FAITH-CHILDLIKE
A cry for help from the
heart of a childlike believer is sweet praise in the ears of God. Nothing
exalts Him more than the collapse of self-reliance which issues in passionate
prayer for help. “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and
you shall glorify me” (Ps. 50:15). Prayer is the translation into a thousand
different words of a single sentence: “Apart from me [Christ] you can do
nothing” (John 15:5).
Brothers, We Are Not Professionals, Bethlehem
Baptist Church, 2002, p. 55.
For many,
Christianity has become the grinding out of general doctrinal laws from
collections of biblical facts. But childlike wonder and awe have died. The
scenery and poetry and music of the majesty of God have dried up like a
forgotten peach at the back of the refrigerator.
John Piper
Desiring God, 1996, p. 89, Used by
Permission, www.desiringGod.org.
Now, as
always, God discloses Himself to "babes" and hides Himself in thick
darkness from the wise and the prudent. We must simplify our approach to Him.
We must strip down to essentials (and they will be found to be blessedly few).
We must put away all effort to impress, and come with the guileless candor of
childhood. If we do this, without doubt God will quickly respond.
A.W. Tozer
The Pursuit of God, Christianity Today, v.
38, n. 12.
The Bible
calls us to be like children in two specific ways: First, Jesus says that
unless we approach the kingdom of God as little children, we will never enter
it (Matthew 18:3). That is, we are to approach the kingdom of God with a
simple, childlike trust in God. The second way in which the Scripture directs
us to be children is, “In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be
adults” (I Corinthians 14:20).
R.C. Sproul
The Purpose of God, An Exposition
of Ephesians, Christian Focus Publications, 1994, p. 105.
There is a vast difference,
however, between childlike faith and childish faith, though the two are often
confused. (Childlike faith calls the
believer) to remain forever in a state of awe and trust of their heavenly
Father, while a childish faith balks at learning the things of God in depth. It
refuses the meat of the gospel while clinging to a diet of milk… The call of
the New Testament is to maturity.
R.C. Sproul
[Christ]
wants a child’s heart, but a grown-up’s head. He wants us to be simple,
single-minded, affectionate, and teachable, as good children are; but He also
wants every bit of intelligence we have to be alert at its job, and in
first-class fighting trim.
C.S. Lewis
For Jesus,
there is no better way to illustrate God’s free unmerited grace than pointing
to a child. For unlike many adults, children are generally entirely
unpretentious about receiving a gift. Moreover, “little ones,” that is, the
least, regardless of age, are a repeated focus in Jesus’ teaching on
discipleship (Mt. 18:5; Lk. 9:48). Indeed, God’s kingdom must be entered in a
childlike spirit, a lesson that was yet to be learned by Jesus’ followers.
Andreas Kostenberger
God,
Marriage and Family, Crossway, 2004, p. 113.
Our religion
is one which challenges the ordinary human standards by holding that the ideal
of life is the spirit of a little child. We tend to glorify adulthood and
wisdom and worldly prudence, but the gospel reverses all this. The gospel says
that the inescapable condition of entrance into the divine fellowship is that
we turn and become as a little child. As against our natural judgment we must
become tender and full of wonder and unspoiled by the hard skepticism on which
we so often pride ourselves. But when we really look into the heart of a child,
willful as he may be, we are often ashamed. God has sent children into the
world, not only to replenish it, but to serve as sacred reminders of something
ineffably precious which we are always in danger of losing. The sacrament of
childhood is thus a continuing revelation.
Elton Trueblood
As the flower
in the garden stretches toward the light of the sun, so there is in the child a
mysterious inclination toward the eternal light. Have you ever noticed this
mysterious thing that when you tell the smallest child about God, [he or she]
never asks with strangeness and wonder, “What or who is God – I have never seen
Him,” but listens with shining face to the words as though they soft loving
sounds from the land of home. Or when you teach a child to fold [his or her]
little hands in prayer that [he or she] does this as though it were a matter of
course, as though [it was] opening for [the child] that world of which [he or
she] had been dreaming with longing and anticipation. Or tell them, these
little ones, the stories of the Savior, show them the pictures with scenes and
personages of the Bible – how their pure eyes shine, how their little hearts
beat.
R.C.H.
Lenski
From Interpretation of Saint Matthews Gospel by Richard C. Lenski, © 1932,
Augsburg Publishing House, p. 743.
Hudson
Taylor, founder of China Inland Mission, in the closing months of his life said
to a friend, “I am so weak. I can’t read my Bible. I can’t even pray. I can
only lie still in God’s arms like a little child and trust.
Author Unknown
Although a
Christian should believe simply, he should not “simply believe.”
Os Guinness
If this child
is born to you, you are a child, and the question arises, are you so? Man grows
from childhood up to manhood naturally; in grace men grow from manhood down to childhood;
and the nearer we come to true childhood, the nearer welcome to the image of
Christ. For was not Christ called “a child,” even after he
had ascended up to heaven? “Thy holy child Jesus.”
Brethren and sisters, can you say that you have been made into children? Do you
take God’s Word just as it stands, simply because your heavenly Father says so?
Are you content to believe mysteries without demanding to have them explained?
Are you ready to sit in the infant class, and be a little one? Are you willing
to hang upon the breast of the church, and suck in the unadulterated milk of
the Word – never questioning for a moment what your divine Lord reveals, but
believing it on his own authority, whether it seemed to be above reason, or
beneath reason, or even contrary to reason? Now, “except ye be converted and
become as little children,” this child is not born to you; except like a child
you are humble, teachable, obedient, pleased with your Father's will and
willing to assign all to Him, there is grave matter of question whether this
child is born to you.
C.H.
Spurgeon
A Christmas Question, Sermon #291, December 25, 1859.