{"id":214,"date":"2012-07-10T09:28:56","date_gmt":"2012-07-10T09:28:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meditations.kafkasworld.com\/dir\/?p=214"},"modified":"2012-07-10T09:28:56","modified_gmt":"2012-07-10T09:28:56","slug":"childlike-faith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/07\/10\/childlike-faith\/","title":{"rendered":"Childlike Faith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
Childlike Faith
\nCopyright 2010 by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n

Our Lord calls us to be childlike in faith. What does that mean for an adult?<\/p>\n

For one thing it means receiving rather than earning. By this I mean that we need to learn, really re-learn, how to take something for our good without always giving in to the compulsion to try to earn it. Normally young children do not try to pay for a gift someone has given them, especially if that someone happens to be a parent. In fact the idea of paying for what is clearly a gift does not even cross their minds. This is part of the innocence of childhood and it is a very good thing. We tend to lose that kind of \u201cinnocence in receiving\u201d as we grow up and take our places in an often loveless world which tells us nothing is free. We especially lose it if certain people either unconsciously or purposefully teach us that love, itself, is not free.<\/p>\n

But God is the original \u201cno-strings-attached\u201d Giver. He gives because it is in His nature to do so. God is love and love is never earned, it is only freely given and freely received. When a good parent gives his or her child a gift simply out of love it is a faint echo of what the Creator of the universe gives to all humankind. This kind of love that extends to all is what has been called common grace. To become His children in Christ we are to become the recipients not only of such common grace but of saving grace as well, the receiving of Jesus as our Lord and Savior. For this to happen we must somehow become like a \u201clittle child\u201d again. (How exactly this happens in salvation is a mystery to me. God enables us to receive even the childlikeness that makes it possible to receive Him, but we must will to do so. Whether that will is ours alone, or somehow also the gift of God I will leave to the Calvinists and Arminians to debate)<\/p>\n

But even after the miracle of salvation our sanctification requires us to remain childlike. For many of us this means continuing to seek to be that way. Perhaps the critical question now becomes how we can enjoy our salvation, and its earthly blessings, rather than trying to continue to justify why we should have both. Even Christians fall into the trap of attempting to earn the ongoing love of their God. Salvation may be free, but sanctification costs, or so we think.<\/p>\n

The Christian life does \u201ccost\u201d in the sense that it requires us to progressively give up the worldly things we continue to cling to for our sense of security. But even that process is enabled by the completely unearned love of God and it, again, can only be received with the trust of an innocent child. We cannot \u201cearn\u201d that state of trust either. We can only ask for it, in the name of our Lord.<\/p>\n

This may seem like a circular argument: \u201cwe cannot earn the trust of a child, but we must trust God enough to give us that trust\u201d. Maybe this is true from a purely rational standpoint, as far as that goes. Ironically children do not ever ask such questions. Their trust is, to a large degree, both innate and trans-rational.<\/p>\n

My position is this: if we have truly known salvation we can simply ask our Father in Heaven for the further restoration of a childlike spirit because our very salvation proves we have some of it back already. As Christians we do not have to worry if we have the faith that requires. This is because the same mustard seed of faith we somehow found ourselves having to put our trust in God for our salvation still exists to also help us with this aspect of our sanctification.<\/p>\n

I suppose that position requires some childlike faith as well. I trust I have it. I hope you have it too.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Childlike Faith Copyright 2010 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Our Lord calls us to be childlike in faith. What does that mean for an adult? For one thing it means receiving rather than earning. By this I mean that we need to learn, really re-learn, how to take something for our good without always… <\/p>\n

Read more Childlike Faith<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-christian","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6GkOA-3s","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":155,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/15\/childlike-faith-blessing-grief\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":0},"title":"Childlike Faith and the Blessing of Grief","date":"June 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Childlike Faith and the Blessing of Grief Copyright 2011 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cDon\u2019t let your past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become.\u201d This bit of pre-marital advice from the brother of the bride in the movie \u201cMy Big Fat\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":233,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/07\/18\/recovering-the-child-within-through-christ\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":1},"title":"Recovering the Child Within\u2026.Through Christ","date":"July 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Recovering the Child Within\u2026.Through Christ Copyright 2010 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved There is a luminosity about childhood. For many of us no other time in life was as full of peace and happiness, even joy, than our earliest years. This, I believe, holds true whether we were raised\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":50,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/25\/dealing-with-mystery\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":2},"title":"Dealing with Mystery","date":"April 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Dealing with Mystery Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved. The famous Christian author John Bunyon once wrote the following: \u201cThe mysteries and contradictions which the Christian revelation leaves unsolved are made tolerable by hope.\" No one who has read the Bible with an open mind can honestly say that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":983,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2017\/02\/16\/trust-betrayal-and-consecration\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":3},"title":"Trust, Betrayal and Consecration","date":"February 16, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved What is it that keeps many Christians from being, in contemporary Evangelical parlance, \u201csold out\u201d to Jesus Christ? Why do believers hold back so much of their lives from consecration to Him? The answer may lie in the thoughts we entertain about who\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2012\/06\/09\/depending-on-grace\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":4},"title":"Depending on Grace","date":"June 9, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Depending on Grace Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved We should not presume upon grace but we must depend upon it. The term \u201ccheap grace\u201d often gets bandied about in the Church today. The implication is that many professed contemporary believers abuse the unmerited favor of God, using it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Christian"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":911,"url":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/2016\/10\/22\/the-persistence-of-grace\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":5},"title":"The Persistence of Grace","date":"October 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright\u00a0 by Shea Oakley All rights reserved At times it is difficult to trust that God\u2019s grace continues to be present in our lives. This is especially true if our past experiences have been full of pain caused by the conditional love that is so common among human beings. This\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sheaoakley.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}