My wife and I are blessed to have a one-year-old daughter, Eliaya, and a second child on the way. This week, our daughter has not been sleeping well at all. When she does sleep, she wakes up early and very, very hungry. I think I have learned to pour milk and seal her sippy cup in about 4 seconds. When she does not have her milk, she cries or screams (very similar).
In 1 Pet 2:1-3, Peter encourages us to, "like newborn infants, long for the pure spiritual milk," and this image resonates immediately with me. When Eliaya was younger, her lips and fingers started quivering in the air as she longed for her milk. If as humans, we do what we want, and what we want is wrong or not according to God's desires or for his glory, it's no wonder as non-Christians we have the kind of motives mentioned in v.1, "all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy." But, replace selfish, sinful desires with a primary desire to please God, and we truly will "grow up into salvation," v.2. Progressively, our sinful desires will be replaced with godly ones, and so our sinful actions will subsequently be replaced with righteous ones. The desire to please God comes from a regenerated heart motivated by faith that says "the Lord is good" and from a heart filled with the Holy Spirit. I am so thankful that He knows how my mind and my choices work. He saved me from my sins, and He now works to free me from them as well.
I pray that I long to please God, to be like Him, and to know Him like my daughter longs for her milk. I want to desire God like a screaming baby.
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