God is a Daddy who lovingly stoops down to us, and that requires something of us. Yesterday, I blogged about this irresistible image of our almighty God bending down to look us in the eyes and listen to us (Psalm 116:2). Our Father does not expect us to do the impossible–to climb our way up to him; the unholy to strive to the holy, the weak to struggle up to the all-powerful. So he comes down to our level, a Daddy stooping down to a little child–his child.
Does that sound like a paradox? How can it be that God does not expect us to work our way to earn his love, and yet his stooping does require something of us? It’s simple:
Look at what God says about this:
- “The Lord protects those of childlike faith” (Psalm 116:6).
- “But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).
- “Jesus said, ‘Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to such as these'” (Matthew 19:14).
- “Then Jesus prayed this prayer: ‘O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding the truth from those who think themselves so wise and clever, and for revealing it to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way!'” (Matthew 11:25-26).
What is “childlike faith”? It is complete trust in our Daddy, even when it does not make logical sense in the mind of a wise and clever grown-up!
When our kids were small they had this kind of faith in me and Heidi. As they grew into adolescents, they began to question us more and trust us less. Now that they are teens and young adults, we want them to grow up, but sometimes we just need them to return to that childlike faith in us, to trust us. That takes maturity.
Did you catch that? It takes maturity to have childlike faith.
Childlike faith takes surrender of my own ideas of self-sufficiency and wisdom. More than anything else, it takes humility. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow!
My God, help me to humbly surrender myself to you today. You are my Daddy! I simply want to do what you tell me to do. Nothing more and nothing less. You know better than I do!
