“Like newborn babies, long for the pure milk of the word, so that by it you may grow in respect to salvation” (1 Peter 2:2).
Our willingness to be equipped today will significantly shape how and how much God uses us in the future.
We begin our Christian lives as babes in Christ (1 Cor 3:1; Heb 5:13). God surely can and does use us even when we are baby Christians, but if we remain babes, fail to grow and mature as followers of Christ, then we limit what God may do with and through us. Just like our children, if they remain infants, they limit themselves.
This is not to say God will use us all the same, or even as much as another person. Rather that we will either limit or reach our full potential in what God wants to do with us as an individual by how willing we are to be equipped today for His purposes today and tomorrow. The comparison is not between how much God uses one individual compared to another, but how much God uses an individual compared to how much he would have used him if he humbly sought to become all God desires him to be.
“But to this one I will look, To him who is humble and contrite of spirit, and who trembles at My word.” (Isaiah 66:2).
The Scripture is replete with commands, encouragement, and teachings about the need to grow spiritually and that help us grow; there are no scriptures that extol perennial infancy.
We need not concern ourselves so much with how God is going to use us in the future. Instead, we must focus upon availing ourselves to the opportunities for spiritual growth and service that are before us in the present. Then, when God is ready, and we are ready, he will open new areas of influence and ministry; often in ways, we could have never imagined. Do not wait on the magic moment to serve or grow; seize the present moment to grow and serve in whatever way is available.
“But speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him who is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body, being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body for the building up of itself in love.” (Ephesians 4:15-16).
