spiritual parenting
Some of us have known Jesus for a long time. We're veterans at this Christian thing. We've grown and matured in The Lord, somewhat. And yet, looking across the vast swatch of Christendom in the U.S., it seems as if most of us are like the believers addressed by the writer of the Letter to The Hebrews. By this time, you ought to be teachers. But in fact, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God's Word all over again. You need milk, not solid food (Hebrews 5:12).
There are lots of reasons why this might be the case. For one, we in the prosperous West are not accustomed to suffering for much of anything. We seek to delay or defer pain and discomfort at all costs, whereas God says that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame because God's Love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us (Romans 5:3-4). One of the key marks of a true disciple of Jesus is that, like their Master, disciples say "yes" to suffering for The Lord.
But perhaps the single most significant reason we're more like babes in Christ is that we haven't been properly parented. Our fierce individualism leads us to misunderstand God's direction to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling (Philippians 2:12), a command addressed not to individuals but to the plural friends of Jesus, to the Body of Christ, together. We are to raise one another up in The Lord in the way Paul describes himself doing with the church in Thessalonica. He says, just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you ... and we dealt with you as a father deals with his own children (1 Thessalonians 2:7-8,11). Notice that he says that "we" did this, Paul and his companions, caring for and dealing with each other in the church so that, together, they could grow up fully matured in Christ. This church demonstrated its maturity when, in a severe test of affliction, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity in giving money for the relief of the saints in Jerusalem (2 Corinthians 8:2).
If anyone realizes that they continue to be a babe in Christ, they should look for a small community who can properly parent them in The Lord. And then, together, they can do the same spiritual parenting of others who will do the same for still others.