Not being fed

My 14 year old grandson was hit by a car while riding his bicycle. He had a broken leg on his non-dominant side, a broken shoulder on his dominant side, and a severe concussion. I was staying with him while his mother ran some errands. He couldn't use his dominant hand to feed himself, so I fed him a little pudding. We laughed because I hadn't fed him since he was a baby. (He started feeding himself finger foods before he was a year old, and using a spoon before he was two. ) He needed someone to feed him that time because he was injured, but within a few days, he had managed to feed himself pretty well in spite of his injuries. He wanted to feed himself because he didn't want to be treated like a baby. It was humiliating to him. Which makes me wonder why people leave the church because they "aren't being fed"? Are they admitting that they are baby Christians who have not moved on to maturity?

Hebrews 5:11-14 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB) 11 We have a great deal to say about this, and it’s difficult to explain, since you have become too lazy to understand. 12 Although by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the basic principles of God’s revelation again. You need milk, not solid food. 13 Now everyone who lives on milk is inexperienced with the message about righteousness, because he is an infant. 14 But solid food is for the mature—for those whose senses have been trained to distinguish between good and evil.

Let me be clear. I don't claim to have reached maturity, but I want to grow closer to Christ and more like Him. I want spiritual ribeye steak and baked potato. I may not be there yet, but I definitely don't want to have to live on nothing but baby formula and strained peas. When I was a child my daddy read to me from the Bible every night as I went to sleep. He was feeding me spiritual milk. When I accepted Christ as my Savior, my daddy told me that I needed to start reading the Bible for myself. Carrying the analogy a step further, he put some spiritual cereal on the tray of my high chair and let me begin to feed myself. Before long I wanted something besides cereal and started eating spiritual food that had a little more substance to it. It's a process of growth, but it has to involve feeding ourselves.

Philippians 3:10-15 Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB)
10 My goal is to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, 11 assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead. 12 Not that I have already reached the goal or am already fully mature, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, 14 I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. 15 Therefore, all who are mature should think this way. And if you think differently about anything, God will reveal this also to you.

I get up in the morning and fix myself coffee. After I get to work, I eat either something from the cafeteria or a breakfast cereal bar. When it is lunch time, I eat something, even if it is just a snack. By the time I get home from work, I am famished. I eat every single day, without fail. I get hungry and I eat. If I only ate on Sundays, not only would I be really hungry, I would not be healthy. Even if we expect someone else to feed us on Sunday and Wednesdays, what are we eating the rest of the week? We must feed ourselves from God's Word. The purpose of church services is not to provide you all the nourishment you need for the week. That is a ludicrous assumption. We meet together to worship, to fellowship, to encourage, but we spend time daily studying God's Word and praying for our spiritual nourishment.

I'm not condemning anyone, but it does make me curious. My grandson had the right idea. He is 14 years old, way too old for someone to have to feed him.