Since M-g exceeds traditional devotional format lengths, it becomes challenging to stay within its scope. I am always slipping over the walls of brevity like a child told to stay within the confines of the yard. I want to present a two-part series (if I can keep it to two parts) on maturing in Christ while maintaining a childlike faith because I earnestly and sincerely believe that the childlike faith aspect of the maturation process of being like Christ gets lost in the translation of life (apart from the Scriptures) for most believers. This is evidenced by the visible struggles and loss of joy in worshiping and serving God in their lives.
It is my contention that the vitality of spiritual growth is in maintaining a childlike faith no matter how old we become in the Lord. Childlike faith does not have a biological age limit, but many set it before the stormy teenage years without biblical support. The why of why we do this can be an extensive treatment beyond even the scope of M-g. How we get it back can be abbreviated but challenging. Naturally, we can’t do this thing in our own strength any more than we can save ourselves or live for the Lord. We never should outgrow a childlike faith of simple trust and utter dependence.
We are encouraged, even commanded to grow in the faith (2 Pet 3:18), but never are we told to leave childlike faith behind. We are to put away childish things, of course, but never the trust and dependence of a little child or childlike faith. We enter the kingdom of God as a little child or the faith or belief of a little child (Mk 10:15). Childlike faith is the vanguard of our walk before the Lord throughout life. In our own wisdom, we take the lead of an adultlike faith, and it comes at a price spiritually, mentally, and physically. Childlike faith is one of those paradoxes from the Lord; you know like – give to get, die to live, go down to go up, lose to gain, or mature with childlike faith. Ain’t that a hoot! You got to love providential physics. Important as growing with childlike faith is, it seems to me to be the missing element of our experiences in the Christian life.
We cannot delve into the thick of all the details or illustrate every point without making this book-size. My hope is to at least provoke our thinking into moving in the direction of Christlikeness with childlike faith, simple trust, and utter dependence. Should this become a spiritual reality then the time was well worth spending for both of us. The objective is not to return to emotional immaturity or experience childlike regression but to a simple trust and utter dependence on a little child’s faith in God.
I truly believe it will revolutionize our faith and revitalize our joy in the Lord. Why would any believer abandon the simple trust in salvation for wrestling and struggling with a complex trust of our own making is fodder for books. We could psychoanalyze and spiritually dissect until the cows come home and not be any closer to the truth. J.B. Phillips in his book, Your God is Too Small, made an interesting observation,
“It is obviously impossible for an adult to worship the conception of God that exists in the mind of a child of Sunday-school age, unless he is prepared to deny his own experience of life.” 1
“Unless he is prepared to deny his own experience of life” got my attention. It is “obviously impossible” to worship the conception of a child’s mind of God otherwise! Phillips is declaring that the adult conception of God is really too small, not big enough to meet the needs of self-deceived believers much less modern man, and many are not willing to ditch their experiences to embrace that childlike concept of God.
Now, the world would prefer to bar the church doors and contain the idea of God within its four walls, making it a convenient sarcophagus and a grave marker of a time that has come and gone. It doesn’t much care for a conception of God, big or small. What would cause an unregenerate man to drive by a church and think of it as merely a symbol of a graveyard for Christianity? Such a perception is disturbing because a Bible-believing church (almost oxymoron to say) may be seen as a place full of dead man’s bones having nothing to offer to anybody, and who is crazy enough to want to hang around a graveyard anyway?
Does such a critical and extreme point of view of us possess any element of truth? Are we just fossils to the lost who see our faith as irrelevant and without any curb appeal? Are we a people reflecting gracelessness and hopelessness to a world already troubled and in peril? What do we see when we look into the mirror of God’s Word before we walk out of the house? Are we spiritually ready to go out that door and engage the world as an ambassador of Christ every day with the right dimension of God as revealed in Scripture?
For modern man, Christian thought and practice is archaic and no longer considered relevant in addressing the complexities and perplexities of modern thought and times in light of the gigantic explosion of knowledge and scientific discoveries over the last century. God is not seen as on the cutting edge but old fashion, distant, out of touch, and irrelevant. Such secularism only sees a Christian as an antithesis to modern culture as one dumbing down to a medieval God-notion and flat earth thinking as modern man becomes more technologically advanced, independent, and futuristic in his thinking. Modern man has a “stuck on this earth” mentality which is why he looks to the stars in hope of finding other forms of life or a way to visit other “inhabitable” planets one day. Faithful Christians, on the other hand, are looking forward to leaving the earth for heaven one day which is why they look up, feeling the tug of the glorious gravity of heaven.
Truthfully, I am afraid that our view of God is too small, and it can be traced back to several reasons. But let me suggest a contemporary one – the way we look at and value Scripture. God cannot be any greater than our view of Scripture which is a Divine disclosure of God.
If we hold to a low view of Scripture, we tend to believe that the Bible is full of errors, contradictions, and a work of man. We will always be questioning the character and motives of God. In contrast, if we believe that all Scripture is God-breathed (2 Tim 3:16-17), authoritative in all matters
of faith and practice, we will have a high view of God that develops from a sound
approach or proper hermeneutic (interpretation) of Scripture that God is who He
claims to be as revealed in the Bible, the Creator and the One and only
Almighty, the I AM that I AM who is trustworthy (Job 13:15). A low view of Scripture
(what God supposedly said) contributes to a lack of trust, and a high view of
Scripture (what God actually breathed or said) promotes simple trust in God without
tampering with His character or diminishing His attributes in any way.
As I have said before, an orthodox view of God is not proof alone of genuine faith. All demons have an orthodox view of God (Jas 2:19), but their destiny is the lake of fire. Genuine faith is fruitful (Jas 2:20; Mt 7:20) and glory bound. What is troubling is how the average believer treats the Word of God. For the most part, they practically ignore it or seldom read it. The lack of reading, studying, and meditating on the Scriptures has attributed to a sweeping negative effect of worldliness, ignorance, apostasy, and a detrimental reflection of God to the world. J.B. Phillips was right on why we cannot worship God like a child of Sunday school age because we are unprepared to deny our own experiences of life.
Rather than looking at the world through the lens of Scripture (from God’s point of view), we see life through the lens of our experiences (from our point of view) and interpret the Bible by our experiences rather than proper and consistent hermeneutics. Should the truth of Scripture contradict our experiences, we question the Bible and default to our own experiences. In fact, our faith has dwindled, and God has become small in our eyes because our experiences have become the litmus test of the truth.
The scientific community states evolution is a fact when in fact it is just a theory as creationism. But I am of the opinion that evolutionism takes more faith to believe in than creationism. We have to decide whether to side with the authority of science or the authority of Scripture. The Bible is not a book of science, but whenever it alludes to science it is accurate. When we measure truth subjectively by our five senses rather than the objective truth of Scripture, we create a fallible authority. The Bible is no longer the authority in all matters of faith and practice; our experiences now determine what is right or wrong, true or false, fact or fiction, truth or a lie, or me or an opinion (cf. Jdg 21:25). Willful ignorance maligns God’s character and prevents maturing with childlike faith. Growing up with the wrong conception of God is not maturity; it’s paganism. Christlikeness represents the God of the Bible. If our view of God is not in agreement with the truth of Scripture, we cannot be like Christ. We are like something else….
Jesus claimed to be Deity (Jn 10:30). If any of God’s attributes are diminished in any way, shape, or form, Jesus is belittled as well. When we represent another Jesus than the One portrayed in the Bible, we present a false image of Christ to others This may be done unintentionally in the process of progressive sanctification or growing in the faith (2 Pet 3:18). Part of the learning process is making mistakes, learning from our mistakes, and avoiding the mistakes of the past.
When gross negligence is the result of willful ignorance, it is an intentional misrepresentation of Christ to others. We cannot say, “I didn’t mean to hurt others with my folly!” Nonetheless, when we are not like the Jesus Christ of the Scriptures we invariably hurt others in a way that has a negative impact on the cause of Christ – “If that is an example of what it means to be a Christian, I don’t want any part of it!” I am not referring to people being offended by the truth but offended because we were acting or living outside the truth (worldliness) in our attitude and behavior. Worldliness causes people to reject the message of Christ due to our hypocrisy; it hurts the body of Christ; it breaks our fellowship with God because of sinful behavior; and worldly works do not fare well at the judgment seat of Christ for believers.
As I have said before, an orthodox view of God is not proof alone of genuine faith. All demons have an orthodox view of God (Jas 2:19), but their destiny is the lake of fire. Genuine faith is fruitful (Jas 2:20; Mt 7:20) and glory bound. What is troubling is how the average believer treats the Word of God. For the most part, they practically ignore it or seldom read it. The lack of reading, studying, and meditating on the Scriptures has attributed to a sweeping negative effect of worldliness, ignorance, apostasy, and a detrimental reflection of God to the world. J.B. Phillips was right on why we cannot worship God like a child of Sunday school age because we are unprepared to deny our own experiences of life.
Rather than looking at the world through the lens of Scripture (from God’s point of view), we see life through the lens of our experiences (from our point of view) and interpret the Bible by our experiences rather than proper and consistent hermeneutics. Should the truth of Scripture contradict our experiences, we question the Bible and default to our own experiences. In fact, our faith has dwindled, and God has become small in our eyes because our experiences have become the litmus test of the truth.
The scientific community states evolution is a fact when in fact it is just a theory as creationism. But I am of the opinion that evolutionism takes more faith to believe in than creationism. We have to decide whether to side with the authority of science or the authority of Scripture. The Bible is not a book of science, but whenever it alludes to science it is accurate. When we measure truth subjectively by our five senses rather than the objective truth of Scripture, we create a fallible authority. The Bible is no longer the authority in all matters of faith and practice; our experiences now determine what is right or wrong, true or false, fact or fiction, truth or a lie, or me or an opinion (cf. Jdg 21:25). Willful ignorance maligns God’s character and prevents maturing with childlike faith. Growing up with the wrong conception of God is not maturity; it’s paganism. Christlikeness represents the God of the Bible. If our view of God is not in agreement with the truth of Scripture, we cannot be like Christ. We are like something else….
Jesus claimed to be Deity (Jn 10:30). If any of God’s attributes are diminished in any way, shape, or form, Jesus is belittled as well. When we represent another Jesus than the One portrayed in the Bible, we present a false image of Christ to others This may be done unintentionally in the process of progressive sanctification or growing in the faith (2 Pet 3:18). Part of the learning process is making mistakes, learning from our mistakes, and avoiding the mistakes of the past.
When gross negligence is the result of willful ignorance, it is an intentional misrepresentation of Christ to others. We cannot say, “I didn’t mean to hurt others with my folly!” Nonetheless, when we are not like the Jesus Christ of the Scriptures we invariably hurt others in a way that has a negative impact on the cause of Christ – “If that is an example of what it means to be a Christian, I don’t want any part of it!” I am not referring to people being offended by the truth but offended because we were acting or living outside the truth (worldliness) in our attitude and behavior. Worldliness causes people to reject the message of Christ due to our hypocrisy; it hurts the body of Christ; it breaks our fellowship with God because of sinful behavior; and worldly works do not fare well at the judgment seat of Christ for believers.
When we were young everything looked
bigger until we grew up. When I returned home after leaving for the first time,
everything appeared smaller than I remembered it; I got bigger but the
dimensions of my childhood memories shrunk. We all experience this phenomenon.
As we got older, we saw things in their proper physical dimensions. Who changed in
understanding the true dimensionality of our environment? We did, but not God.
According to the authority of the Scriptures, God is eternal, infinite, and immutable. God may appear to “grow” with our learning, but once we become adults, He is still the same God unchanged (Mal 3:6). When we willfully disembark from childlike faith, we get taller, and God gets smaller. I like what William Hendricks once said, “The size of your God determines the size of everything.” Ask a child how big He is (Mt 21:16). How’s your faith hanging? <><
According to the authority of the Scriptures, God is eternal, infinite, and immutable. God may appear to “grow” with our learning, but once we become adults, He is still the same God unchanged (Mal 3:6). When we willfully disembark from childlike faith, we get taller, and God gets smaller. I like what William Hendricks once said, “The size of your God determines the size of everything.” Ask a child how big He is (Mt 21:16). How’s your faith hanging? <><
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| To Part 2 |
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1Your God is Too Small. New York: Simon & Schuster, p.7
