worldview and perspective on Trust like a Child

God's will is what you would want for yourself if you knew enough to want it.

Imagine a remote village in Africa. No modern Westerner has ever set foot there. The natives live off the land, using the same ancient methods and tools as their forefathers used for the last thousand...

Father, as adults, we can fool ourselves into being quite self-sufficient. Yet, You have called us to be precariously dependent upon You. When we see how Jesus welcomes the little children, we can als...

Father God–You invite us to come as a child to his/her daddy. You invite us to open our souls to You. You invite us to lay our desires before You. You are fond of us, Your children–so we come to You h...

Ancient Lens What’s the historical context? Background Structure This Psalm of David is unique. “It is the only hymn in the Old Testament composed completely as a direct address to God.” [1] It e...

God, our heavenly Father–from whom all families gain purpose, direction and life: When we need bread, you don’t give a stone; and when we ask for fish, you don’t give a snake; for you are good, you ar...

First Chronicles 4:9-10 could be forgiven for being called the text that roared, once Bruce Wilkinson got his hands on it and wrote a little book called The Prayer of Jabez. This book, which was relea...

In the first century, children enjoyed little esteem and virtually no respect. While families appreciated their own children, society merely tolerated them. The very language of the day reveals this f...

Assurance grows by repeated conflict. . . . When we have been brought very low and helped, sorely wounded and healed, cast down and raised again . . . and when these things have been repeated to us an...

When most of us grow up in a faith tradition, we begin with an assumption that faith is good, while having doubts is bad. As we mature however, we realize that faith and doubt are not opposites, but i...

Leader: We put our trust in you, O Lord. People: We put our trust in you, do not let us be ashamed, or let our enemies triumph over us. Leader: No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame, b...

God, our rock and refuge, there are plenty of things that we allow to erode our faith in you. When life gets stormy, we let our uncertainty cloud our trust in you. We think we know better and start re...

Leader: To you, O LORD, I lift up my soul; People: My God, I put my trust in you; let me not be humiliated, nor let my enemies triumph over me. Leader: Let none who look to you be put to shame...

Gracious God, you love us deeply yet we take your love for granted. Rather than trusting you, we trust the gifts you have given us. We confess that our misplaced hope and reliance is on money, intelli...

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Trust no future, howe’er pleasant!  Let the dead Past bury its dead!  Act,—act in the living present!  Heart within, and God o’erhead!

All: Gracious God, you promise that your light drowns out darkness, yet the darkness is so persistent. We cannot see in front of us, so we look to our own knowledge and ways. Forgive us for turning to...

Merciful God, We come before you with thankful hearts. Thankful for the many gifts you have given us. You have clothed us and given us shelter. You have given us food to fill our stomachs, friendship...

The skills have been lost of being present for and in another, and what remains is mistrust and violence.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; The thief doth fear each bush an officer.

It's in our biology to trust what we see with our eyes. This makes living in a carefully edited, overproduced and photoshopped world very dangerous.

From infancy on, we are all spies; the shame is not this but that the secrets to be discovered are so paltry and few.

People...think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross...You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clea...

Leader: God says, "Trust in Me with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding." People: If in all our ways we acknowledge You, Lord, You will make our paths straight. We ar...

Children, in particular, are driven to create—if we just nudge them in that direction. They thrive in a world stocked with raw materials. But too often, and with the best of intentions, we fill their ...

Almighty God, we trust in our own strength, abilities, and resources. We think too highly of what we have to offer this world. The truth is we cannot do anything without your strength and all we have ...

When the renowned writer and poet Dante Alighieri first saw the painter Giotto’s children, he was startled by their ugliness. “My friend,” Dante remarked, “you create such lovely figures in your art—w...

If you really want to change, it starts with your story. If you want to change the story of your life, you need to change the stories in your mind. So what story do you want to live? Do you want to ex...

In this excerpt from his book Faith in the Shadows, pastor and author Austin Fischer shares a surprising truth about the need to be vulnerable with our own faith if we are likely to have a positive im...

Psychoanalysis . . . daily demonstrates to us how youthful persons lose their religious belief as soon as the authority of the father breaks down.