Recently, our church secretary and pianist presented the following devotion for our worship band practice. It was so good, I thought I would share it with you. Practice can be tedious and time consuming, but it is beneficial. Thanks for your thoughts Barb Rice…

For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. Therefore leaving the elementary teaching about the Christ, let us press on to maturity . . . (Hebrews 5:12-14, 6:1a)

What struck me about these verses was the word “practice.” The word in the KJV is “use.” But if we look at it in terms of practicing—intentionally working at something in order to learn or master—that’s something I had never thought about before. Although we’ll never truly master Christianity until we get to heaven, it’s something we need to practice. I think the passage in Philippians 2:12-13 conveys this same idea:

So then . . . just as you have always obeyed, . . . work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.

We are meeting here tonight to practice; i.e., to work on our music to learn and master it in order to “work for His good pleasure” in the services. In I Corinthians 9, Paul uses the training of athletes as an example. They exercise discipline and self-control. Athletes have coaches to help them become better at their sports, and they practice to work on what the coach tells them.

For believers, our training involves things like prayer, Bible reading, serving, worshiping, evangelism, etc. And we need to listen to our coach – the Holy Spirit. As we put into practice what we know of our faith, we grow more mature and can then understand deeper spiritual truths, referred to as solid food in Hebrews 5:14.

Barb Rice, FBC secretary & pianist

In a recent devotional from “Our Daily Bread,” the writer talks about 3 rewards of spiritual maturity, and I added a 4th:

1. Discernment – Hebrews 5 says, “because of practice, our senses are trained to discern good and evil.”

2. The ability to communicate God’s truth to others – also in Hebrews 5, it says that, by this time, the people ought to be teachers rather than still needing to be taught.

3. Godly wisdom – I Corinthians 2:6 talks about speaking wisdom among those who are mature.

4. Blessing – In Chapter 1, James talks about being doers of the word, not merely hearers. Verse 25 says, “But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.”

This is to encourage us all to be intentional about practicing our Christianity every day so we can grow to spiritual maturity.

Hey, if you have an interesting thought, send it to me and maybe I will post it to my blog. Remember, anything sent to me gives me the full right to edit.