Failure to thrive (FTT) is a medical term used to describe inadequate growth or the inability to maintain growth, usually diagnosed in newborns or during early childhood development. It is a sign of undernutrition, caused by the inability to properly absorb and utilize calorie intake. All babies grow at different paces, for most, growth after birth is fast and easy. But some babies do not gain weight as quickly as expected, some have little or no appetite, and the most severe cases are categorized as having “lack of survival instinct.” The first concern is this condition can lead to problems like developmental delays (mental and physical), behavioral concerns, and difficulty fighting infections. If growth problems continue over time, it is called “failure to thrive.” If not properly diagnosed it can even lead to organ failure and premature death.
Several weeks ago, I ran across an article about (FTT), it was just something that popped up in one of my searches. My curiosity caused me to read the article, the more I thought about the article the more I began to see a parallel between this sad condition usually in infants, and the comparison to many modern-day Christians. They are born again with the full expectancy and capability of a bountiful life, only to find themselves suffering from spiritual (FTT), many times undiagnosed and unaware of their condition. The natural drive to become spiritually mature remains undeveloped or even challenged, delaying the maturation process. We can find a clear case of this in scripture. Let’s take a deeper look.
Hebrews 5:12-14 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first 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 unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
1 Corinthians 3:1-2 And I, brethren, could not speak to you as to spiritual people but as to carnal, as to babes in Christ. I fed you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are still not able.
In 1 Cor 3:1-2, Paul uses milk as a metaphor, simply as a nourishing food because his emphasis is on desire, not depth. In Hebrews 5:12-14 Paul uses milk as a metaphor for elementary because he wants to shock them into comprehending how far they had slipped from their former state of conversion and previous teaching. He judges the Corinthians as weak, unable to digest solid food, based upon their behaviors and attitudes, which reflected little or no spiritual progress. These references directly tie spiritual diet to growth in understanding, behavior, and development. Paul's milk metaphors are scathing rebuke! He does not question their conversion, but he certainly rebukes their lack of growth. This church had once been more mature but had regressed. It is a situation vaguely similar to elderly people becoming afflicted with dementia, except that faith, love, character, conduct, and attitude were being lost rather than mental faculties. This resulted in the people drifting aimlessly, with some being led astray.
An additional insight regarding an insufficient spiritual diet appears in the next chapter. Paul tells them that their problems are directly related to being lazy. Dull in the phrase "dull of hearing" in Hebrews 5:11 is more closely related to "sluggish" or "slothful." It is translated as such in Hebrews 6:12, ". . . that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises." Paul charges them with being lazy listeners; they are not putting forth the effort to meditate and apply what has been taught them. They are, at best, merely accepting of truth. In other words, they are not assimilating what they hear, and the result is a lack of faith and consequent faithlessness. His rebuke is far more serious than the one in I Corinthians 3 because these people are older in the faith. They have frittered away a large amount of time that would have been far better spent on spiritual growth.
I do not think Paul is attempting to shame them, but trying to shock them into realizing how far they had slipped by calling these grown people—some of them undoubtedly elderly—infants. He goes so far as to tell them that they are unacquainted with and unskilled in the teaching of righteousness. He attributes to them the one particular trait of infants: that they do not understand the difference between right and wrong, a characteristic that defines immaturity. The Bible provides ample evidence that a poor spiritual diet results in a spiritually weak and diseased person, just as a poor physical diet works to erode and eventually destroy a person's physical vitality. Similarly, we can see that a person can be in good spiritual health but lose it through laziness, distraction, or other forms of neglect. Just as a mature adult needs good, solid nourishment to maintain vitality and remain free of disease, the spiritual parallel follows. For one to grow to spiritual maturity, a Christian needs solid, spiritual nourishment, assimilated and actively applied, to continue growing and prevent regressing, as opposed to the sluggish spiritual deterioration that was being addressed. Paul was properly diagnosing their condition, trying to bring them out of spiritual (FTT)
Throughout scripture, whether Paul, Peter, John, and other writers there is this implied command that our pursuit of righteousness is expected after we come into the Kingdom. I am aware of the struggles and pitfalls that we all may encounter on this journey. But these trials should never cause us to relegate our pursuit of spiritual growth to circumstance. I have often asked myself if the 20% rule also applies to the Church and the Christian community at large. The 20% statement comes from the “20% do all the work, the remaining 80% just coast.” I know that physical (FTT) is not a condition anyone would choose for themselves, but how do we keep such a condition from invading our Christian walk? Let us look at three areas in our walk that I believe are key to being a surviving overcoming, Christian. One with life, vitality, spiritual appetite, and influence.
STUDY
"Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth." (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV)
Paul was writing to the evangelist Timothy, Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that need not be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. This verse illustrates the need for understanding that word meanings and context may change, and we must be ever on guard against misapplying or twisting scripture, even when we try to teach the truth. The rendering, study to show thyself approved unto God is found only in the King James Version, the word study meant to strive, or be diligent. New American Standard Bible renders the verse, be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, handling accurately the word of truth. Bible study is very important, but 2 Timothy 2:15 is not just a single focus command to study the Bible. Being an approved workman involves much more. Paul wanted Timothy to understand that to be a workman that God could approve, he would have to be diligent in his service to God. God is not the kind of Master that accepts shoddy work! By earnestly applying himself in service, Timothy would not need to be ashamed as he stood before God on the day of judgment. To be that diligent, approved workman, he would have to correctly handle the word of truth, what the King James Version renders, rightly dividing the word of truth. (Context, culture, cross-references)
The goal of being an approved workman should be the focus of all believers. In the verses immediately before 2 Timothy 2:15, Paul stressed the importance of living faithfully before God, even to the point of suffering. If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us (2 Timothy 2:12). He then told Timothy, Of these things put them in remembrance, charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit, but to the subverting of the hearers (2 Timothy 2:14). The evangelist Timothy was to remind his hearers of the sacrifice of Christ, the need for serving Him, and the need to work diligently to be approved workmen before God. The diligent application of all our energy and focus to the service of God will allow us to join Timothy in standing before God without shame. Nothing will help us more to please God than to handle carefully and correctly God’s word. We should look to the written word of God with the same reverence as the psalmist who wrote, thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. Therefore, we can understand this Bible phrase to mean more than simply the studying of God's Word, though that is essential for Christian lives. Paul meant this phrase as the full workload for ministers of the faith in serving their churches. While Pastor’s are called to a higher responsibility to lead others in the truth of God's Word, the members of the body are also given this charge as well. Too often congregants demonstrate a (lack of ownership) and advocate their responsibilities of Bible study and understanding to the leadership/clergy of the churches. This lack of personal responsibility creates spiritual infants in growth and understanding of the word and sadly no real depth of spiritual things.
MAKING and BECOMING A DISCIPLE
Following Christ means making disciples. His words echo in the back of our minds, Go therefore and make disciples . . . (Matthew 28:19). We do not become a Christian by making disciples, but once we are in Christ, few things are more important than fulfilling this commission. Unfortunately, it is rarely practiced in today’s churches! This could be for many reasons, but I think the main one is this process could get to be time-consuming and could get messy. His disciples would have a call to answer, a part to play, and genuine obedience to be fulfilled. There was the actual imitation of their master to own and realize. They were to imitate and duplicate Christ’s life in the making of disciples. What might his disciples hear when he told his disciples when they heard this command?
For Peter and Andrew, James and John, Jesus had first framed his call to disciple them in terms of their native profession. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). Having been trained, their whole lives long, to use boats and nets to draw food from the sea, what would have been plain to them then, and all the clearer after three years with Jesus, was that you don’t make fishermen, or disciples, overnight or in an instant.
The making of a good disciple is a long, involved process, as they knew all too well. So, what may that call look like to us today? It still requires teaching and training over time. Not only hearing, and internalizing, clear words of instruction, direction, and correction, but also it requires watching a master at work (a close interaction) — and catching the unspoken rhythms and patterns of his desires and calling. It requires “the kind of knowledge that is difficult to capture in propositional terms or categories, but that emerges in the context of a close relationship and in the imitation of another” 1 Corinthians 11:1 And you should imitate me, just as I imitate Christ.
By watching the master and emulating his efforts in the presence of his example, the apprentice unconsciously picks up the skills of the art, including those which are not explicitly known to the master himself. (a shared experience) Such disciple-making, as seen in the life of Christ, involves more than formal, verbal instruction. Disciples not only hear their master talk about his craft, but they watch him at work and then receive ongoing instruction as he, in turn, watches their early efforts and speaks into their emerging abilities, giftings and purpose.
Jesus had called them to follow him, and for more than three years, in setting after setting, in private homes and in the middle of great crowds, walking long journeys between towns and enjoying unhurried meals — one conversation at a time, one day at a time, one situation at a time — Jesus had discipled them. Jesus showed them the Christian life, inside and out, in public teaching and private prayer, in temptation and victories. Now they too were to make disciples. Such disciple-making requires both structure (specific intentional lessons and topics to work through) as well as an open margin that allows the discipler to speak into unplanned teachable moments as they manifest. Such a process is both engineered and organic, involving both truth-speaking and life-sharing. Quantity time is the soil in which quality time grows. Most of Jesus’s time with his men wasn’t formal. I like to call it porch time, dinner table, and hardware store interactions. It is nothing short of amazing what three years with Jesus did for this ragtag group of young Galileans. All of them were outsiders to the religious establishment of the time; none of them were rabbi-trained like Paul. And yet, after Christ’s ascension and the pouring out of his Spirit, the religious authorities could see with their own eyes the profound imprints of Christ on his men: So, we should always be focused and pursuing these two categories: submit to being discipled or being a discipler!! If we do these two, we are fulfilling the Great Commission. This is the only way to create true depth, trustworthiness, and consistency in a believer!
REGULAR EXAMINATION
2 Corinthians 13:5–6 Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test? And I trust that you will discover that we have not failed the test.
Before we dig too deep here, Paul does not tell the Corinthian believers to examine their works to see if they are saved or to see if they are a part of God's family. We should not look to our works for assurance of salvation, we should always look to Christ, the object of our faith. Paul has in mind another purpose for their self-examination. First, Paul was writing to believers, not to unbelievers. All through the letter of 2 Corinthians Paul asserted this. Notice the following examples. “To the church of God, which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in Achaia” (1:1). “Now He who establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us is God, who also has sealed us and given us the Spirit in our hearts as a deposit” (1:21-22). “You are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men; you are manifestly an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink but the Spirit of the living God” (3:2-3). “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (6:14). “You know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ” (8:9). “Finally, brethren, farewell. . The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (13:11, 14).
Paul did not question the salvation of his readers, but he repeatedly affirmed it. We must remember the church at Corinth had been filled with divisions, strife, envy, drunkenness, and immorality. And yet he affirmed rather than questioned their salvation in 1 Corinthians as well Paul referred to their carnality and yet called them “babes in Christ” and those whose “body is the temple of the Holy Spirit.” Paul taught in Romans that believers can be sure that they are saved (Rom. 5:1; 8:31-39). However, if one looks to his works for assurance, he can never have an absolute assurance since no one’s works are flawless. (Filthy rags)
Christ in you refers to the sanctification process that begins at the time of our conversion experience. Christ is only active in the transformation of believers to the degree we obey and submit to Him. Using that context, it is clear Paul is asking the Corinthian believers to examine their works to see if Christ is in them experientially. Are their works Christlike? If so, the Lord Jesus is indeed active in their experience. If not, they are not in Christ in their experience. The term is disqualified (adokimos in Greek). This is a term that elsewhere in Paul's writings and throughout the New Testament is used exclusively of believers. Paul in 1 Corinthians 9:27 used this exact term about himself. He said that he buffeted his body and pressed on in his service for Christ so that he might not be disqualified from the rewards which will go to faithful believers.
Nowhere does the Scriptures call believers to look to their works for assurance. We are called to look to Christ and find our assurance in Him. However, repeatedly in the Scriptures, believers are called to look to their works to find out how they are doing in their walk with Christ. Second Corinthians 13:5 is one such verse. Yes, as believers we are to examine ourselves regularly. The purpose is to ensure that we are doing our best in our service, submission, and loyalty to Christ with the expansion of the Kingdom being our focus.
In closing, the spiritual journey develops us to maturity, but can still always have the evidence of milk/meat analogy in us. Milk is required when God is teaching or revealing something new to us (through scripture or experience), while in other areas we are enjoying a juicy spiritual filet mignon. It is not an either-or, it should always be both. I believe the openness to the Spirit to being re-taught will always leads to maturity. In the end, we trust this process to the author and finisher of our faith.
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