Pastor Skip Heitzig guides us through First and Second Peter in the series Rock Solid.

Would you turn in your Bibles to First Peter, chapter 2? We continue the series Rock Solid; First Peter, chapter 2. One of the most successful ad campaigns in America was a campaign from which I stole the title for this message. "Got milk?" Some of you will remember the celebrities who had milk mustaches for many of the commercials to bring awareness to the idea of milk. In 2002 this campaign was voted one of the top ten best advertisement campaigns in history by USA Today.

It interestingly began as a response in California to plummeting milk sales. As the sale of milk went down about 3 percent, and they put the ad up, and it increased milk sales 7 percent. Got milk? I went to their website this week gotmilk.com. A very flashy website with a nice cow on it, and little milk drops on it. And the website still going strong touts the benefits of drinking milk, adding proteins to your body for strong muscles and bones and teeth and hair, as well as being a sleep aid, drink a glass of milk in the evening.

But I found some interesting facts about milk that you may not know. The Roman Emperor Nero's second wife, Poppaea, kept 500 donkeys to provide milk for her bath. An article I read noted researchers in England, in the UK claim that cows with names make 3 to 4 percent more milk per year than cows without names. [laughter] Now, come on, that's a little bit interesting, is it not? So you name your cow, and I don't know why they would produce more milk.

Maybe there's a sense that you care for them. I don't know, but it's interesting---name your cows. The average cow produces 90 glasses of milk per day, or 200,000 glasses of milk in a lifetime. That's one cow. That's a lot of milk. A cow's utter holds 25 to 50 pounds of milk, which is utterly amazing. [laughter] And most cows will give more milk when they listen to music. They didn't say what kind of music, just music, an interesting experiment. I think humans probably produce more when they listen to music as well.

And here's something for us in New Mexico: milk is better for cooling your mouth after spicy food than anything else because there's a protein called casein that will take and cleanse the taste buds more quickly. So when you eat that chile or that jalapeno, it's like, "Man, that's, like, way too hot." Got milk? [laughter] But I'm not here to talk about bathing in milk, or naming cows, or even drinking cow's milk.

That's not the point at all of the passage we're about to encounter in First Peter, chapter 2, but rather, put simply, that just like a newborn baby desires milk for food, so we should crave spiritual milk, spiritual truth. That's the gist of the passage. Proper nutrition is required for physical growth; proper nutrition is required for spiritual growth.

Verse 1 of chapter 2, "Therefore, laying aside all malice, all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and all evil speaking, as newborn babes desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious." I want you, first of all, to notice how the verse begins, how the chapter begins with the word "therefore." That's a strange word to begin a thought with, and that's because he's not beginning a thought.

And whoever decided to put in chapters and verses, much later after the Scripture was written, I don't think took this into account, because Peter is still back on the thought in chapter 1. And you can notice it just in looking in your Bibles that Peter has been speaking about the Word of God, the Word of Truth. He says, "You have been born again." See it a few verses back? "You have been born again, not by corruptible seed, but by incorruptible seed, which is the word of God."

And also he speaks of "the word of God which lives and abides forever." And the last verse of chapter 1, "This is the word that was preached to you." So, Peter is coming with a point based upon that truth that he has introduced. And he says, "Therefore," and he gives us the idea of the milk of the Word. Now, if you know anything at all about Scripture, you know that there's lots of encouragement within these pages to be students and lovers and those who delight in God's Word, God's truth.

Psalm 1, the blessed man is someone who "delights in the law of the Lord, and in his law he meditates day and night." Job cried out and he said, "I have esteemed the words of his mouth more than my necessary food." Jeremiah said, "Your words were found, O Lord, and I did eat them; and they were to me the joy and the rejoicing of my heart." Psalm 119 has 184 references in one psalm to the Scripture, the Word of God, the testimonies of God. And he says, "Your testimonies are also my delight and my counselors."

And, really, that is what is in Peter's mind, I believe, as he brings us to this point with the "therefore" and introduces this theme of delighting in, and craving after, and desiring the Word of God. It's simply---if I can sort of again catch us up to speed in First Peter, he's been talking about the theme of salvation and the results of salvation. And, first of all, he would say the result of our salvation, our redemption, the first result toward God is that we be holy. He says that back in verse 16 of chapter 1.

The second response to the salvation we have is toward others, and that is, to love one another. We discussed that last week. And, finally, the third response to our redemption, our salvation is toward ourselves, that we would crave this food in order that we might grow. That's the thought. And do you remember that old saying, "You are what you eat"? So, let me ask you: What do you eat a lot of. And you don't have to answer that, but I'm meaning that in a spiritual sense. What are you craving? What are you feasting on? What are you feeding on?

I saw a cartoon this week, it cracked me up. It was a little squirrel in a psychiatrist's office. Can you picture the little squirrel lying on the couch with his little furry arms behind his head, spilling his little squirrel guts. I mean figuratively. [laughter] And he says, the caption reads: "When I learned that 'you are what you eat,' it was then I realized I was nuts." [laughter] I liked it.

So I would like to give you three ways to enhance your spiritual appetite, three ways to grow spiritually based on these three verses. So, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to make it a little more fun. And simply by taking off this whole idea of craving food, I want to begin by taking you into a restaurant and sitting you down at a table. And first will come out the appetizer. You're going to taste that. And if you've tasted it, it's so good, you're going to want more.

But then you're going to be tempted by junk food, and you're going to want to push that aside. And, finally, you want to make room, real room, real desirous room for the main course. So we want to look at three ways to enhance your spiritual growth, and we'll put it to you this way: be mindful, be careful, be faithful. Be mindful of what you've tasted, that's the appetizer; be careful to push away, avoid, junk food; then, be faithful to feed on the truth. Those three things will enhance your spiritual appetite.

What I'd like to do is begin with verse 3, not verse 1. And you need to know why I'm doing this. Because it says in verse 3, look at it with your own eyes, "if indeed." It says in your Bible, "If indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious." The entire thought of these three verses is predicated on this supposition, this subjunctive "if." If this is true, then this should be true. And it could even be translated, and would be better translated, "Since indeed you have tasted." That's the thrust behind the passage.

Since you have tasted that God is gracious, therefore, push aside the bad stuff, the junk food, and make room for the good stuff, the real food. So look at verse 3. "If indeed [or since, because] you have tasted that the Lord is gracious." When you taste something, you experience it. You've tasted that God is gracious. You didn't read this in a book. You didn't hear it in a sermon. You yourself experienced the gracious goodness of God.

My mind goes back to Psalm 34 whenever I read this, where David said, "O, taste and see that the Lord is good." Taste for yourself, try this out, because once you taste it, you'll get hooked. You've tasted that he is gracious. When you taste his graciousness, you figure this out: God tastes better than sin. God's graciousness tastes better than all of the earthly pleasures combined. Once you've tasted him, you're hooked.

Now, you first tasted God's goodness when you first came to faith, you came to Christ. Think back to the day or the night you said yes to Jesus on a personal level. Remember how that felt? For me it was like a burden being lifted. I couldn't describe it, I didn't see a vision, I didn't hear a voice, but I felt like a burden of guilt was immediately lifted off. I felt so free because I tasted the graciousness of God.

I remember somebody witnessing to me before I made that decision, and what he said was so good I decided I gotta use that when I share my faith later on. He said, "Skip, this is what it's sort of like: it's sort of like if you have eaten Hamburger Helper your whole life, or canned soup, or TV dinners. That's all you had." Now, I could relate to that because that's sort of what I ate growing up. My mom could cook, and she did cook, but we were very busy and I ate a lot of that stuff.

So he said, "It's like you ate that all your life, then one day somebody invited you to a fine restaurant, and they paid for you to have steak and lobster, a gourmet meal. Now you're ruined. Now your taste buds have a gourmet taste to them. And once you've tasted that, it's just hard to go back to Hamburger Helper and ramen noodles, and canned soup." What God has to offer you, once you taste what he has to offer, you're not gonna want to go back.

I think it's good for believers to regularly survey a catalog of their blessings since they've come to know Christ. I believe we forget that a lot. And because we forget that a lot, we get grouchy and grumpy, and we're going to read that in just a little bit. Isaiah 51 says "Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and the hole of the pit from which you were dug." Sometimes it's good to go back to the pit. Not get in it, but look inside it and go, "I came from that pit. That's the slop I used to feed on down there. I used to eat that stuff, but now I've tasted his goodness, his graciousness."

Think of how many prayers God answered for you. Think of how many times he's sent you a word of encouragement or some provision just in the nick of time. You tasted that goodness and that graciousness from time to time. My wife's a great cook, but she makes this dessert, she makes it about once a year, and I'm ready for it. It's a cherry cobbler with this Graham cracker butter crust. There are so many calories in that thing that when I know she's going to make it, I'll just, like, fast all day long.

I'm gonna save my calories for this, because once you taste this cobbler, you will want more. Let's that be our thought: once you've tasted how gracious God is, you're going to want more of that, and it's going to change your reality forever. And that's the thought of the passage---"Since you have indeed tasted that the Lord is gracious." So, that's number one: Be mindful of what you've tasted. Remember as you get into this meal what the appetizer was like. And he went, "Oh, man, that's good."

Which takes us to the second step: be careful; be careful to avoid junk food. Now, I take you back to verse 1, "Laying aside all malice, all deceit, all hypocrisy, envy, and [slander or] evil speaking." Now, this is the junk food that comes to the table. These are the things that will ruin your appetite. They'll spoil your appetite. And there are five areas of junk food that are mentioned. You want to push them aside. I'm going to tell you a true story, it's going to gross you out, and I'm intending to do that. But it's a true story.

I was at a restaurant here in Albuquerque. I ordered a meal. Salad came first. I will not tell you what restaurant, long time ago, doesn't matter. I don't even think they're in business. And as I tell you why, you'll understand. I had just flown back from India. So, for two---three weeks I have survived all the meals in India. Now I come back to America. It's safe here, right? To sit down at a restaurant and eat, it's safe. So I dig in and I have a few bites of lettuce in my salad, and as I do, my teeth stop on something hard and large.

I said, "That's odd for a salad." I pull it out of my mouth, and I look at it, and I show it to my wife. And I said, "Is that what I think it is?" And she looks at it and says, "Yup, that's a fingernail all right," pretty large one too. It was a woman's fingernail, and I mean the fingernail. And a lot of thoughts went through my mind at that point, but the most important thought for our purpose is simply that I'd lost my appetite. I didn't want to eat anymore. I was sort of the done with the meal after that bite of fingernail.

So, here's what I want you---it is disgusting, I know. That's exactly what I said. But I want you to look at these five things like fingernails. They're so nasty to you that you'll want to spit them out. You'll lose your appetite if you eat anymore. Now these are relational sins; these deal with people. It's interesting here that he includes these things, as Peter would say here's some things that come to the table that are so bad for your spiritual appetite that he says you need to lay them aside. You need to say no to these things.

These are horizontal sins that will take away your appetite for vertical truth. And, you and I, we must go vertical. These will choke out nourishment. I read an article this week in a heart-friendly website. It said, "Food needs to give you the nutrients you need in order to grow, to repair damages, to prevent disease. Anything that you put in your mouth, except for water, needs to provide nutrition. It should not take away nutrition. If it does, it's a poison. It kills slowly, but it kills." I don't know where cherry cobbler fits into that article, but---let's look at these five junk foods.

First of all on the list, verse 1, "malice." "Laying aside all malice." It's a general word for ill will. It's an attitude that eventuates into words that are said and deeds that are done. It begins inside, but eventually you speak it out---malice, ill will. It could even be looked at as a complaining, grouchy, grumpy person. I heard about a husband who sat down at breakfast, and his wife cooked him, like she did every day, two eggs: one fried, one scrambled. And he sat down, looked at the eggs, and went, "Pfft! I knew it. You did it again. You fried the wrong egg!"

I think she might've married the wrong egg. [laughter] He shouldn't have said anything. Just shut up, enjoy the egg, dude. But Jesus said, "From the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." And malice among Christians will quickly cause you to lose your appetite, so put that aside, that's junk food. Second on the list, "deceit," deceit. Now Peter was a fisherman and he understood this word. The word literally means to bait a hook. That's deceit, to bait a hook.

Now, if you are a fisherman, my dad was a big fisherman, essentially, that's what you're doing when you go fishing. You know that, right? You're deceiving fish. It's all about the lie. [laughter] You are lying to those little fish. I have no problem with that. [laughter] What you do is you take the hook and you cover it up with something that to the fish looks like a meal. You're baiting the hook; it's deceit. That's where the word comes from. Peter understood this.

Deceit among people is when you play a trick in order to get your way. You're manipulating them; you're dishonest with them. Whether it's an overt lie, or you are cleverly hiding an aspect of the truth to gain personal advantage, that's deceit. Now notice both of these are on the horizontal level in relationships---malice, deceit. I'll give it to you this way: when you eat deceit, you're in no mood to eat real food. It's a growth stopper. It's an appetite quencher. It'll take away your appetite for the good stuff.

Third on the list is "hypocrisy." Everybody knows what a hypocrite is. The word comes to us from the Greek plays. The Greeks would wear masks, often with a smile or a frown, and they would play a part. They would wear a mask in order to play a part and the word given was "hypocrite," a stage actor. It's become a prominent word even in the English language. So, a hypocrite is somebody who pretends to be something he or she is not. So, if somebody pretends to be smarter than they are, or cooler and hipper than they really are, or more spiritual than they are, that person is a hypocrite.

I read an article about a man who was arrested for impersonating a physician. He wasn't a doctor, but he knew lots of medical terms. He knew human anatomy. He knew just enough to be dangerous. They caught him because he wrote prescriptions that were the wrong prescriptions several times in a row. And somebody thought in the pharmacy, "Something's up with this guy." Come to find out he was a medical student.

And he was almost a doctor, but he didn't graduate. He was a hypocrite. He played the part of something that he was not. And so, too, a person can wear a mask on Sunday, and as soon as church is over take the mask off, go back to real life, and then bring the mask out next Sunday and stick it on, and live their life that way. And listen, nothing will take away people's appetite for God quicker than hypocrisy. Junk food---get rid of it. Throw it away.

Next on the list, notice, "envy." Envy is a slippery term. It's what one writer said is "the last sin Christians will confess, because it's so ugly." Envy is what goes on in your heart when somebody is blessed around you, and you're mad because they got some fortunate thing that happened to them; or when you're joyful that some misfortune happened to another person. It's the attitude that says, "I should have what they have, and I don't." And that breeds an attitude deep within. That's envy, that's junk food, that'll quench your appetite---get rid of it.

Next on list is "evil speaking," or a better term, "slander," as some translations say. Literally the Greek word means to speak down, talk down on someone, gossip, a cheap shot in a conversation. It could be a raised eyebrow. It could be a sentence that you leave unfinished. You start saying it, "Oh, well, never mind, I don't want to say anything bad." You just did! You're talking down that person's reputation, backbiting, rumor. And here's what I want you to see in all these things: when you forget the appetizer, when you forget how gracious God has been to you, you become eventually somebody who eats this stuff.

This is what you feed on. And the reason a person is cantankerous, and complaining, and down on other people a lot, if they're a Christian, and you wonder, "How can that be? Being around that person's like witnessing an autopsy. They're just always down and negative." The reason a person becomes this way is that person has forgotten what the appetizer was like. They've forgotten how gracious God has been to them. And when you forget how gracious God has been to you, an undeserving sinner, you start getting ungracious toward other people. That's the idea here.

Your bitterness will kill your appetite for his sweetness, or his sweetness will kill your bitterness and dispel it. You cannot have both. So, be mindful of what you've tasted; be careful to avoid junk food. Takes us to the third and final point here: be faithful to feed on truth, the real stuff. Verse 2, "As newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby." The highest rate of growth in human life is the infant stage. They change weekly. Have you noticed? It's amazing.

I haven't seen my grandkids all week, they've been at their other grandparent's house, especially that little cute girl, Kaydee, I know she's gonna change radically in one week. And the reason they change is they're eating a lot and they're growing rapidly during that phase. Now, when a baby is hungry, and a baby doesn't eat, a baby is faithful to let you and everyone else know exactly what they want. Am I right? So when a baby desires milk, you'll know about it. It's an unmistakable signal.

And when a baby cries because a baby is hungry, do you go, "I can't believe that demanding little baby. When is she going to learn, manners?" Not at all, because for a baby milk is not a fringe benefit, it's absolutely necessary for life. It's a necessity. You can't live without it. In order to grow you need milk. Now, when Peter uses this little metaphor "like babies desire milk," he's not writing to his audience saying, "You guys are a bunch of babies." Or he's not implying that, "You have such a low spiritual growth rate, you're just like spiritual infants. I'm not writing to mature believers."

He doesn't mean that at all. Some of them are very mature. Nor is he meaning that we should avoid deep, spiritual, meaty truths of the word and just love the milky things. You know, no doctrine, just the milky truths. He's not meaning any of those things at all, rather it's very simple, he is saying, "Crave God's truth just like a baby craves milk," and if you do that, you'll grow because of it. That's the intent of the passage. It all revolves around a single verb. And I want you to see it yourself.

It's the word "desire," "As newborn babies, desire . . ." Some translations give you a better word, "Crave it," crave it. It's where you got to have it, you yearn for it, you require it. The Greek word is epipothe?. It means a vigorous, passionate, intense desire---gotta have it. I heard a fun little story about a farmer named Ole. Ole was Lutheran. He lived in a little town back in the Midwest, a farming community. Everyone in his town was Catholic except Ole, he was a Lutheran. Well, that posed a problem Friday evenings when he would barbecue beef on his backyard porch, and that smell wafted through that Catholic community.

Friday they eat fish, not meat. I can attest to that in my upbringing. So, the community got together and said, "Let's talk to Ole." So they went to Ole and said, "Ole, listen. You're, like, the only Lutheran in this Catholic community, and the nearest Lutheran church is, like, the next town. It's too far away. Why don't you just convert and be a Catholic? Be one of us, join our church, join our community." He thought about it, and he said, "That's a good idea. I'll to that, that's a great idea."

So the big day came, they arranged it with the priest. And Ole knelt down on his knees, and the priest stood over him and put his hands on Ole, and said something to the effect, "Ole, you were born a Lutheran, and you were raised a Lutheran, but now"---and he sprinkled water and incense on Ole. "But now you're a Catholic."

That was it. Ole got up, gave the guy a hug, hugged all of his new friends, was a part of this church. And everything went well that week until Friday evening. And once again all of Ole's neighbors could smell beef being barbecued over at Ole's house. So they go, "We gotta go talk to Ole. He's changed now; he can't do this." So they went over, and just as they were entering his yard they peered over the fence. And there was Ole standing over his barbecue talking to his beef, saying, "You were born a beef, you were raised a beef," and then sprinkling salt and spices, said, "but now you're a fish!" [laughter]

I got the biggest kick out of that. Ole was bent and determined to eat beef no matter what. He craved beef. So he thought, "If that worked, this will work." He wanted to eat beef. What do you crave? What do you crave? On a scale of one to ten, what is your spiritual appetite like? I want you to think about that. I'd like you to think about that this week. On a scale of one to ten, evaluate your own spiritual hunger, your spiritual appetite: one being mildly interested; ten being an intense craving. What's it like?

You see, I recall our Lord Jesus Christ saying, "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, they will be filled." He said nothing about casually snacking after righteousness. There's some people who can go a week or two weeks without even cracking this Book. They feel good about it. It's no big deal to them. Just pull out the Sunday mask and go for it. What is your craving like? See, that's the real thrust of this passage. Just like a baby has to have milk and let's everybody know---crave spiritual truth.

Can you think back and can you remember how you devoured the Word of God when you were first saved? You know what I used to listen to? They had this thing years ago called cassette tapes. [laughter] Some of you remember them; others, you have to go to a museum to see what they look like. A cassette tape, I could listen to an hour message, Bible message. I'd listen to several cassette tapes during the day to go through the whole Bible.

My wife, before we were married, when she single and a brand-new believer, she would go to church every single night of the week that they offer Bible study. She just could not get enough. Have you lost that newborn passion, that kind of craving? It's not a priority any longer? What makes one student in school better than the average students? What makes one athlete excel more and get the gold more than the rest of athletes? What makes one worker at a job stand out to the boss more than the others?

One word describes it---passion. Passion, craving, desire, yearning---passion. J. C. Penney said, "Show me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll show you a man who will make history. But show me a man without a goal and I'll show you a stock clerk!" What's the difference? Passion. Passion, desire, crave, yearn the pure milk of the Word. Now look at it again. It says, "the pure milk of the word." It means no additives, no contaminates. It comes from the language of the farm. Two thousand years ago it was a word that described pure grain or pure uncontaminated corn. In this case, pure milk.

Think about it. Does a baby want 2 percent or skim milk? Are you kidding? That's adult stuff. They want the full-meal deal, whole milk, the real stuff. You know why? They're trying to put on weight. They're trying to grow. They're trying to add substance. If you mix it up and contaminate it with other things, or water it down, that child will not have a healthy upbringing. You want to grow? Don't mix God's truth with anything else---the pure truth the pure Word. Not the Bible plus philosophy, the Bible plus psychology, the Bible plus somebody's theological bent, but the "pure milk of the word."

And here's why it's important: "That you may grow thereby." Here's the truth, Baby Ruth. Here's the bottom line: you cannot grow spiritually without a steady diet of God's Word. You just cannot. You can't just read a devotional, you need the Word, the pure Word. You can't grow without it. That's why Wednesday nights are my favorite time of the week, because we tear through a chunk of Scripture, a chapter, two chapters at a time, and really go into it and go through all of it "that you may grow thereby."

Picture in your mind right now an adult wearing diapers with a Binky and a rattle. Just put that little image in your mind. Some of you have no imagination, it'll be hard, but others of you it comes quite readily to you. [laughter] Think about that. Look at that. Sad, isn't it? It's not right, is it? And now ask yourself: "Am I in the same place spiritually that I was a year ago or five years ago? Have I not grown beyond that? Is that just sort of where I've stagnated and stayed?"

Perhaps here is why: Timothy hears this from Paul, Second Timothy, chapter 3, "All Scripture is inspired by God and useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It straightens us out. It teaches us to do what is right. It is God's way of preparing us in every way, fully equipped for every good thing God wants us to do." There you have it. It's like the story I love to tell about the factory that had to shut down because it's biggest, most intricate piece of equipment failed. They couldn't fix it. They couldn't repair it.

So they brought in the expert who built it. He looked around, and he listened, and he watched. And he took out a little hammer, and with one little [bing] tap, just one tap, the machine started working again. And he sent the company a bill, $10,000. And he itemized it this way: "It's $1 for the tap; it's $9,999 to know precisely where to tap." Have you discovered God's Word knows precisely where to tap? You read a passage of Scripture and it's like [grunts], "That hurts!" Bam! Tap! It speaks to you, it challenges you, it confronts you; at other times it comforts you, it warms you, it encourages you. It knows exactly where to tap.

So there you have it. You're given the appetizer when you're first saved. He tastes so good! He is so gracious. But then we can start feeding on junk food that takes away our real spiritual appetite. And we need to clear those off our plate and move those off the table and make ready, make room for the real spiritual stuff. Clear the plate of the horizontal junk, relational junk, so that we might go vertical. But we'll never make it vertically as long as we're mired horizontally. Those two axes are connected and they work together.

There's some common philosophies Christians have in regards to church, Christianity. First is the philosophy that says, "I'll show up. That's all I gotta do. I'll just show up, find a seat, occupy the seat. I've showed up. I went to church." So you ask people, "Do you know Christ?" "I go to church." Not the question. But that's it to them, "I go to church. I show up. I dress up, I show up." Others take it a step beyond that: "I dress up, I show up, and I listen up. And I'm okay as long as I listen to the sermon."

All of those things are good, but you need to take another step. Grow up---by remembering "if indeed you have tasted that he is gracious." Get in touch with that again. Go back to that gracious appetizer, clear off the junk food, and be craving and desiring the real stuff. Because here's the deal: your growth, your growth spiritually is directly proportional to your desire. Make sense? You are a spiritual giant this morning or a spiritual midget, all because you want to be right where you are.

It's directly proportional to your desire. You and I have access to the same stuff. It's out there. We are where we are in our spiritual growth because of our desire or lack of it. So maybe a more basic question to end with is, not "Got Milk?" but, got Jesus? Got salvation? Maybe we should start there.

Father, we want to end, which for some will be a new beginning, we close with these thoughts still moving across our minds, still making their marks on these hearts. And we have been given by Peter a beautiful picture of this restaurant having tasted how gracious you are. And staying in touch with that, because when we forget that, that's when we become very critical and judgmental and ungracious toward others, because we have forgotten how good you are to us and have been.

And then with that, Lord, the craving, the desire for pure truth, unadulterated, unmixed Bible truth; the kind that Peter, the kind that Paul described as life-changing, because you know where to tap. You know how to straighten us out. You know how to provide what is needed. So, I pray for us, your people. If we find ourselves without a real hunger, it's probably because we're just eating a bunch of gnarly junk food. I pray that we would see these things, Lord, as to be avoided, like spitting fingernails back out. For anyone who might not personally know you, I pray that today would be the day that they would say yes to Jesus Christ on a personal level. It's in his glorious name we pray, amen.

For more resources from Calvary Albuquerque and Skip Heitzig visit calvaryabq.org.