Are You Ready for Meat?

When I was little, my family, like many then and much more now, had little money and resources to provide a full meal everyday for dinner. Mom, being the ingenious budget manager and food stretcher, would devise ways of making the meals stretch. One day in a moment of revelation, mom had us eat our food in stages. The first would be a little salad with homemade dressing (a little ketchup and mayonnaise mixed up), a little starch (rice or beans or both) to make you feel full and then whatever small amount of meat she could muster up from the pennies she had left.

As always, her three children would clamor for the meat portion of the dinner before eating the first three stages and mom would say, are you ready for the meat? She knew it was best for us to go through the first stages of the meal in order to be completely satisfied at the end of the meal with the portion of meat we were served.

With the many requests/petitions we make before the Lord in prayer, we clamor for our hearts desires (the meat) and many times God has to ask us, “are you ready for the meat?” We haven’t even partaken of the first stages of life in Christ before we want more. Have we hungered after the sincere milk of the Word (1 Peter 2:2), have we been ravenous for wisdom so we speak the truth to others. (James 1:5).

When we move from being a babe only needing milk (Hebrews 5:12-13) then and only then can God trust that we are mature (full enough) to receive the meat (Hebrews 5:14) and be satisfied enough to offering a meat offering (Leviticus 2:7-9) of a life pleasing to Him.

That’s It Right There!!