Faith like a child…. What does that mean to you? I think often it is taken to mean just blindly following without questioning. But actually, I have come to believe it means something so much more. To have faith like a child means you have a pure heart that is able to give and receive the love of the Lord. Your soul has not yet been tainted by the sins and the hardships of this world. There is no junk of the world blocking off your direct line to Jesus. As we age we walk though struggles with sin, with our relationships, with stress and business, worry about health and money….. You just fill in the blank here. All this stuff shapes us into the people we are and all too often it changes everything about how we experience the Lord. But a child is still looking out on their life ahead through fresh, innocent eyes. They haven’t yet known heartache, they don’t have to worry about paying their bills or their failing health. For a child every experience is new.
“…Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘move from here to there’, and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Matthew 17:20
I want to look at the world through the eyes of a child. I want every flower to mesmerize me, every bird flying over ahead to dazzle my senses, every smell entice me, every sound sing to my soul. And I want to look at God’s people with untainted eyes without any judgment or holding onto any previous experience to shape my perception of that person or how I should love them. And more than any of this, I want to see Jesus through redeemed, renewed, and restored eyes that are just as pure as when I first knew Him as a child. Before my life went off track and became filled with the junk that has blocked my direct line to Christ for way too long. I want to go back to childlike faith. The Lord is walking me through such a redemption process and taking me back to the identity He spoke over me when he was forming me and creating my life. He is faithful to be our guide and be our light when we are ready to follow Him like a child again. So I got on all fours yesterday and barked like a dog while kids lined up to take a ride on my back. It didn’t matter if the floor was dirty. It didn’t matter if the kids were dirty. It didn’t even matter if I was dripping with sweat and my back was hurting. And it was one of the greatest days of my life. I want to let go and plunge into the love the Lord has for all of us.
On a side note- If you are continuing to pray for our ministry here in Nicaragua please be encouraged! This month has been wonderful and offered us opportunities to participate in a wide variety of ministry, including, more manual labor (digging a new outhouse for a single mom and also building a house for a sister of the church here), clearing the church parking lot to make more room for children’s facilities, beautifying the area by removing trash, evangelizing at an elderly home and street side, and one special day was spent helping at a school for challenged children. My team has also spent a good deal of time seeking out unsung heroes working to build the kingdom of God and met some amazing people and heard some incredible God stories. God has done miraculous things here in Nicaragua. We even got the extreme honor of witnessing an 88 year old man accept Christ as Savior for the first time in his life and other teams have seen several surrender to the Lord during evangelism here. The love of Jesus is being poured out on those we serve as well and it is our honor to be witnesses for the Kingdom. It has been a nice change of pace working with my entire squad and hearing all the stories of the day when we all reconnect at our church (all 50 of us are sleeping in our tents at the base church here and split off into our smaller teams of 7 for ministry during the day. We are actually partnered with another team for ministry this month making us 12 now). So the Lord is moving for sure. Keep praying for us! Mucho gracias!! Adios!!
