Practice Makes Perfect

"Practice Makes Perfect", that well-known proverb. I'm sure you heard it a lot when learning new skills, like playing a  musical instrument or math facts or ... And it is true that we get better and better at whatever we do with practice.

So many things demand practice, including spiritual disciplines. Although we know we can never be perfect in the sense that we are faultless or flawless (at least not this side of heaven), we also know that we can grow and mature and soften or even eliminate some of those imperfections through practice.

Hebrews 5:11-6:12 teaches the need for maturity, the need to move beyond the infantile need for milk so that we can be fed "solid food."

For though by this time you ought to be teachers,

you need someone to teach you again

the basic principles of the oracles of God.

You need milk, not solid food

Hebrews 5:12

What's interesting is how verses 13 and 14 define the difference. 

for everyone who lives on milk

 is unskilled in the word of righteousness,

since he is a child.

But solid food is for the mature,

for those who have their powers of discernment

trained by constant practice

to distinguish good from evil.

 Hebrews 5:13, 14

Did you pick up on those key phrases that differentiate between the child and the mature? The child is unskilled in the word of righteousness. Unskilled. That sounds to me like the child has not practiced the word of righteousness sufficiently to become skilled. And where do we learn about true righteousness if not from the Bible, the Word of God. 

Verse 14 goes on to say that the mature have been trained by constant practice. Practice makes perfect—or at least mature.  

My take on this is that we need to study the Bible, that we need to practice its teachings until we are trained to discern and distinguish between good and evil. And evil can masquerade as good, false teachers can masquerade as experts in the truth. We grow and mature, we become more and more like Christ, as we feed on the solid food of the Bible, applying its teachings to our lives and we learn the difference between God's truth and the world's or Satan's twisted truths.

Oh, application is so important! I've know individuals—and I'm sure you have, too—who are well-versed in Scripture but their lives don't show it because they haven't applied its truths to themselves.  If truly believers, they are still infants or children. They have not allowed the Word of God to train them, nor have they been willing to practice its teachings so they may progressively improve and mature.

Reconsidering the proverb, "practice makes perfect", I have rephrased it in several ways:

Practice Makes Mature Christians

Practice brings about Matirity

Practice Perfects—not completely, but progressively.