Child-Like Faith

Being around a toddler all day long can either be exhausting or enlightening. We get to choose! I choose enlightenment for today. Jesus said that we must have child-like faith to enter the kingdom of God (Matt. 18:3). And from what I've observed from my toddler is this - she asks of me for things, with such absolute faith. She doesn't doubt that I will give her what she needs. So when and how did I lose this kind of faith in my Father? If He cares for the sparrows so lovingly then surely He will care for you and I, right? (Matt. 6:26) To care for me is one thing, but to give me the specific things I ask of Him is a whole different type of love (Psalm 37:4)!

It is in the way that the toddler asks that we must learn. The child comes up to the mother and without hesitation makes request of a need. The child knows, without a shadow of doubt, that this is the person to whom they should direct their request, for it will be granted. The toddler has lived long enough to know that it is a delightful thing to be given what it is they want, but not yet long enough to have been hardened by the evilness of the world. So, wishing the child to be frozen in time, with this remarkable faith, we examine the word delight. Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart". I don't know about you, but I want what this verse claims, and if I want those things I desire so desperately, I must first delight myself in God!

What does the opposite of delighting in the Lord look like, because without any fail, I want to avoid doing that. Just a few antonyms that came up in my google search were: misery, heartbreak, disappointment, agony, regret, boredom, annoy, hate, sorrow, depression, anguish...we get the point! On the other hand to delight in the Lord is to be completely satisfied in Him alone.

I think of my toddler once again, who the other day stopped dead in her tracks just to listen to the creaking of the trees, created by the wind. She was filled with such wonder. Delighting in the Lord is so simple, and children bring us back to the simplicity of it all, don't they? To delight in the Lord, we must surrender to His hands, and allow Him to mold us. This requires us to be soft and not rigid and stubborn in our own ways. It requires us to stop moving and be still and examine God's ways. What is God's heart beating for? His ways are so much high above the ways of this world, the ways of us humans. We must slow down enough to hear the groaning of the trees as they bend in the wind. We either get to spend our days ignoring the song that creation is singing, or choosing to join in, and sing back, in delight, to the One who formed us.

James, the brother of Jesus, who came to know Jesus not only as his earthly brother, but as the living Son of God, said these words:

"What causes quarrels and fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions" (James 4:1-3)

I must agree with James then, that we often ask God for wants out of our own selfishness. And like a wise Father, He is not willing to give us anything but that which will benefit us! "Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (James 1:17). Yes, even the things which seem horrid in the sight of man, could they actually be good gifts from our Father? Gifts that will benefit us, in the perspective of eternity? 

It is a hard thing for us calloused souls to understand, but let us not give up! Let us press on to know the Lord (Hosea 6:3)! What are we missing out on in our lives, simply because we are not bold in prayer? I for one want to have my faith reverted back to that of a childs. The simple kind of faith. Like my toddler, who will wake up this morning, as she has all mornings prior, and ask me for breakfast, without a doubt in her mind that I will give her what her little soft, delicate, heart desires. 

Change my heart oh God, 

Make it ever true.

Change my heart oh God, 

May I be like You.

You are the Potter, 

I am the clay.

Mold me and make me,

This is what I pray. 

(Song by: Eddie Espinosa)