Season 2, Episode 10
There is a wonderful simplicity about a personal relationship with God. That’s been my own experience for the past 66 years and I so much want it to be yours too. My heart’s desire is to stir up your heart’s desire for God, rather than stimulate your mind’s desire for knowledge! “By faith we understand…” (Hebrews 11:3)
When Jesus’ disciples asked Him, “Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” He placed a little child among them and said, “Truly, I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” That was not the kind of reply they were expecting … or hoping for! Become like little children? Was He exaggerating to make some point?
But Jesus never exaggerated. Had He done so even once, you could not rely on the absolute truth of anything He said. And Jesus always spoke the truth – which He often emphasised by beginning a statement with those emphatic words: “Truly, I tell you …”. So let it be settled for each of us: unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
Change from what? From living your life, your way – relying on your own understanding, your own store of knowledge, your own views and opinions, and your own abilities. Of those who gathered to listen to Jesus, some were religious leaders always seeking to catch Him out, but many others were genuinely wanting to hear what He had to say because they believed He spoke the truth.
This mattered to them because they had grown up in a religious system whose origins were not false. They were descended from Abraham, known as ‘the friend of God’ and ‘father of all who have faith’. But the pure faith, which sprang out of God’s covenant with Abraham, had long since been turned into a complex religious system with a myriad of burdensome, man-made rules and traditions.
In stark contrast, Jesus taught His listeners that a personal relationship with God must be characterised by childlike simplicity – that innocent, trusting approach of little children, who believe what they see and trust what is said to them.
Even in writing those words, I can anticipate the thoughts and questions they might evoke. It’s all very well to talk about things like childlike innocence and trust, but what about the potential dangers? Yes, children are vulnerable in this world, and those very characteristics of which Jesus spoke, are what make them so! Yet, that’s not the point. Jesus was not speaking about adults taking advantage of children. Nor was He talking about childishness – adults acting like children. He was referring to childlikeness – that uncomplicated simplicity which some tend to look down on as naïve or ignorant in others.
For me, Jesus’ reference to becoming like little children evokes pleasant memories of a simple, uncomplicated childhood many years ago … prompting me to say things like, “Things were so much simpler back there”. Whether or not that’s an accurate statement, I think that most of us would agree that, ideally, the life of a young child should have an uncluttered simplicity about it.
Which brings me back to the essential point Jesus was making: the way into God’s Kingdom is marked, not by complexity, but by simplicity.
Yet Humanity is drawn to complexity … even when claiming otherwise! Man without God seeks (as did Adam and Eve) to be ‘asGod’. He has a need to make ‘the work of his hands’ increasingly complex and impressive to others. Like those Paul wrote of who are “always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth”.
When Jesus presented His Father to those who had been led to believe that pleasing God is an intricately complex and labourious business, His words were revolutionary. Here was this man speaking about a relationship with God that was not only incredibly simple but also changes you into the person you were created to be.
When you look at Abraham, to whom God spoke at the age of 75, saying, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you” … what do you see? An unreasonable demand, with enormous implications, on an unsuspecting old man, by an unfeeling God? Or a clear and simple direction from a loving God, requiring a correspondingly simple response of faith and trust?
As for Abraham himself, we all know how he saw it, and how he responded – which resulted in him becoming the Patriarch of God’s people. He not only obeyed God at that time, but then kept on obeying Him, step-by-step. Whenever God spoke it was an opportunity for Abraham to obey. Yet in order to obey God, he needed to first believe God. And in order to believe God, he needed to exercise faith in God.
Yet, for Abraham, it was a simple matter. Either God had spoken or He hadn’t. If He had spoken, it was up to Abraham to believe it. And if he believed it, the only way he could demonstrate that belief was by doing it!
Abraham’s reputation as the father of those who have faith was well-earned, but you could also say that because of the way he responded, he was the father of those who obey.
A declaration of faith is meaningless if it is not accompanied by a demonstration of obedience!
Our personal relationship with God begins when we simply come to Him with an open heart. And that simplicity continues as He draws us deeper into Himself and His ways. In fact, it must continue! Look again at Abraham’s life and how, whenever God spoke, his simple response was to always do as He said. As a result, we have that defining statement about him: “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” (Genesis 15:6) His simple childlike belief and obedience could be encapsulated in three short sentences: God said it. I believe it. I will do it!
Abraham had no need to understand. Which is just as well, because the final big thing God asked of him was so far beyond comprehension as to be unthinkable! By any measure, there was no sense in it, no logic, no redeeming purpose. It was horrific to contemplate! How could God say to this faithful, obedient man, ‘Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and sacrifice him as a burnt offering.’ Yet, without hesitation, Abraham responded to God as simply and readily as He had always done.
Of course, that story did indeed have a wonderful outcome. But for a few moments, as Abraham was poised to fulfil God’s word to him, that outcome was literally balanced on a knife-edge and depended on the intervention of an angel!
A story like that could make some Christians very insecure. Especially those who rely on the veracity of the Scriptures. Had that account not been recorded in the Bible, who would choose to believe that God would ask such a thing of anyone? Surely it would be way too risky to give credence to any man claiming a command from God to sacrifice his own offspring!
Which begs the question: can mere humans really be trusted to know that God has spoken to them?
Yet, that is exactly the sort of risk God has taken in His dealings with us since the Garden of Eden.
If you approach God with a truly open and willing heart – having chosen to make your life about Him and not yourself – He will speak to you and He will lead you.
In making Himself known to people, God has always sought for “truth in the inward parts” (Psalm 51:6). He looks at the person you are on the inside. Do you recall the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well – and her discomfort as it became apparent that, even though they had never before met, He knew many things about her? And the way she then tried to divert the conversation by saying, “I can see you are a prophet. Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place we must worship is in Jerusalem”. To which Jesus replied, “…a time is coming and has now come when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshippers must worship in spirit and truth.”
Spirit and truth are what exists within you. Jesus said: “If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” Conversely, if you are full of light because of your openness to God and the purity or your desire for Him, you will know the truth. And if, in knowing that truth, you are also living by it … you have become a true worshipper of God!
True worship is not achieved through ceremony or religious observance. It takes place when God is lifted up in spirit and in truth … when you adore and worship Him from deep within your own being. Whatever your form of worship, whether singing or praying, or almost anything, He will be lifted up because you have made Him your God.
Those who worship God in spirit and truth are the ones who glorify Him now in this world and will then go on to glorify Him throughout Eternity. Their hearts take them beyond everything else, so that they simply see God for who He is.
“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.” (Matthew 5:8) We see God for who He is when we seek Him for who He is.
However long you live, if you continue in this way with God, your relationship with Him will not only remain as simple and uncomplicated as when it began. It will become even simpler. That’s certainly my own experience over these past 66 years. So many things I once thought mattered, don't matter, but He matters more than ever. Through that day-by-day experience of living and walking with Him, my life becomes not only simpler, but also deeper and richer!
You may be tempted to think of God as old-fashioned and out of touch with life in today’s world. After all, life did seem so much simpler in the past compared to this hi-tech, fast-paced age. But no. The God of the Universe – Creator of all things – can never be left behind or be out of touch. He not only understands the most cutting-edge technology that humankind discovers and develops (for better or worse). He created it and set the laws in motion that control the entire physical Universe! In short, God knows far, far more than the entire human race could ever know.
Man discovers what is already there … but God created it and put it there! We think we live in a high-tech age, but the highest of high-tech can still only be based on what God has already created.
In short, God is completely across anything and everything that our lives, and this present age, could ever be about. Simply because He is completely across everything that this world can ever be about!
“By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.” (Hebrews 11:3)
Our God is “the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End”. Yet, amazingly, you can know Him, livewith Him, and walk with Him … in the utmost simplicity!
And, wonder of wonders, God has a specific purpose for your life. A purpose that is there for you to discover as you live in the utter simplicity of a life abandoned to Him.
But take your eyes off God and, instead, seek closeness with Him on your own terms, and you will soon become distracted and preoccupied. With so many ‘Christian resources’ available to you, the choice can be overwhelming! So many resources! So much knowledge!
And all the time, God will be saying: “What about me? Do you really want to know what matters? Do you really want to know my way? Do you really want to hear my voice?”
The apostle Paul wrote to the church at Corinth: “… I am afraid, lest by any means, as the serpent in his craftiness deceived Eve, your minds might be corrupted from the simplicity and the purity in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3)
True relationship with God is wonderfully simple. It is what you were created for, and if you give yourself wholeheartedly to Him in childlike faith, He will fill your life with His presence. There is no striving in this. Rather than anxiously trying to change yourself, allow His Spirit to change you into His likeness “from glory to glory”.