The other night, Matt and Becky Jones took my family out to dinner at The Pizza Factory to give Britton a break after way too many brutal days at work. I had never eaten there before, and was definitely pleased with the food. We did have to persevere through an ordeal back in the kitchen with a broken pipe. For a while, we didn’t get our drinks, or the breadsticks Matt had ordered. I wasn’t prepared for what was to come.

Our drinks arrived, but then… the breadsticks arrived too. Stretching almost two whole feet off of the table, these massive buttery parmesan-crusted breadsticks spiraled into the air like a giant bread bouquet melting my heart and making my pregnant tummy rumble. They not only looked good, but they tasted divine.

Over dinner, I kept peering through the breadstick bouquet at Becky who was wrestling with her little one-year-old, Andrew. Now, Andrew melts my heart even more than those breadsticks with his chubby cheeks and precious little grins where he scrunches his nose. This evening, Andrew was anything but content. Before our appetizers and pizza had arrived, this little guy was hungry. He dined on a fruit cup, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Unfortunately, that just wasn’t enough. He wanted more. Feeding him from the never-ending vase full of bread that dominated the table should have easily solved this problem. I don’t know what that little guy tasted when Becky poked a piece of fluffy buttery bread into his mouth, but whatever it was, he abruptly spit it out. Becky sighed in frustration then said, “He won’t hardly eat anything that fills him up. All he eats are things like fruit…”

I am confident that Andrew will learn one day to eat bread and meat, but will we? I was mulling over that dinner this week when I thought of my own life at present. When was the last time I dug into God’s word and feasted upon the truths that He reveals to us there? I am just like Andrew who loves the light sugary fare, but won’t give the real food a chance to fill him up. I feel that the Holy Spirit has blessed our church by showing up and moving our hearts on Sunday mornings. The reason why I am so confident of this is because I know that I am moved nearly every Sunday morning in worship or even convicted during the sermon. From my experience and other people’s experiences in Life Group, I think that God is doing work there as well. While God does move there, He longs to do so much more on an individual basis. He wants us to dine with Him everyday and feast upon His word and to be filled with peace as we pray and listen to Him. When we neglect our God daily, we aren’t getting all the nutrients our souls crave.

Hebrews 5:12-14 says, “In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.”

If you are in the same spot as I find myself in, do yourself a favor. Please don’t beat yourself up and try to fix it all on your own. Simply pray to God to give you the desire to dig in to what He has in store for you. He lavishes His grace and mercy on us because we will all fall short and have times of failure. Live in His grace, and pray for Him to give you desire.