Well-known devotional author Oswald Chambers has said, ""If you believe in Jesus, you are not to spend all your time in smooth waters just inside the harbor, full of delight but always moored. You have to get out into the great deeps of God and begin to know for yourself, begin to have spiritual discernment...Beware of harking back to what you were once when God wants you to be something you've never been.""

You won't find a better description of the people to whom the book of Hebrews was written. They were like adolescents stuck in kindergarten, or college students struggling with their ABCs. We could shake our heads at these spiritually stunted saints--except when we look in the mirror and realize how often we fail to act on the truth we know.

The writer of Hebrews was in the middle of some important teaching about the priestly ministry of Jesus when he looked up, as it were, and saw that he was losing his class. The Hebrews had become slow spiritual learners. This was not an indictment of their mental abilities, but of their shaky commitment to Christ and their growth in the knowledge of Him.

Spiritual dullness is a serious problem for any believer. But its effects ripple outward from individual Christians to the body of Christ. By the time this letter was written, the author felt these Hebrew believers should have been ready to teach others. Instead, they were in need of teaching so basic that the writer pictured them as infants still on the bottle.

That's a painful assessment, but it fit the Hebrews. There's nothing wrong with ""pure spiritual milk"" (1 Pet. 2:2), the basics of the Christian faith. Peter tells us to crave this truth--but not for the rest of our Christian lives. The purpose of milk is to help babies grow into maturity so that they can eventually digest solid food.

Just in case his readers didn't get the point fully, the writer laid out his challenge explicitly in verses 1-3. In the words of Oswald Chambers, it was time for the Hebrews to leave the ""smooth waters"" of spiritual immaturity and ""get out into the great deeps of God.""

This Good Friday, as we remember the suffering of Jesus Christ on our behalf, would be a great day to take a new step of Christian growth.

Maybe you can name an area of your spiritual life where you want to see growth: prayer, stewardship, love, obedience, faith, or patience. One tangible step you can take this weekend is to get out your Bible concordance and see what the Word has to say about your topic. Most important, decide that you will obey the truth as God reveals it to you.