FAILURE TO THRIVE SYNDROME

A dear friend shared with me today a beautiful understanding of God who is our El Shaddai which means "The Breasted One." She reminded us how when a baby is born, we as mothers long to nurse and nourish our baby and meet their every need. Where does this instinct come from? Of course, it comes from God who is El Shaddai. The understanding of this name also means, "The God who is Enough." He longs to supply our every need and His wells are inexhaustible. He waits for us to come and feed from Him so we can grow and mature. As 1 Peter 2:2 says, "As newborn babies, desire the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby."

As I thought about this, I thought of the FAILURE TO THRIVE syndrome where a child has very low weight gain or low increase in weight gain. This is a serious condition. And yet so many are living in the SPIRITUAL Failure to Thrive syndrome. Our El Shaddai who waits and longs to pour out of His inexhaustible riches to satisfy and feed us often waits in vain. We do not come to Him. We do not come to His precious Word to feed. We take a little sip on Sunday when we go to church, but starve during the week! We eat three meals a day to satisfy our physical body, but except for a tiny crumb here and there, we starve our spirit!

What about our children? We wouldn't think of not feeding them three nutritious meals a day, but how often a day to we feed their spirit? This is the most important part of our children? We need to feed them God's Word at least every morning and evening, as we start and end the day. They can't grow "strong in spirit" on anything less (Luke 1:80).

May God save us from having a diagnosis of  "Failure to Thrive" over our lives. And please, may God save us as mothers from being guilty of putting our children in a position of "Failure to Thrive" because we starve their spiritual beings.

Love from Nancy