Luke 18:15-17People brought babies to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. When the disciples saw it, they shooed them off. Jesus called them back. "Let these children alone. Don't get between them and me. These children are the kingdom's pride and joy. Mark this: Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in." MSG
So in what way can we be more like a child…? Once upon a time when I had no children, and no wife, a good friend of mine, Handel O, said “Aaron, I just look at my children and God just blows my mind teaching me things through them. “ Well now that I have children of my own, I could relate. For God has placed us in family to understand the family of God, and how we ought to live. In the family of God, we play the role of the child. The child, yes the child. Ever-since we were a child, we worked towards trying to be an adult. We wanted to be older, and our parent instilled in us daily with things that eventually helped us mature. As a child we want to be more and more independent, and many of our parents spent a lot of time trying to help us be more independent. Now here we are trying to be more like Christ, and Christ is telling us if we want to be more Christ-like, or more kingdom-minded, we have to abandon everything that we have been striving to do since we were a baby, and now we need to be more like a child. So in what way can we be more like a child?
I. Love- P&W
How do you choose to visualize the scripture above? 
There are many illustrations, paintings that depict this event. The illustration that I like is one that I believe I had in my first children’s bible. It was a picture of Jesus sitting on the grass, with a bunch of children jumping on Him, playing with and around Him. Because Jesus had a way of relating to all types of people, I believed He didn’t start being real “churchy” when the children came around, I believe He just laid hands on Him in the midst of relating to them on their level.
The Message translation says that, “…God’s kingdom is made up of people like these.” Reading this always makes me think that this was His antidote to being homesick. I believe the children loving on Him made Him feel like He was at home. For while at home, Jesus is just Praised and loved on all day long. Not the type of praise that we adults tend to give Him; but an un-inhibited praise, a no bars held affection of love.
For our loving on God should be in this matter. When I walk into my house, my children hear the “beep beep” of the door opening and the response is “Daddy!!!!” If they are downstairs, they run towards the door, yelling again, “Daddy!!!” They are so excited to see me, and don’t care about anything else. Nothing else matters at that time but loving on dad and telling him what they want to tell him even if I don’t understand what they are saying. Take a moment to watch a child love on someone they love, then attempt to love on God in that same way. The child does not care; stop caring. The child’s full expression is excitement. Quit allowing your adulthood gage your feelings, your emotions, your intimacy, your worship, towards God.
II. Faith
1Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see. Hebrews 11:1 NIV
I’ve never thought about this before, but children can be a great model of faith. Hebrews 11:1 says, “…and certain of what we do not see.” In comparison to an adult, most children have not been in this world long enough to have seen anything. So a lot of what they do is with a trust in others. They have no worries that all their needs are met. They trust that their needs will be supplied by their parents. As a matter of fact, all they really see is their parents. The bills are there, the need for food is there, issues that come up that affects the family are there; but in a child’s eyes, all of these issues are eclipsed by their parents. I wonder what would happen if our issues were eclipsed by our focus on God? If we didn’t get distracted on the issue, and simply trust in who would take care of the issue for us.
III. Obedience
The bible says, “Children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right.” For this is right? What kind of reason is that? I mean it is a good reason, but it sure is vague. Why is it right? What makes it right? Hmp! …For this is right. So why did God give us the reasoning, “…for this is right?” It’s the same reasoning that we give our children the answer, “…because I said so”. Lol. You know when we ask our child to do something, they ask why, and our response is “Because I said so”. Why do we say that? Well sometimes this is our response because obedience is a reason enough. But a lot of the times the answer is just too much to explain. You’d spend time trying to explain it to them and it just only leads to more questions. Or the conversation would end with them not really understanding why. The best thing the child can do right then, is to obey. Eventually, they’ll understand the whys. The bottom line is that we give our children certain direction because we love them, we want to protect them, and we want what’s best for our children. The parent is able to see harm much farther than what the child can see. So what makes no sense to the child is clear direction for the parent. Like an earthly parent, God tends to guide us (through the Holy Spirit) in certain direction that makes absolutely no sense to us. But after it’s all said and done, we understand that God had a specific direction He was taking us all along. Even our pains that God allows us to go through have a designed purpose that is too far away for us to see with our own human eyes. Just as it hurts us to see our child go through pain that is necessary, it hurts our heavenly Father to see us go through pain that we must go through. But at the end of the day, he directs us, corrects us, guides us, and allows pain because He loves us farther than what we can see.
