When you evaluate your spiritual life and where you are in your relationship with God, finish this thought, “By this time I ought to be…” Where should you be? How far down the path of spiritual growth ought you to be? The writer of Hebrews uses this wording to discuss his readers’ spiritual immaturity. “…You have become dull of hearing. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food…But solid food belongs to those who…by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil” (Heb. 5:11-14).
Where are you spiritually? Or, to ask it again, where ought you to be by this time in your Christian life? The key for the spiritual growth of the Hebrew readers is the key for our spiritual growth today—come to the Word of God and by reason of use, we must exercise, learn, increase knowledge and become skilled “in the word of righteousness” (5:13). Where are you? Where ought you to be?