Use these for group work, or to assist your personal reflection.

1. What Christian teaching would you associate with the idea of ‘spiritual milk’?
2. Discuss how it is that we ‘rid ourselves’ (2:1) of all wickedness and deceit etc. How do they raise their heads within your church?
3. How can a preacher declare the solid food of the Gospel when the congregation are a complete mixture of those who need spiritual milk and those who want ‘solid food’?

Use the programme which can be found on the link ‘discipleship challenges’. The ‘worksheet’ will help you follow through anything you feel is right to take up. The following notes are for your interest and consideration.

Personal comment: I hope that I keep to my own advice within this study; I certainly aim to do this. I have been greatly blessed by those Christians who are more mature than I who have testified in the most simple and powerful ways about the saving work of God in their lives. The elderly in faith have an essential part to play in the mission of the church; they just need to share their faith!

Ideas for discipleship programme

• Find some of the elderly people in your own church and talk to them about what Christ means to them, and how He has guided them over the years.
• Pray against the arrogance by which people give the impression that they are more advanced and mature in faith than others; and pray that all God’s people might receive the appropriate sustenance for their spiritual needs.

Gracious Lord, who sent the Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ, into the world to bring about the Heavenly Kingdom of God and defeat all evil; so work in my life that I may show the fruits of repentance, and live my life in a manner worthy of my call; I ask this in the name of Jesus Christ. AMEN