Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
ANNIE: Iâm going to start with a story.
This is about a Praise Academy mom, Connie. She was with her kids and several of her nieces and nephews when her 11-year-old niece, Shakira, began having a seizure. Connie called 911, but for [sic] some confusion about the address, they didnât show up for 25 minutes. So for more than 20 minutes, Shakira was shaking and was unresponsive. And then Connieâs six-year-old son Dewayne came out of the room he had been in, walked up to his cousin, and stretched out his hand, silently, and began to pray.
He prayed for about a minute, and then the seizure stopped. And Connie called out to Shakira, and she said, âWhat?â She opened her eyes. And Connie saidâand she said to Connie, âWhat happened?â She was fully alert. She said, âI just felt someone touch me, and I woke up.â And just then, the first responders came. And they checked everything, and everything appeared normal. But Connie showed them a video, and they said, âYeah, that was a seizure.â But subsequent tests were normal too. She was totally fine. And Connie saidâasked Dewayne, âWhat did you pray, when you prayed for your cousin?â And he said, âI just asked Jesus to be with her, to come and help her and wake her up.â [Crowd murmurs in awe and Annie says âyuup.â]
From Matthew 18:
It was at this time that the disciples came to Jesus with the question, âWho is really greatest in the kingdom of heaven?â Jesus called a little child to his side and set him on his feet in the middle of them all. âBelieve me,â he said, âunless you change your whole outlook and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. [Matthew 18:1â3]
We have to take him seriously. Listen to Jesusâ words here. He means what he says. Imagine this little child; heâs probably a curious kid, heâs been watching the disciples and their heated argument. Jesus puts this little child right in the middle of themâright in the middle of those squabbling disciplesâand says to them, âYou will never enter the kingdom of heaven unless you become like little children.â This isnât just a touching scene to make a painting of and hang on your kidâs bedroom wall. Thereâs a serious warning here, with real consequences: If you do not change and become like little children, you will not be able to share in Godâs kingdom.
Letâs take him seriously as we enter our consultation. If we want to see and hear God in our consultation, we must become like little children. But what is Jesus getting at? What does he mean by becoming like a child?
One beautiful May afternoon in Evansville, John Bowar, Catherine Ficker, and I met a man named Arthur. We told him we were Christians, and he motioned for us to sit down, and said with a huge smile, âI just love to talk about my Jesus!â
He said, âI thank the Lord for waking me up every morning. I get to open my eyes and see his world. I get to feel his blood warming up my body. I get to splash some of his water on my face, and then I get to sit down and eat some of his food. I talk to him all day long. I say, âO my Father, . . . ââ And then he started to pray, but it was a prayer that was to the Father and to us at the same time, like there wasnât any veil between heaven and earth.
He said, âI told the Lord that I wanted to see him in the flesh today. And he told me that heâs always walking around, but he wouldnât make it here today. But then he told me to look up, and I looked up, and I saw the sun. It was so bright, I couldnât look at it long. Thatâs like his face; itâs so beautiful you canât look at it too long.â
Then he said, âI donât want people to be sad when Iâm gone. . . . Iâm gonna walk up to my Jesus and put my arms around his neck and lay my head on his chest. And I just hope he says, âWell done, good and faithful servant,â and then leads me to a room in his mansion that heâs prepared, where on the door it has my name, âArthur Jones.â . . . And if I donât get to go to heaven, I just want a peek. I just want to peek around the corner and see everything heâs done.â
Then he paused and leaned back, and he had a huge grin on his face. And he said, âIâm the richest man in all of Evansville!â But as he spokeâhe was mostly toothless, and his grin showed out of a scarred and wrinkled face; there was lichen on his roof, and a wheelchair ramp filling his yard. But seeing the joy on his face, I knew he believed it. He continued, âIâm dirt poor, but Iâm filthy rich! Everything I see is mine . . . because it belongs to my Father.â
When Jesus tells us we must be childlike, he is not talking about something sentimental and soft, or cute and touching. Heâs taught the childlike spirit is not childish. Heâs talking about becoming Arthur, one who sees everything in his life as coming from his heavenly Father. This isnât about Arthurâs circumstances; Iâm not saying we need to go toothless. Iâm talking about childlike clarity of vision, about being able to look up and out, to see the sun for what it is, to accept reality for what it really is, not cluttered by self.
To encounter the reality of God at work in our consultation, we must enter into it with the simplicity, openness, and awe of children. Letâs consider three ways we can change our outlook and become like children.
- First, let our minds and hearts overflow with other people.
- Second, change our idea of what is valuable.
- And third, believe God.
Let your mind and heart overflow with other people.
I was on a walk recently with my two-year-old niece. We passed a whole bunch of people of all ages and statuses. Sheâmy niece would smile and wave at every single person we passed, greeting them with a cheerful, âHi!â âHi!â âHi!â Her world is filled with people! And they respond; they stop and they smile. Itâs disarming.
Mike Wacker was telling his niece, who is seven, that heâs been slowly saving up to buy a camera. When she heard that, she left and went to her room; [she] came back a few minutes later, having collected all the money she owned. She held out five dollars and thirty-four cents to him, and said, âUncle Mike, I want you to have this. I know itâs not much, but itâs all I have.â And he responded, âThank you! This is the best gift Iâve ever been given!â
My sister Catherine and Gretchen Connolly threw a birthday party this summer for a single elderly neighbor of theirs. The next day when the neighbor recalled the party, she said, âYou know what the best part was?â And she shuffled inside and came back out with a hand-drawn card from six-year-old Carol Connolly. And she said, âIt was this.â Then she opened up the cardâand on the inside, written in six-year-old handwriting, it just said, âI love you!â
A childâs attitude toward life lies in humility. They donât count themselves for much. They donât drag their small egos into the foreground. Children have the capacity for total joy and total surrender, giving their whole heart without fear of obstacles. Their reactions to other people are absolute; their love is sincere. The consciousness of a child overflows with people, with events.
They are honest and candid. Like open books, they stand in front of us with wide-open eyes. They let us look freely into their little souls. They reveal whatâs in their hearts. They donât feel the inhibitions that make it so difficult for adults to be honest, inhibitions which are a killer for community. Inhibitions isolate, with âI just donât want to impose.â But a child simply walks right in and asks for what he needs.
Jesus says in Matthew 11:29, âLearn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.â To become childlike is to become humble. It is to meet reality person to person, heart to heart.
Now we may face a temptation when we think of humility. We may say to ourselves, âOf course children are humble. They have very little yet to offer the world, at least not in the way of success.â And we may say of ourselves, âI do have something to offer! Iâve had some success. Iâve worked hard!â But thereâs a trap here, which is to take a path other than the one that Jesus chose,
who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing (you could say he made himself a child) by taking the very nature of a servant and being made in human likeness. [Phil 2:6-8]
Christian humility must mirror Godâs humility; we must accept a humble God. We need to, like a child, look âup and out,â and let our hearts be filled with other people. If we possess the honesty of little children; if we are quick to forgive; if we enter into our consultation with simplicity, openness, and awe, we will see the reality of God at work.
Now to the second aspect of becoming like a child: change our idea of what is valuable.
Think for a minute about the scribes and Pharisees. We tend to just focus on how they rejected Jesus, but they actually had a lot going for âem. Their incredible history was rich with traditions; their memory reached back more than 1500 years, all the way to Abraham. Thatâs a really impressive history! Their wisdom was both a divine gift and the fruit of long human experience. Itâs hard to imagine a more mature bunch!
Then, Jesus arrives on the scene! Here comes the Promised One. Their long history is about to be crowned! But they cling to the past, with its human traditions. They entrench themselves behind the law and the Temple. They are sly, hard, and blindâand their great hour passes them by.
Look in contrast at the Roman centurion. Hereâs a pagan; he doesnât know anything about the law or the Temple. He doesnât have any expectations for a Messiah. But he hears of Jesus and knows without question that Jesus has enough authority to heal his servant without even setting eyes on the servant or coming to his house.
The centurion is natural and open. He sees the reality of Jesus! He sees the miracles for what they are. He lets himself be amazed. Like a child, heâs receptive to the earth-shattering ideas in Christâs teaching, not measuring them against his own wisdom, but simply hearing them.
The same teaching is met with reserve by the maturer Pharisees. Their cleverness condemns it as impossible; their caution warns them of its consequences; their self-esteem is up in arms; their hard grasp cannot let go. They have enclosed themselves in artificialities; and, fearful for their brittle little worlds, they prefer not to understand. Fear has made their eyes blind, their ears deaf, their hearts full. As Jesus might say, they are âovermatureâ; they know too much.
Jesus says to Nicodemus, âNo one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again from aboveâ [John 3:3]. That causes Nicodemus a heart attack! âWhat do you mean?â exclaimed Nicodemus. âHow can a man go back into his motherâs womb and be born again?â Nicodemus was smart, and he was close to the truth. He sincerely sought Jesus out. But Nicodemusâs problem was the epitome of the trouble the Jews had with Jesus. They couldnât believe that something new was happening.
All the culture and history of the Pharisees was not meant to be abolished, but rather, made complete, in the very person of Jesus. But Jesus did not meet their idea of a successful Messiah. He was poor. His friends were unremarkable. His teachings didnât take root, not even among his own followers. He bore the stamp of mysterious failure. And they missed it!
To accept the reality of Jesus their Messiah, the Jews would have to fling aside their measuring rod of success, their idea that Godâs standard of success mirrored their own. From 1 Corinthians 1:
For consider, what have the philosopher, the writer, and the critic of this world to show for all their wisdom? Has not God made the wisdom of the world look foolish? . . . For the Jews ask for miraculous proofs and the Greeks an intellectual panacea, but all we preach is Christ crucified.
If we are âover-mature,â our hard-earned values and well-reasoned opinions become filters through which we sift reality. We become unable to take things at face value, unable to accept them simply for what they are. Like the Pharisees, we react with things like, âThat simply isnât done!â or âThat isnât the right way!â We clutter reality with our evaluations and analysis.
Children are not like that. They live in a world of unwavering trust. They let things be free, rather than demanding that they fit into neat categories.
Let me show you what I mean. Weâre going to watch a clip; this is from a flash mob that has people, young and old, behaving with childlike delight.1
That clip really just captures the utter simplicity and joy ofâhowâthat children have. Where everyone is just totally captured by the event.
Becoming like a child means letting life get a little messy. Sometimes thatâs whereâprecisely when the Spirit of God shows up. Think of the morning at Pentecost. What a ruckus was created with all those languages being spoken at the same time!
Adults are practical, looking at things with an eye to their usefulness, setting goals and aims, not wanting to waste our time or energies. The Holy Spirit is practical too, but in a way that makes us more free.
The day the Lord first led the People of Praise to the Southside of Indianapolis back in 2007 started out looking like a complete failure. Nick Holovatyâs household had planned a big outreach dinner for students at IUPUI.2 Dinner was on the table; everything was readyâbut nobody showed up. So they gathered and prayed and decided what to do next, and thought the Lord wanted them to split up into four groups and go to four different parts of the city and talk to people. So, for three of the groups, their conversations just went nowhere. No progress; no one was interested.
And the fourth group got completely lost! Finally, after driving around for a while, they just parked the car and got out; they didnât really even know where they were. But as they started talking to people, in every conversation people were hungry for the Lord! A few weeks later the household moved into that neighborhood, and the People of Praise has been there ever since. It started out looking like a failure, but the Holy Spirit led us exactly to the place he wanted us to be.
To become childlike, we need to change our measuring rod by which we judge that which is successful, worthwhile, and holy. We need to see beyond our âmaturityâ: to see as God sees, with his wisdom, not our own. As we enter into our consultation, we are not executing a merely human endeavor judged by human standards. This is a work of God. We need the humility of a child to be able to see God at work in the messiness of our conversations, and to hear him speaking in the least among us. We will encounter the reality of God at work if we have the simplicity, openness, and awe of children.
Finally, becoming a little child is to believe God.
At the LaSalle Company, we run an essay contest for elementary students. We ask them to describe a moment they felt close to God. Iâm going to read a few excerpts from those essays.
This oneâs from a 3rd grader:
I was trying to fall asleep one night but I was crying because my leg hurt. Then, I felt a hand on my leg. When I looked, no one was there, but I still felt the hand. After a few minutes, the hand went off, and my pain was all gone! The next day, I told some of my friends at school and they said, âIt probably was Jesus healing you!â So I believed them. I was amazed! I never knew that Jesus heals people. So now I know.
The attitude of this child is captured by the word âbelieverâ: one who is open to all that comes from God. He simply believed his friends when they told him that God had healed him. âNow I know.â
âI praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.â [Matt 11:25]
Here is one from an 8th grader: She described an experience she had while on a rafting troopâtrip with her Girl Scout troop. She was swimming near the raft and got stuck on a log underneath the raft. She said,
I felt water rushing around my body, only hearing fuzz. I donât remember how long I was under there, but I do remember my lungs being aflame as I thought to myself, âI donât want to die. Not now, God, not now. Please, not now.â I repeated that phrase over and over again . . . until I felt strong arms gently wrap around mine. I felt my body move upward, until I could no longer feel the water or the raft. I felt the original pair of hands let go, and new ones forcefully grab me. And I opened my eyes as I was pulled onto the raft. The odd thing is, my mom said I just popped out of the water before one of the troop leaders grabbed me! I vividly remember a feeling of arms around me. I honestly believe that what I felt was God saving me. Some people might say Iâm crazy, but I believe it.
And hereâs another from a 3rd grader:
Jesus is alive and I know it! One time, I was learning to ride my purple bikeâwithout the training wheels. Life with training wheels was excellent. [Annie and audience laugh.] I felt safe, and like I wasnât going to fall. When my mom took off the training wheels, I was sad and angry. I wanted her to keep them on. Jesus was who I needed at that time, because I was scared. With Jesus on my side, I finally learned how to ride my bike without the training wheels. I felt like a bird flying in the sky! I now know to get Jesusâ help when I am afraid.
Here is a story just from this week from Praise Academy. There is a student there who is seven years old, but heâs repeating a few grades. His lack of learning is due to COVID and online school, changing schools, and moving. He loves Praise Academy, and he doesnât mind that heâs kind of back at the beginning. So this week Mary Grams was working with him on rhyming words. She asked him to come up with a rhyme for the word âgoat.â So heâs [Annie whispers] thinking and thinking. . . . And finally his face lit up and he said, âBoat! Jesus told me, boat!!â [Annie and audience chuckle.] Mary told him, âYes, keep asking Jesus to help you learn. And he will.â But this kid had no doubt that it was God that gave him that word.
Matthew 19:13:
Then children were brought to him that he might lay his hands on them and pray. The disciples rebuked the people; but Jesus said, âLet the children come to me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.â
As adults, we want to find a reason for everything, to make sense of things. When weâre mature in the worldâs eyes, we just see things as natural, as cause and effect.And we only attribute something to God if we canât find another reason. His name gets put at the end of the credits, long after everyone has stopped watching. We scorn those qualities that are essential to encountering reality: the reality of Christ alive, the reality of God at work. We squeeze all the wonder out with our dissecting and analyzing. Children, on the other hand, are full of wonder. They see everything with the amazement of seeing for the first time. We need to have the capacity for awe like little children, so that when we see something new, we are awestruck.
Pope Francis said this well in a recent homily. He said, âOur ability to be filled with wonder before Godâs plan is perhaps the measure, the thermometer, of our spiritual life. I repeat the question, dear brother, dear sister, all of us here: how is your ability to be amazed? Or are you so used to it . . . that you have lost it? Are you able once again to be amazed?â End quote.
Children have the simplicity of eye and heart which welcomes all that is new and great and worthwhile. They see what is new for what it is, go straight to it and enter in. âBlessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see Godâ [Matt 5:8]. Being childlike is essential for prophecy, for hearing God and believing him. If we want to encounter the reality of God in our consultation together, we must enter into it with simplicity, openness, and awe.
To become like a little child is not easy. Childlikeness is something great and holy, and not easily acquired. To become a child, we must outgrow maturity, go back to the beginning, and build from the ground up. âFor whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find itâ [Matthew 16:25]. Jesusâ instruction to become like a child is strange and difficult. âWith men this is impossible, but with God all things are possibleâ [Matthew 19:26].
I want to close with a story from the Coptic monk Matthew the Poor. He was a key figure in the revival of Coptic monasticism in Egypt that began in the 1960s. Before he was a desert monk, he had become a successful and established pharmacist. He recalls a time here when some college students came to him to speak with him at the monastery.3
I told them, âYou have come to a monastery, and you see me before you as a monk, with a great white beard, who has spent many years in monasticism; so it probably seems to you that I am a large figure who has had grand experiences in the spiritual life.â They all nodded. So I continued, âActually, no. Let me tell you who I am and what my life has been.
âWhen I was a child, whenever we had a serious problem, my family would stand me up and tell me, âPray.â And I would repeat the prayer after them, line by line. We were a poor family and had to send our grain to the bakery to be made into bread. When the freshly ground grain would arrive at our house, my parents would use my tiny hand to make the sign of the cross in it. Although I understood very little, the silent presence of my parents told me that our circumstances were critical, but that everything was in Godâs hands.
âAfterward I completed my education and entered the workforce. But I found monastic life the preferred way. So I came to the monastery and I said to myself, âNow I am in the company of saints. It is time to experience the spiritual heights!â I immersed myself in prayer and the Bible, until little by little, I regained that first childhood experience of God.â
That was the word I gave them. Whenever my family directed me to pray, I would pray with all my childlike heart. This all would occur although I never did prostrations, or fasted until sundown. So this love is achieved by very simple means. It needs no sophistication. Do you suppose I was sophisticated at the age of five? I tell you, it took me long periods of struggle to return to that previous childhood state of prayer. No one can truly achieve this divine love except children. What I tell you is a spiritual law: It is impossible for a person to pray to God with all his heart, soul, mind and strength unless he becomes a child at heart.
Thank you for listening!
[Applause]
Endnotes
1. Annie plays a video of a busy, unsuspecting crowd in a plaza. One by one, musicians begin to play Beethovenâs Ode to Joy together. Finally, a choir bursts into full song from the midst of the crowd. Individuals, adults and children, react with smiles, rapt attention, and even âconductingâ along with the musicians. People are entranced and visibly delighted. Return to text.
2. IUPUI is the merged campus of Indiana University and Purdue University in Indianapolis. Return to text.
3. The text that follows is a shortened excerpt from Words for Our Time: The Spiritual Words of Matthew the Poor. Return to text.