Growing into a Child
Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. — Matthew 18:3 (ESV)
There’s a really adorable moment where I was out mowing the lawn one day and my son saw what I was doing for the first time. He was so fascinated by it that he wanted to join in. So I picked him up and sat him on my arm and continued to mow. His little feet dangled above the ground as I pushed the mower while carrying him. “I’m helping! I’m helping!” he screamed with joy. Of course, he wasn’t really helping at all. I was lifting him up to myself while doing all the real work, and I loved every moment of it with him.
Each day the devil tempts me with whether I’m doing enough, if I’m good enough for God’s kingdom. Do I tell enough people about him, do I say the right things to turn their hearts to him? When a moment of grace does present itself for me to speak the truth about God to someone, I always feel like I flub it up by overcomplicating it, saying the wrong thing, or forgetting to say something I should have. Posthumous, my thoughts wander. Did I just drive them farther away? Did I introduce some sort of unintended heresy? Oh no! They’ll remember the wrong things, or they’ll not remember any of it. Of course, it’s all selfish thinking to believe I’m the crux of anyone’s salvation. That right belongs solely to Jesus.
Eventually, my pride subsides and I remember that spiritual moment on the lawn with my son. I’m joining my father in his work and he’s lifting me up to himself, bearing my weight while doing all the real work he had intended to do all along. I’m just obnoxiously screaming “I’m helping, I’m helping!” to the glory of his name, and he loves every moment of it with me.
There was another moment of revelation like this for me with my other son as I was putting him to sleep. He was cranky and crying tremendously because it was bedtime. As I always do before placing him down, I began singing “Amazing Grace” to calm him.
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now am found
Was blind but now…
…I stopped singing. All I could think about in that quiet moment was how much I loved my son and how good it felt to love him like that. He was fast asleep, completely at peace in my arms. I was raptured by the next thought: I, a flawed man, am able to look on my children with a deep affection and grace. How much deeper and truer does God the perfect Father look upon each of us in a longing that we might be reconciled to him?
Our Father God is not the hard and distant man we think him to be. Assuredly, he’s just. He does not tolerate wrong doing. Yet his reprimands are in perfect love. They’re not like my ill-fated attempts as an earthly father to discipline. They are true, and right, and wholly perfect for our good. God is for us, not against us.
There’s a moment in Matthew 16 where Jesus is with his disciples in the city of Caesarea Phillipi. It was a place full of lustful pleasures and other abhorrent idol worship. Surrounded by this, he quizzes them on how the world perceives him. They share all sorts of differences of opinion and perceptions about him. He then directs the question to them and asks them who they think he is. It’s as though he’s asking them to choose between falsified gods and the one true living God by asking them there.
A lot of perceptions and opinions exist about who God is still today. A lot of twisted truths. A lot of past hurt held from those claiming his name to their own ends. But God is taking us out and turning to each of us and asking, “Who do you say that I am?” It is the great anticipation of his heart that one day we might call him “Daddy.”
