Childlike

Do you remember when your child would hear your voice and turn to you with a smile? When you would say, “Jump! Daddy’s got you.” And she jumped. Or you could say, “Let’s take a walk,” and he put on his coat and waited by the door?Or, maybe you were the child with the smile at the sound of your father’s voice; the one risking all by jubilantly jumping into mom’s arms; the one standing by the door, eager to brave the world at daddy’s side.

Jesus said: “The truth is, you must change your thinking and become like little children. If you don’t do this, you will never enter God’s kingdom.” Matthew 18:3 (ERV)

There are at least three endearing qualities of small children that seem to be essential in our relationship to our Heavenly Father: unqualified love, unquestioning trust, and eager obedience. To be sure, these traits develop best in a loving home. But even in the worst environment, children demonstrate these characteristics for a time; at least until – through hard and bitter experience – they learn to respond in kind to the unloving, distrustful, and rebellious examples around them. (In those situations, perhaps Jesus’ other comment about children should be remembered: “It would be best for the person who causes one of them to lose faith to be drowned in the sea with a large stone hung around his neck.” (Matthew 18:6 GW))

Love, trust, and obedience. Where a healthy bond exists between child and parent, each quality is strong. Where one is weak, they all become skewed, distorted, and the relationship quickly erodes. It is most often very easy to distinguish a good from a poor relationship by the shared look, even before hearing an exchange or observing a response to a simple request.

In broken family relationships, it is hard even to attempt to determine whether the relationship is undermined by parent or child. A loving child may be disappointed to learn that the mother is not to be trusted; that the father is less than honorable. Or a model parent may find a child drawn away by peers or – heaven forbid – the other parent. Too often, these factors and hundreds more combine to make lasting and loving relationships difficult or impossible. While children are still admonished to honor parents and to be loving and obedient, there are always ample excuses to justify lackluster, cautious relationships or outright rebellion.

But in our relationship to God, there are no excuses.

God is love. That’s settled. He is trustworthy. That should be beyond doubt. And He is our Father, our Creator, our Savior, our Everything. Surely, He is to be honored by our obedience. Our relationship to our Heavenly Father should be as spontaneous, as confident, as eager as the little child to her loving father. God never acts toward us from any motivation other than love. He never fails us in even the smallest matter. He is our Father.

Do we, His children, respond to Him with a spontaneous loving smile? Do we jump where He directs with complete abandon? Are we quick to obey His Word and the promptings of His Holy Spirit? Do we make our Father proud?

We show our love for God by obeying his commandments… 1 John 5:3 (CEV)

Article originally ran on 2/17/2012.