The Truth About Us预览

Maturing into Childlikeness

Jesus said we have to become like children to enter the kingdom, because children know they’re not in control of everything. They’re not anxious about tomorrow. They’re in the moment. 

Kids don’t seem terribly interested in crafting a public persona. No, that’s a thing older people do. We grown-ups are very interested in controlling people’s perceptions of us. It’s a burden. Like we noted in Day 3, we act as our own PR person, our own spokesperson, and it’s exhausting to always be spinning things to our advantage.

If there’s a God and He really loves us, well, it makes sense that He’d want us to be like children. He’d want us to laugh. He’d want us to admit who we really are. No wonder Jesus told us to get over ourselves and turn toward Him.

He really did say that, by the way. In a hundred ways. He said, too, that He wants us to have life, and have it to the full (see John 10:10). He told us that if we lose our own lives for His sake, we’ll find real life (see Matthew 16:25). It’s a startling message, and it’s ironic when we treat it lightly.

Yes, the truth about us really is the Good News – that God still wants us, and He is restoring the world. He’ll even use us to do it. We’re not good people, but we’re deeply loved anyway. And the truth about us is like all truth from Jesus: It sets us free, in so many unexpected and profound ways.

I’m convinced my pride is the great destroyer of everything fun, and I’m much more fun to be around when I can get over myself.

It’s our pride that drives us from God. Nothing else can do it. “Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons,” Paul writes to believers in Rome, “neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow – not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love” (Romans 8:38 NLT).

All the forces of the universe cannot stop us…if we finally come to the end of ourselves. 

True humility is the final repudiation of self-righteousness, the rejection of the very idea that our way is better, that somehow we’d be more, accomplish more, or reach our potential if we rejected God’s way for our own.

Today, as you see children going about their days, ask yourself how you can be more like them in your relationship with God.