When we get to the point in our life where we have to "growing up" or (in the words of my wife) act your age, we sometimes lose site of our inner child. Not only do we do this in our life's journey but sometimes in our spiritual journey as well.
One of the popular scriptures in maturing our spiritual and physical person is in 1 Corinthians 13:11 where is says "When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things." (NKJV). We read this scripture and automatically think, "we need to stop messing around, live life perfect, speak a certain way, dress a certain way, hang out with certain people and/or Christian ONLY and do what mature Christians are suppose to do" and we lose site of our inner child. And now the question comes up "Why do we need our spiritual inner child if the scripture says we put away childish things?" Well the Bible also says in Matthew 18: 3 "...unless you are converted and become as little children, you will not by no means enter the kingdom of heaven." This could be confusing but if you think about it...it's pretty simple. To put a little personal spin to this, when my son, Maverick, continues to get older and grow up, we will start liking things that are "age appropriate" and stop playing with the toys and stuff that he played with when he was younger. As Christian, our spiritual person needs to continue to move, change, adjust, and grow. When we do this, our spiritual person cannot with the "childish" things. We must strive for the next thing that God has for us and our spiritual person. But we are reminded in Matthew 18:3 that we have to keep the "Childlike Faith" to enter the kingdom. How do we continue to grow and mature in our spiritual person without losing the childlike faith part, our inner child? What this scripture is saying is that we don't need to get so caught up and so "spiritual" that we lose sight of the childlike faith we had when God first radically changed our life! When the disciples were chosen BY Jesus to follow Him and Him mentor them, their life was RADICALLY changed and their spiritual person started out green and an "infant Christian". As they walked, talked and learned from Jesus, they HAD to continue to change, adjust and grow their spiritual person. Along their journey with Jesus, they saw crazy awesome miracles performed and heard the stories straight from the authors mouth and they had that Childlike Faith. But after awhile of seeing the miracles being preformed, continually growing their spiritual person, learning from THE teacher first hand, they started losing site of their inner child and thought they'd "put their spiritual big boy pants on" and approach Jesus and see who was the best and greatest in the kingdom of heaven. When they got the nerve to ask Jesus which of them (the disciples) is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, this is where Jesus brought a little child in the middle of them and reminded them in Matthew 18:3 of how important it was keep their inner child. Well how does this story apply to me? Well sometimes we get so caught up in being so spiritual and this awesome Christian that we lose sight of our inner child and do not act or practice our Childlike Faith! If we ever get to the point in our Christian walk that we don't see why we need that childlike faith to continue growing or moving forward, we need to be reminded, just as the disciples were, that we need to find our inner child! I like how Eugene Peterson puts it in the Message Bible: Matthew 18: 2-5 For and answer Jesus called over a child, whom he stood in the middle of the room, and said, "I'm telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you are not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God's kingdom. What's more, when you receive the childlike on my account, it's the same as receiving me." We must continue to operate in and with our Childlike Faith. Even though we also need to continue to adjust, change, grow spiritually, we must remember to keep it simple and not complex.
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Chad & Valerie TrinkleGod loves you more than you think he does. Archives
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