faith on Childlike Faith

Faith is a redirecting of our sight, a getting out of the focus of our own vision and getting God into focus.

Faith means to be apprehended by that which is not ourselves, to be seized by God.

Being childlike does not save us, nor is it meritorious in itself. One can be childlike and be very far from the kingdom. Jesus is telling us that in order to enter the kingdom we need to have the tru...

A father is delighted when his little one, leaving off her toys and friends, runs to him and climbs into his arms. As he holds his little one close to him, he cares little whether the child is looking...

Grace substitutes a full, childlike and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. The good man is sorry for the sins which have increased his need. He is not entirely sorry for the ...

I grew up in a church where healing never happened. We had theology that Jesus healed, but I never saw anyone healed growing up in the church. One day, I’m a pastor, and I decide we have to move beyon...

Becoming a child is living the Beatitudes and so finding the narrow gate into the Kingdom.

A children's story that can only be enjoyed by children is not a good children's story in the slightest.

[M]y husband, Nick, tells a story of when he was a teenager riding his bike with his friends, and his chain came off his bike. Nick took the bike to his dad, who said, “I'll fix it, you watch”. Hi...

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...

One common mistake is assuming that everyone else finds faith easy, while we alone struggle. Yet there is comfort in recognizing that we are not alone in our pursuit of Christ in the midst of a broken...

O God, Creator of all seasons, We thank You for the wonder of winter. As the earth is blanketed with soft snow, Help us to feel the warmth Of Your embrace. As ice coats bare branches, Glittering...

Faith is a free surrender and a joyous wager on the unseen, unknown, untested goodness of God.

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...

In his book, A Peculiar Glory , John Piper provides an illustration of the kind of faith we are called to. This is no “blind faith,” in which we are supposed to simply believe without using our minds...

Faith is a way of waiting—never quite knowing, never quite hearing or seeing, because in the darkness we are all but a little lost. There is doubt hard on the heels of every belief, fear hard on the h...

It’s better to have little faith in a big God than to have big faith in a little god. That’s why Jesus said we just need faith like a mustard seed.

Faith is a voluntary anticipation.

Faith according to our Lord’s teaching in this paragraph is primarily thinking; and the whole trouble with a man of little faith is that he does not think. He allows circumstances to bludgeon him. . ....

Once when my daughter was six and my son was two, my mother-in-law noticed my daughter holding a favorite toy just out of my son’s standing reach, and she gently scolded her for teasing him that way. ...

Writing about ministering to postmodern skeptics, Don Everts and Doug Schaupp share a helpful insight into the mystery of God's movement: The first lesson they have taught us about the path to f...

Faithfulness in small things is a big thing to God.

Faith is dead to doubts— dumb to discouragements, blind to impossibilities, knows nothing but success. Faith lifts its hand up through the threatening clouds, lays hold of Him who has all power in hea...

Faith, thankfully, does not preclude doubt. It consists of staking your life on the rumor of grace.

We live in an age when belief comes hard because we’re much more afraid of being gullible (believing something that’s not true) than we are of being skeptical (not believing something that is true). W...

I believe in Christ and confess him not like some child; my hosanna has passed through an enormous furnace of doubt.

Someone once said that faith is not a personal possession until you have suffered. That person understood that the very nature of faith requires the grit and courage to be in the dark so you can event...

For some, faith begins with a hard shell, a rigid set of answers and platitudes that keep them safe but eventually prevent them from growing into who they could be. The system that was initially prote...

Faith isn’t a feeling; it’s a choice to trust God even when the road ahead seems uncertain.

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...