In Matthew 18, the disciples asked Jesus,
“Which one of us is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
He shocked them with His answer. “Unless you are converted and become like children, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The disciples were struggling with a problem they didn’t recognize. They were living under the lie that they could be as God … strong, wise, and self-sufficient. They had forgotten that only God is God.
THEY NEEDED TO CONVERT, TO CHANGE THE WAY THEY WERE THINKING.
They needed to embrace the truth that they were really children before Him. If not, they wouldn’t fully experience the kingdom they had already entered by faith.
THIS WASN’T JUST THEIR PROBLEM, IT’S OUR PROBLEM, TOO.
And it comes with disastrous consequences.
God designed us to live from Him, in a childlike relationship with our loving Father. When we do, He becomes our supply and meets all our needs.
Just as water flows from a faucet and fills a cup, we can be filled to the brim with Him.
No longer empty, we can finally stop trying to control and manipulate each other and live in an adult community of harmony and peace.
BUT WHEN WE REJECT A CHILDLIKE RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, WE WILL FIND OURSELVES IN AN ADULT RELATIONSHIP WITH HIM.
Living as His equal, we’ll trust ourselves instead of Him to supply our needs. The cup of our lives will be empty, and we’ll live in childish relationships with one another, vying for attention and selfishly trying to get our needs met at others’ expense.
We’ll be a community of children, a giant nursery filled with babies screaming that life is all about them. Like ticks with no dog, we’ll find ourselves isolated and unfulfilled.
Jesus said we need to convert.
That’s the Greek word strepho, which means to turn. We need to turn from thinking we can be adult with God and reject the lie that we can be great … because only God is great.
Ironically, the word strepho is the root of our word catastrophe.
When we make life all about us, and fail to live with Him as our source, we’ll forfeit all He longs to supply to us. We’ll wind up empty, unable to live the full and fruitful lives He longs for us to have.
Demanding that we have all the attention, we’ll fail to express the true nature of God to the world. And that is the greatest catastrophe of all.
We need to reverse our course and learn to be children again.
We need to see life through the eyes of a child and embrace our weaknesses as assets, because they force us to get help from the One Who is bigger, stronger, and wiser than we are.
And our strengths? We need to see them as liabilities, because they can steer us toward self-sufficiency and keep us from seeing our need for God.
Faith is born out of need, and God stands ready to meet all our needs, if only we would own up to how needy we really are.
The world grew us into adulthood. Now it’s time to allow the Holy Spirit to grow us back down to childhood with our heavenly Father.
He wants us to experience Him personally and express Him powerfully
through the supernatural life He will live through us.
WHEN IT COMES TO OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH GOD, LET’S ALL BECOME CHILDREN AGAIN.
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