Hello everyone. Praise the Lord!
THE WRONG DIET.
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Why haven't we grown?
If we are real children of God, born of God, and we haven't grown, it is because we haven't had the right diet. I don't blame people. I'm not scolding you. I'm thoroughly convinced the ministry is to blame. I believe most people—99.99 out of 100—would rise to the level of the Word of God for them if they knew it.
But just because a man is one of the ministry gifts —apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher—doesn't mean he's a full grown Christian. It just means he has that calling on his life. He still has to develop and grow himself.
In the last church I pastored, during the winter of 1947 and 1948, I shut myself up in the church, sometimes for days at a time, with the Word. I would kneel and read the Bible on my knees. I read for hours, and for weeks. I had read it for years, of course, but this time I took those two prayers Paul prayed for the church at Ephesus—Ephesians 1:17-19, and 3:14-21.
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I would leave one of my Bibles open to that place all week. And every time I came into the building I would get on my knees and say, "Father, I'm praying these prayers for myself." If I had to make a call or something arose, when I'd come back, even though I may have already done it several times that day, I'd pray these prayers for myself. "...That the eyes of my
understanding be enlightened, that I may know what is the hope of His calling,...." And so on.
It didn't seem to do a bit of good for a while. But I just kept on praying them. Then—after a while—I began to get revelation from the Word. (He couldn't have revealed the Word to me if I hadn't been feeding on it.) It began to open up to me!
Within a few weeks, 30 days or so, I'd learned more than I'd learned in the previous 13 or 14 years of ministry put together. I said to my wife, "What in the world have I been preaching? My, my, my, that little old stuff I've been putting out wasn't even milk. It was just bluejohn."
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This didn't come just because I prayed. That was just a part of it. I spent equal time, if not more, with the Word as I did praying. You can't build a prayer life just praying alone. It has to be built upon God's Word.
So when the Bible speaks about our becoming a perfect man, the terminology "knowledge of the Son of God" is used (Ephesians 4:13). It infers that it is this knowledge which will cause us to become full grown, and cause us to become mature.
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William James Roop
