Matthew 18:3 Then He said to them , “I can guarantee this truth: Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes like this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven...”
With this verse it’s definitely easy to jump to, “What do I need to do to have the faith of a child? What is the faith of a child?” It’s easy to become focused on the law and accomplishment side of it and “what do I need to do.”
For the first time I saw a different way to look at this verse.
God prompted me to focus on Him. He is our Father and we are His children. How does He look at His children and their faith?
As a parent you quickly realize that while children may be “pure” from not having witnessed certain things in life, they definitely aren’t sin free. They are born with it and start to sin very quickly.
As a parent your responsibility is to teach your children right from wrong and guide them down the right path.
Proverbs 22:6 Train a child in the way he should go, and even when he is old he will not turn away from it.
This is exactly what God does with us.
The faith we are to have is the faith that children have in their parents. They trust their council. They believe in what they’re teaching them. They seek their wisdom. They trust them and find comfort in them.
The real beauty of it all is thinking of how even when children respect and love their parents. They still don’t always want to listen, they still talk back or don’t take their parent’s advice. They still seek the advice of their friends instead, etc.
Yet this is still the faith that God calls us to and is talking about. He knows we are not perfect and the grace and mercy He has for us is so beautiful and so needed.
Even when we stray, don’t listen, talk back, etc. God is always there for us to run back to. To say “I’m sorry. You were right.” He allows us to grow in the realization and appreciation of His knowledge as we grow in our relationship with Him.
Have the faith of a child of His existence and love and grow as a child does in a relationship with Him and an appreciation of His wisdom and who He is.
Popular posts from this blog
Up until the moment that I wrote this, I’ve viewed Abram in quite a negative light. “He’s so passive. Besides going where God calls, He doesn’t seem to follow God in any of these situations.” While Abram has moments of not trusting God, he also has moments of reflecting Jesus and what Jesus stood for. “Now, Lot who was traveling with Abram, also had flocks, herds, and tents. But the land was unable to support them as long as they stayed together, for they had so many possessions that they could not stay together, and there was quarreling between the herdsmen of Abram’s livestock and the herdsmen of Lot’s livestock…So Abram said to Lot, ‘Please, let’s not have quarreling between you and me, or between your herdsmen and my herdsmen, since we are relatives. Isn’t the whole land before you? Separate from me: if you go to the left, I will go to the right; if you go to the right, I will go to the left.’” Genesis 13:5-9 CSB Abram was not avoiding conflict here. He faced it. Did he lay d...
“He also said to Him, ‘I am the LORD who brought you from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.’ But he said, ‘Lord God, how can I know that I will possess it?’ He said to him, ‘Bring me a three-year-old cow, a three-year-old female goat, a three-year-old ram, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.’ So he brought all these to him, cut them in half, and laid the pieces opposite each other, but he did not cut the birds in half….When the sun had set and it was dark, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch appeared and passed between the divided animals. On that day the LORD made a covenant with Abram, saying ‘I give this land to your offspring, from the Brook of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates River. Genesis 15:7-10,17-18 CSB This is an obscure weird occurrence for us to read about. Surprisingly it was weird in Abram’s time as well, but for very different reasons. The instructions that God gave to Abram were something he was familiar with. It was a common practice wh...
"You are to take seven pairs, a male and its female, of all the clean animals, and two of the animals that are not clean, a male and its female, and seven pairs, male and female, of the birds of the sky – in order to keep offspring alive throughout the earth.” Genesis 7:2 (CSB) Once I was able to get past the initial shock that it wasn’t just 2 of each animal, as I had grown up thinking, I was then curious about why He was so specific and why there needed to be more of the clean animals for them to survive than the unclean. Was it because of the Jewish laws of only being allowed to eat clean animals? “Every creature that lives and moves will be food for you; as I gave the green plants, I have given you everything.” Genesis 9:3 (CSB) No, the Jewish laws weren’t established yet. They were free to eat any animal. “Then Noah built an altar to the LORD. He took some of every kind of clean animal and every kind of clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar.” Genesis 8:20 (C...
Comments
Post a Comment