Like Little Children
Jesus said:
“Unless you stop thinking like adults and have the same attitudes as little children do you will not enter The Kingdom of God!” Matthew 18:3.
So what did Jesus mean?
The first thing to ask is what attitudes do little children originally have before they are taught otherwise?
They trust people who have authority over them.
They take things at face value and what people say as being true.
They are eager to learn and try out new things.
They respond to love and give it unconditionally.
They desire to please (serve) without thought or any reward for doing it.
They rely on people in authority for all their needs (physical, mental, spiritual emotional).
They rely on people in authority to teach them life skills and relational skills.
We are adopted children of The Father, so how should these attitudes be shown in us?
In Matthew 6:33, God promises to provide all our needs and in John 16:13, God promises to show us all the truth we need to know about things: both spiritual and physical.
They trust people who have authority over them.
We must trust The Father completely in all He does for us and to us otherwise we will have fear in the relationship and it will not be as it should.
We need to believe Romans 8:28 that all God does for us is for our best otherwise we are calling God a liar saying something He does not mean.
They take things at face value and what people say as being true.
We must trust what Jesus said and not try to read things into it or find ‘hidden’ wisdom or mysteries or add to it in the belief God has not told us everything and we need to find these out for ourselves.
If we do not accept what Jesus said as being truth then we call Him a liar.
God only tells us what we need to know (Deuteronomy 29:29).
They are eager to learn and try out new things.
Fear stops you learning and doing anything new God desires you to do so fear stops you from growing in your spiritual life or allowing God to take you into new adventures in your Christian life.
They respond to love and give it unconditionally.
Or primary attitude should be love for The Father, Jesus and The Holy Spirit and this will be reflected in love for others.
There is no fear in love so fear stops you loving others as you should in the way God desires you to relate to them.
You may not like what they do but that should not stop you loving them as someone your Father in heaven created and loves.
So for His sake you should love others and serve them as He loves and serves them and you.
They desire to please (serve) without thought or any reward for doing this.
IF you Love God and appreciate what He has done for you, then you will serve Him and show this in your love for others as you have the attitude required to do this — His Quality of Love for them.
You will show His quality of love to others and tell others what He has done for you and can do for them because you love Him so much you want to tell others about Him and what He has done for you and can do for them.
They rely on people in authority for all their needs (physical, mental, spiritual emotional).
We must rely on God to teach us through The Holy Spirit and to bring to us people to help us in our Christian life who show by their lifestyle they are worthy of being listened too.
We follow God because He is worthy of being followed and so we should find teachers who are worthy of being listened too and not just because they have something ‘new’ or appear to be spiritual in what they do.
‘New’ is different to restoration and usually implies a ‘new knowledge’ not previously in the church and because of this should be carefully evaluated against scripture.
If we do not trust God when He said He would provide all we need if we served Him with our whole heart then we are saying He lied in Matthew 6:33.
They rely on people in authority to teach them life skills and relational skills.
We can learn values on how to live from what God teaches how we should live in His Bible. So we should be studying The Bible to see how God desires us to do things and accept them at face values.
He also gives us His Holy spirit to guide us in this and if we do not listen to The Holy Spirit in our daily life God says we are not a child of His (Romans 8:14).
In Summary
It all gets back to knowing what God desires you to do and then just doing it, trusting Him for the consequences.
It means to accept what The Bible teaches as truth, and not try to explain it in a way people can accept, but which modifies or distorts its truths.
It needs the attitudes of a child to be able to do these things, and not that of a mature adult of the world who reasons things out and believes they know what is needed for living each day, without the need to consult God in all they do.
~ Through Neville Salvetti
Neville Salvetti is a deliverance minister and can be contacted via The Web Pages of Neville Salvetti and at: salvettina@bigpond.com if you desire deliverance or to know how to do it.
Neville have been told to preach three things:
♥ Deliverance ♥ How to Hear The Holy Spirit ♥ How to fight Satan
This is the need of the hour as it demonstrates The Kingdom of God, which is what attracts people to Jesus.
Beautiful.