Approaching God With Childlike Faith

Real Life presents the Jack Hibbs podcast with intention and boldness to proclaim truth, equip the saints and impact our culture.

0:00:10 - Speaker 2
Jesus is saying if you're going to go to heaven, you need to become like a little child. That must have really blown their minds completely. That goes against all the rules of engagement, right, that goes against all the rules of us engineering a certain thing. If I have just the right type of branding, the right type of look, the right type of verbiage, we've got to have the right font. You know all the stuff that you and I put up with every day in life. Well, jesus says hey guys, you want to be great? See this little guy right here. That's your answer.

0:00:48 - Speaker 1
You can get the outlines of this podcast by going to jackhibbs.com Today. If this podcast lifts you up and encourages you to live a more fulfilled life in Christ, then make sure you leave us one of those five star ratings. To us that's like saying amen or yes. Then that rating will encourage others to listen. Now open your hearts to what God's word has to say to you. Here is Jack Hibbs.

0:01:17 - Speaker 2
Hey everybody, I want to bring you something that is near and dear to my heart, and I think it's near and dear to your heart too. By the time you hear this, I think you'll have some affection, not only toward Jesus, but toward your relationship with God and how you see things. Obviously, we're in a setting, here in Chinahills, that is different than our sanctuary, it's different than our campus. It's not some studio, in fact. Well, I should say it's better than some studio, isn't it? This is early springtime, it will come back here in a month and everything will be purple, orange and yellow. How do we know? Because we've seen it before. We see it each year. Why do we care? Because it's something that God has done.

Notice, even if your own life, that you may not be a believer in God's incredible ability to create. You have to stop and pause for a moment and realize that the things that bring you incredible peace and comfort, in fact, isn't it true that people will even escape away to places that we'll call that are natural places of nature, and they'll love it because they feel what, they feel one with the universe, or they feel some sense of inner peace. And can I just say that those people, though they're seeking a good thing, they're doing it the wrong way, in the sense that they're trying to find the peace without the peace maker. They're trying to find inner sanctum without the God of the sanctuary. And let me share something with you which to me believe it or not, to me defines what Christianity should be like. It's Matthew, chapter 18. And at that time the disciples came to Jesus saying who then, is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? Then Jesus called a little child to him and said him in the midst of them and said so, number one, jesus, who's going to be the greatest in heaven, in the kingdom? We want to know why. Obviously, each of them want to be that title holder. Jesus is going to shock them by getting a little kid and he says surely I say unto you, unless you are converted and become as a little child, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. For, therefore, whoever humbles himself as this little child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and whoever receives one little child like this in my name receives me.

It's an awesome portion of scripture, because we know from Jesus and his ministry that there was a time when Jesus was with the entire multitude of people, right, a big crowd. So watch this. If you are involved in business, ministry, social media, influencing, what's the point? You gotta have a big crowd. You need a crowd. Click, subscribe, click, like, join me, follow me, the crowd.

Here's what's so awesome about Jesus. Jesus is preaching and he doesn't care about the crowd. He cares about the quality of the hearts of those who are in the crowd. And to have the right type of quality heart, you and I have to be converted. That is, we have to think differently. We have to have a different series of priorities. We have to have a different passion for what we're living for and in this case, obviously, the one that will bless you forever is having passion for God. So Jesus is saying if you're going to go to heaven, you need to become like a little child. That must have really blown their minds completely. That goes against all the rules of engagement, right? That goes against all the rules of us engineering a certain thing. If I have just the right type of branding, the right type of look, the right type of verbiage, we've got to have the right font. You know all the stuff that you and I put up with every day in life. Well, jesus says hey guys, you want to be great? See this little guy right here. That's your answer.

Well, we also know from the Bible that Jesus was speaking. The crowds were coming and at one point the Bible tells us that the crowds were pressing in on Jesus and Jesus saw the disciples somehow in some way, because we know from the Greek language. The Bible actually says that the disciples set up barriers. We don't know what that is. Was it their bodies? Were they blocking? Were they tripping? They set up barriers to little children coming to Jesus. Imagine that. So here's Peter, james and John, there's Andrew and Philip. They have somehow concocted a plan. You know what? Jesus is busy. We're helping him out. We've got to manage his crowd and we just got to make sure these little kids you know we don't follow them. So we need to set up barriers.

That Greek word is we need to set up hindrances to the little kids making their way to Jesus because, after all, they could distract him. After all, you know, one might get under his feet. That wouldn't go well, wouldn't look good. And then what's awesome is that Jesus sees it and he says wait a minute, do not forbid the little children to come unto me, for such is the kingdom of heaven. When he said, do not forbid them, that's that word. Hinder them. Let's set up barriers to keep little kids from coming to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven, dovetailing perfectly to Jesus' answer to the guys in their pursuit of pride, what their pursuit of status, their pursuit of likes and subscribes is. We've got to do this. And Jesus says no, you got to give it up. You need to become like a little kid. Why a little kid? Little kid?

A little kid sees things differently. A little kid, for example, in this setting. I'm 65 years old. I see certain things that I can see, but I'll miss a lot. Not a little kid, a little kid will point things out. Do you see that? You know what they would say? Something like this Pastor Jack, do you see the mistletoe growing in the oak tree? That's about ready to bloom. In fact, you see the blooms, just the leaves coming forth on that oak tree right there. But look at the mistletoe. Isn't that used at Christmas time as a tradition? I didn't think about that till I just saw it. They would have seen it immediately. And then, what about the lupins on the side of the hill Just coming out. This whole hillside's gonna be covered soon. Purple, you see that, lupins, there's just a few right now, but a little kid will spot them.

When your little kids are little kids, when they're still crawling, have you noticed that they will find stuff that you have completely missed on the carpet? And if you're not a good housekeeper, mom and dad, guess what they're gonna do? They're gonna put it right in their mouth. And it's so awesome. I mean, you gotta be careful, but many of us have experienced this.

The little ones scooting along. They stop and it's just like what are they looking at? What are they looking at? And they'll reach down. And now you're concerned because it is a marble, you know. God forbid, it's something that could hurt them. But they grab like a little, I don't know. It's lint, some thread, is it a piece of paper? They'll grab it and they'll put it in their mouth. And watch me. They'll put it in their mouth and they'll go like this and you can watch their mouth move around, their tongue is sampling it and their eyes are kind of rolling around. What are they doing? They're studying it. That's how they do it. They're little kids To them. They don't sit there and analyze it, and they're not sitting there about the technology of it. They see something that is out of the normal. They pull it up, they put it in their mouth and they are processing. What is it that I've just experienced? What is it that I'm looking at? What's it taste like? What does it look like? How does it look like wet? If they spit it out and they're looking at it again, they'll put it back in their mouth. What's going on?

Jesus said you got to become like that to be a kid, a kid of heaven. They see things and they giggle and they laugh about things, and things get their attention that you and I so quickly just walk right past. It's kids who teach us what clouds look like. When was the last time you looked at a cloud and you saw a giraffe in the cloud or a monkey or, you know, mickey Mouse? Listen, the fact of the matter is this that when kids see things, their imagination, their eyesight, sees something that their eyes are only a tool to deliver that thing. In other words, their eyes don't really see it. It's their imagination that sees it. Their imagination captures something that has got their attention to you and I. Oh, those are lupins and those come out in the springtime and they're going to do this. They're going to do that.

You think a kid cares about that. They don't care about that. They don't care one bit about that. What they care about is what is it Never seen that before? It's so colorful, what's it taste like?

And so you and I, as believers and I hope that you are a believer that you're somebody who believes and recognizes what God is saying is incredibly, deadly serious but extremely beautiful. Right? He's saying you're not going to go to heaven unless you become like a child. And so what you and I need to be careful about is growing up. All of our lives our parents have said stop it, grow up, and I get it. We need to be responsible and we need to be practical and reasonable, but there's some points in our lives where that crosses a line and we go from being responsible and practical to becoming almost so right about things that we become dead right. And you know church can be like that. Maybe many of you have visited a church and the church is so committed to doing things the right way that that church is so right about things that it's dead right and it kills the church. Why? Because honestly, I think it sucks the childhoodness, the childlikeness out of our lives. Religion files you in and files you out. There's nothing strange happening.

Right, think, if you have a spiritual experience with God, so to speak, every Sunday and nothing's really happening, then you know what. You might be looking at things really practically and really right and really really exceptionally analytical and leave the service completely uninspired. Children are inspired, are they not? And children are trusting. You can put a kid on a block wall and say jump, and they'll jump. Try setting your teenager on a block wall and say jump. They'll say what are you nuts? They don't trust you anymore. You never did anything to them. But doubt is crept in, practicality is crept in. They know, wait a minute, I'm 13 years old, I'm going to look stupid jumping. I don't jump, I'm 13. And besides, I don't think you can catch me. But you've never dropped them in all of their lives. But why now the hesitation? Why the hindrances? Because they stopped seeing things in a childlike setting.

And so, as a Christian, you and I need to mature by becoming like a child.

Does that make sense? We need to mature by growing closer to Jesus, and if we're going to do that, we are going to be less adult-like in our relationship with Him. It won't be silly for us to hear that we should crawl up into the lap of Jesus and talk to Him. It won't be silly for us to praise the Lord. It won't be silly for us to, as it were, make a joyful sound in our heart and sing unto the Lord. Have you noticed? Kids are always singing, so should we so listen? This is just a challenge to all of us that whatever you're doing in life and you call it Christianity or religion, you may be a Buddhist right now, a Hindu, muslim, a Jew, but let's just be honest, let's just cut straight to the chase. Let's just get all the hindrances out of the way. You have no joy. You have no joy because what's going on is the fact that you, my friend, have sterilized a sterilized relationship with God, and Jesus says you come to me.

0:15:32 - Speaker 1
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