COME AS A CHILD LESSON 109 A WORD BEFORE THE EXODUS BEGINS

  

(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)

On a Thursday back on January 4^th of 2014 I started writing this series of bible studies we have called “COME AS A CHILD.”  

Together, we have now studied the whole first chapter of the bible called Genesis.  It only took about two years!  If you are like me, you were amazed at what all the first book of the bible contained, and really, we didn't touch on everything because it would have been impossible to ever finish.

  

It has been fun!  

I hope you have learned as much as I have about God’s Kingdom and how to walk through it with the eyes of a child.  I want to extend my heart-felt thanks to each of you who have been brave enough to join in with me every Thursday!  I am humbled in the fact that I know some of you are much better teachers than I will ever be.  God just has a way of helping us all out.  I am so happy that you have taken this journey with me.  Everything is always better with a good friend at your side!

What you must realize now is that we have only just begun!  The journey through Exodus is about to start with our very next lesson. 

I thought it would be good to go back and review our goals and the purpose for all of this study.  Many of us have already read through the bible, some of us many times over.  The goal here is not just to read through, and not just to study, but to approach scriptures with new eyes.

 

I’ll be repeating some words for those of you who got in on the very beginning of our journey together, but I think they bear repeating.  The whole point of this particular study is to get you to look at the Holy Scriptures with the wide-opened, wonder-filled eyes of a child.  Hear the words all fresh and new and imagine a loving Father inviting you into His story.  Come as a child. 

Why?  

There are many reasons.  Some of them follow below. 

Let’s start with some scriptures:

Psalms 131:3:  But I still my soul and make it quiet, like a child upon its mother’s breast.  My soul is opened within me.

Matthew 18:3: And he said, “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

That was Jesus speaking!  

He says we must come to Him as a little child.  Just what exactly does this mean?

Stop and think for a moment about what is involved in being a child. 

Everything is new to you.

You are learning every day.

You put your complete trust in your parents and all of those around you.  (For the purpose of this study that would be God, The Father.)

There are no preconceived ideas; you accept things as they are.  (Maybe you have been taught “this” and “that” about the scriptures.  That was probably someone else’s interpretation.  I simply ask that you erase all other interpretations from your thoughts for this study and listen to no one but God.  (Not even me!)  Let God speak to you and reason with you about these lessons.  Sit with him each time and LISTEN to Him guide you.)

As a child, you haven’t learned hate or caution or bitterness or manipulation yet.

You are not competing with anyone else.  Life is simply all about being yourself and relating to the world just the way God made you to be.

Everything is out in the open.  Nothing is hidden or fake.

 

The most important part of your world consists solely of you, your parents and the home you are making together.  You are completely dependent on this environment, for your food, for your comfort, for everything you have. 

You never worry.  You don’t even know what that is yet, because your Father takes care of all the details of your life.

You are not afraid.  Fear is a learned behavior, you do not know it yet.

You are innocent.  Sinful thoughts are not a part of your day.  You are pure.  You do not know the things that make up a sinful nature.  Your thoughts are uninhibited by these things.

You have not learned to be prejudiced.  You simply love everyone and everything. 

Joy is a delightful part of each day as you explore the universe that your Father has created.  

Every day is full of wonder and delight!

Are you getting the idea?  Welcome to true worship!  This is just the way that Adam and Eve lived in the garden with God before sin entered in.  

This is the way that God originally intended for us to worship Him.  

In true worship you simply come to God the way a child would, trusting, expecting, letting God do the leading and planning, simply being the person that God created you to be and worshiping God with love.

What could be better?  

What could be more simple?

Yet, in our humanity, we humans make this a complicated, complex mess by trying to do everything OUR way instead of leaving it all up to God.  If worship isn’t straight from God, can we truly call it worship? 

So the idea is to simply relax and find that child-likeness that takes you directly to God.  

Give yourself to be in awe of God.  

Let yourself be completely dependent on God.  

Worship!

We could all do this when we were children.  

Have you ever prayed with a child or watched a child in worship?  

What came to us naturally as children is often hard to achieve in pure form as an adult.  

We have to lay down what the well-meaning people of the world have taught us and look to God to be taught.  

When we truly take the time to listen to Him with a child’s heart we find ourselves learning and living what the scriptures say.  The wonder of it all overflows from our hearts into our lives. 

So as we approach each new passage of scripture we come realizing there are no wrong answers.  You might hear something in your time with God that I did not hear, and I might see something in a passage that you do not see.  The key is to listen to your Father.  He knows each of our own individual needs and like any good father, He shows us what he knows we will relate to.  We both might learn something completely different from each lesson, that is okay!  Neither of us are wrong, there are no wrong answers when you are listening to God.  There are only the answers that He is giving to you.  He shows us in the perspective that we need to know.

 

For example, three people might be looking at a chair.  One person sees the front, one the side and one the back.  It is still the same chair.  We all have seen it from our own perspective.  Trust God to help you have the perspective you need to live in your circumstances.  He will show you.  Have the trust of an innocent child.  Do exactly what God tells you because you believe Him.  He may ask something of you that He doesn’t ask of your neighbor, and vice versa.  This is OKAY – there are no wrong answers, just people who do not listen.  Children listen to their father’s voice.  They know it and they follow it.  That is what these lessons are all about, to help you listen for your Father’s voice and follow it with complete trust. 

As we come as a child with an open heart we want to give our lives away to God’s Holy Spirit and let The Holy Spirit be completely in charge of our learning and our sharing and our doing. 

We must die to ourselves and let God show us everything.  This all starts by approaching God with the heart of a child. 

So now that we have entered through the beginning, let’s go and take the Exodus together, God will go with us.  There will be a new lesson every Thursday – just bring your childish heart!