“as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby…” (1 Peter 2: 2)

Spiritual growth after first accepting Christ should be a given. However, the desire for that spiritual growth very often is not. For many people, spiritual growth is like eating vegetables. They do it because they know it is good for them. Yet, they have to force themselves to do it because the vegetables are hard to swallow.

In another way, spiritual growth for some is like doctor ordered therapy. It is supposed to help you, but you hate to go because you always seem to leave therapy in more pain! What the writer of I Peter is getting at here is that spiritual growth takes place best when a person has a desire for it. Not when they are bribed into it or shamed into it or even tricked into it. At the base of it must be a hunger and a thirst after it akin to the desire that a newborn babe has for its mother’s milk. That baby does not have to be forced-fed. That baby has an innate desire for the pure milk and somehow knows that it will grow thereby. So, before we ask for and get spiritual maturity, our prayer should be to desire the milk of the word of God which is the very thing that produces it.