Everybody, what is going on? You know what time it is. You're listening to join the Journey podcast with your host, Emma, daughter.

Thanks for joining. Today, we're talking all things spiritual maturity. And in today's devote, Tony explained how he found Paul's illustration regarding babies and milk quite helpful.

He said, when our first daughter was

born, I quickly learned that I couldn't just hand her a bottle of milk and assume that she would

know how to drink it. No, he had to prepare and feed the milk to her because she was still in the

infancy stages of development. She was a baby, and it would have been impossible for her to drink it without

any help. And as tedious and tiresome as this process was, especially at 3 a.m., Tony and his wife

never got frustrated with her because they knew that she needed the milk to grow and that she was

completely dependent on them to feed it to her. Similarly, Paul helps us see that just as babies

need milk, baby Christians need Bible basics. And just as adults need food, mature Christians can

handle more than young believers. And oftentimes, we mistake maturity for time or Bible knowledge.

We can easily make the mistake of thinking that

because someone knows a lot of facts about the Bible, that they're mature. But head knowledge

doesn't always equate to heart knowledge, and therefore knowing a lot about the Bible or a lot

about what a certain pastor or preacher says about the Bible does not make you a mature believer.

Additionally, we can tend to think that maturity means you've spent a lot of time in the church,

been there for years, maybe grown up in it.

But time in the church does not always mean you've grown more mature.

And that's exactly what we see Paul address in today's chapter.

In 1 Corinthians 3, verses 1 through 2, Paul says,

But I brothers could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it.

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