babies were only a couple of weeks old and were drinking only two ounces at a time, but their feeding times were still a little uncertain and we were concerned that their shrill cries of hunger would ruin the special ceremony. Armed with diaper bags, pacifiers, and bottles, we strategically placed ourselves on the church's pews so both sets of grandparents (each with a baby) could be prepared to exit if the ceremony went long and the babies grew hungry. The ceremony did, indeed, grow long, and as soon as Ellie gave the slightest whimper, I bounded from my seat and quieted her with a bottle in the church's lobby.

For the next several weeks, we fed babies in parking lots, in Target, in restaurants, one at a time, at the same time propped on Boppy pillows, late at night, in the wee hours of the morning, and later with newfangled little pillows that fit under their chins with bottles strapped onto the pillows. Every doctor appointment, nap, and afternoon walk was scheduled around feeding times. Meals grew cold, a photo session was nearly ruined, and two-year-old Parker learned to wait as our worlds revolved around the next bottle.

My grandbabies were no different from every other newborn. The truth is, infants have a voracious, persistent and demanding thirst that only a bottle of milk will satisfy. What new mother hasn't learned the hard way that a pacifier won't pacify a truly hungry baby!

That's the kind of thirst the writer (Peter) is talking about in the verse above. He's encouraging us to long for the Word of God with a passionate, voracious desire that cannot be quenched by anything else.

I think a lot of us have that kind of thirst, but we're too easily pacified by substitutes. The unadulterated spiritual milk means the whole, true gospel. Not a verse snipped here and there so we can assign it whatever meaning is attractive at the time. Not ideas about the Bible. Not just short devotions read from a book. And not spiritual-sounding talk gathered from friends, a sermon, or Facebook. The real deal. The Bible: studied, meditated on, and applied to the heart.

The idea here is to experience growth. My twin grandbabies have outgrown their Preemie-sized clothes. They're still small since they arrived five weeks early, but they are growing, smiling, and even turning over now.

Apart from the scriptures, we will not grow in faith, godliness, and righteousness. Over the past three decades, there have been many times when my faith has waned, moments when my doubts and insecurities threatened to overtake me, and dry periods when I felt far from God. Without exception, I can honestly say those were the times I had taken a break from being “in the Word,” meaning reading, studying, meditating, and making it my aim to obey the scriptures. The Word of God is our spiritual nourishment, and without it we may change physically, but our strength and power as believers will be puny.

As Christians, we often try to fool ourselves into believing that if we stay away from the immorality of the world, we are pleasing God. But Peter isn't calling Christians to just stay away from obvious immoral behavior; in the preceding verse he tells us to get rid of the wickedness, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander in our hearts. Then he goes on to imply that we do that not by removing things from our lives, but by taking something in: the Word of God…reading, meditating, loving, and obeying God's Truth.

Had my daughter, son-in-law, young grandson, and I not been willing to arrange our lives around the persistent cries of my newborn grandbabies for the milk that satisfied and nourished them, they would, at best, be sickly and frail; at worst, they would have died. It is no different for us. We MUST arrange our lives so we can take in the Word of God, or we will be powerless Christians with faith that is weak, joy that is depleted, and knowledge that is false and dangerous.

Arrange your life. Find time to satisfy the longing God has placed in you for His Word, and through it fall more deeply in love with Him.