Maybe a true story from our family will help:

When our youngest daughter Michelle was 3 years old, she needed her tonsils taken out.  That was a very traumatic experience for her, and she could not understand why this should happen to her.  After the surgery, my wife was with Michelle at the hospital, and I went there after work to spend the night with her.  She did not have much pain because of the medication, but she was very uncomfortable and restless in her bed.  I took her in my arms and held her all night while sitting in a recliner.  As I held her, she was at peace and slept most of the night.

Michelle knew that we loved her, and she trusted us at the time, a trust and faith in us that only little children have in their parents.  This is what Jesus spoke of in the Bible: that we must trust our heavenly Father with the same faith that little children have in their parents.

Matthew 19:14 - but Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven.”

Jesus was talking about our faith for this life, faith that would see us through all situations in this life, whether they are good experiences or hard and painful ones.  Little children know their parents personally and have a close relationship with them.  This is the same kind of relationship Jesus wants us to have with our heavenly Father.

Matthew 18:3 - and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

We have that kind of faith when we are first saved and are babes in Christ, but usually lose it as we return from our mountaintop experience and our lives return to normal.  In our hearts, we still believe that we are saved, but in our minds, we doubt whether all the wonderful promises of God could really be true.  Can we really snuggle up in His loving arms when we are under attack?

Can we become and/or remain as little children to our heavenly Father?

Why do little children trust their parents so much?

When Jesus said that we must become as little children, He really meant it.  That means that it must be possible, and we need to understand what Jesus is specifically referring to.  Little children trust their parents. What, then, are the parents’ attributes that cause little children to see them as never failing?

• We have a close relationship with our children.
• We are always there for our children.
• We supply all their needs.
• We are able to solve all their problems.
• We are always truthful.
• We love our children.

Of course, children’s expectations are unrealistic, because their parents are far from perfect and when that becomes evident, their view of their parents starts to crumble. 

While parents are far from perfect, there are no limitations to God or His love, His power, or any other thing – He is unlimited.  There is nothing impossible with God. Why, then, do we lose faith in God’s ability to make good on His promises?  Are we even honest enough to admit our failure to believe that God is with us when we go through life’s darkest hours?

Psalm 23:4 - Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

The reason why children lose faith in their parents and why Christians lose faith in God is basically the same:  unrealistic expectations. 

When children are growing up in a loving family, they may still trust their parents and feel safe and loved, but they learn that their parents are limited in their abilities. However, God is unlimited, and we need to learn the extent of God’s plan for our lives and what He reveals in the Scripture.  We need to have realistic expectations.

Part of our issue in believing God’s plan is that we don’t understand His purpose for each and every one of His people, and we need to study His Word to learn about His purpose.

God’s purpose and His promises

When we begin to realize God’s purpose in our lives and understand what has been His plan for each one of us from the beginning, we are on track to gain that infinite trust we need to weather life’s storms.

God planned for man to be made in His image and His likeness. This image is for our earthly life; and likeness will come more through our glorified bodies in the next.  Adam was in the full image of God, but he was not satisfied with that and wanted to be like God. That is why Satan could tempt him to reach for the forbidden fruit.  In the process, he lost the image of God, leaving us with an inherited sin nature at birth. But God knew from eternity past that this would happen, and the solution has always been His plan from the foundation of the world.  In this passage we can see God’s plan working out: 

Rom 8:28-30 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those [called ones] whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified. 

In other words, every event in our lives, whether good or bad, is used by God to transform us more into the image of His Son. So, the overarching principle for each believer in this life is to be made into the image of Christ. The Bible is a picture, showing us how God’s plan is to play out in our lives. The Lord shows us that we are active participants in His plan, rather than passive chess pieces.

Rom 8:28 starts out with: “And we know….”  This is the central part of God’s plan for us and we should be informed about it, being glad that God is telling His servants His plan ahead of time.  We know that God is using all events in our lives to transform us more into the image of His dear Son, that this is the very purpose of our natural lives. Then, in the next life, we will be “like” Jesus (1 Jn 3:2).

Within the boundaries of our intellect and sin nature, our natural mind will surely ask how we will conform to His image. This sounds wonderful, but how do we know that it is all true?  This is why we need the unshakable faith of little children and we need to establish incontrovertible proof that convinces our doubting minds that these things are so.

God is Able

We have seen that God’s purpose in our lives is to make us more into the image of His Son Jesus Christ and that all instructions in the Bible are helping us to live in accordance with His plan.  Can we prove it?  Don’t be silly, how can we prove something that is still a work in progress?  That is why we need the unshakable faith of a little child, and for that we need an understanding that God indeed is able and that He can be trusted.  While our minds are incapable of understanding God or everything around Him, we need to strive to understand as much as we are able.  Only then we will have the answers when our natural mind tries to tell us that what we believe is ridiculous.

To the limit of our ability to understand, we need to learn:

• God loves each one of us.
• God knows everything, past, present, and future.
• He is everywhere in His creation.
• He is not limited by time.
• He is truthful.
• There is nothing impossible for God  (Acts 26:8).
• God is not subject to the limits of time.
• God inhabits eternity.  Time has a beginning, and it will have an end. 

Before time, Heaven, and Earth were created, the only thing that existed was God and eternity.  Time and eternity are incompatible, and eternity cannot be expressed in measures of time. Further, God exists outside of time, in eternity.

Eternity is not a long time; it is the absence of time.

When Jesus told the religious rulers: “before Abraham was, I AM”, He did not mean that He was with Abraham while he lived.  Jesus meant that while He was talking to the Pharisees, He also IS with Abraham and beyond.  Further, He meant as Christ, not the man, Jesus.

Today, we could not function in eternity. Mankind needs the chronological order of time where every task must happen in the proper sequence.  For instance, before we can drink our coffee, someone needs to brew it, and so on. Before we can get up from a chair, we need to sit down. We cannot stand and sit at the same time as the task of standing up takes a certain amount of time. All actions require time, no matter how little or how much. But in eternity, there is no time and there is no action. 

Thus, whenever we are talking about verbs or other action words (like “until”), we are talking about the time domain and not about eternity.

And so, our minds should be able to accept that God, who lives in eternity, is omnipresent without any limitations concerning time or space.  It follows logically, that God is in all places “at the same time” and that He will never leave us nor forsake us, as He promised (Hebrews 13:5). Moreover, our minds should be able to accept that “Christ [is] in you, the hope of glory” (Col 1:27) telling us that Christ is in each one of us individually.  This illustrates the meaning of: “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, am I in the midst of them” (Mat 18:20).  It does not mean that Jesus will be only in the midst of the group, but that He will be the “center of gravity” of His presence in the two or three persons, present in His name.

Understanding the difference between time and eternity should remove a lot of roadblocks in our minds.  But how do we know that all of these things are factual?

God is truthful

None of this theology is of value if there is any falsehood in God.  If we think of faith in terms of trust, we know that we cannot trust anyone unless he has earned that trust.

If we are reasonable and experienced adults, we will never trust anyone unless they have proven themselves. Trust is earned and we expect that a person will act in the same way in the future as he has done in the past. If he had always spoken the truth, we expect him to speak the truth going forward. Does this suggest, that we are not authorized to question the Lord? Not at all. In fact the Lord invites us to prove Him (Malachi 3:10).  He wants us to be certain and know that He never lied and never will lie. 

Titus 1:2  Then they will have the hope of eternal life that God promised long ago. And God never tells a lie! 

Since we cannot check whether many of the statements about God’s omnipresence are true, we need to apply established principles of trust-earning to God: are all the instances where we can check God’s truthfulness proving true? Yes. Good, but, if there is even one example where we find Him untruthful, we should question everything He tells us. Perhaps we might still “believe” that God saves us and that we will get to Heaven after we die, but that is not trusting faith, that is wishful thinking.  Our minds will create enmity with God, as the apostle Paul laments in Romans 8:7.

We need to convince our minds that all things about future events spoken by God must play out exactly as they were told.  This is especially important when the exact literal meaning of the events is given in Scripture.  In fact, Jesus’ own disciples confirmed how important this issue was:

“When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken.” (John 2:22).  

That was the final “shot in the arm” they needed… to witness His death and resurrection. And, they maintained their trust and faith, even up to the point of death.  Had Jesus’ words not been confirmed by the actual events, the faith of the disciples would have been destroyed instead of strengthened.  We need to use those same events to complete our childlike faith in Jesus Christ.

You may view some event in the Bible that contradicts what we confess to be true.  What then is that missing piece?  For many, it is the miracle of the resurrection of Christ from the grave. Jesus said that He would be in the grave for 3 days and 3 nights. Not only did He repeatedly say that He would rise after 3 days and 3 nights, but careful analysis of His different statements shows that He meant exactly 72 hours in the grave.

Whenever Jesus was moved to validate His Messiahship, He either quoted from the Law and the Prophets (Lk 4:21), or He prophesied that He would be in the grave for 3 days and 3 nights.  If we don’t believe those words, our minds will doubt everything the Bible says, and we will not have the faith and trust when we need it most.  Here are the instances in question:

• He gave them the sign of Jonah (3 days and 3 nights) (Mt 16:4, Lk 11:29).
• For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. (Mt 12:40).
• He said that He would rise after 3 days (Mk 8:31).
• Again, He said that He would rise after 3 days (Mk 10:34).
• He said that He would rise on the third day (Lk 18:33).
• Again, He said that He would rise on the third day (Lk 24:7).
• He said that He would raise the temple of His body up in three days (Jn 2:18-22).

In several of those instances, He never even mentioned His death and resurrection, but only His time in the grave (Mt 16:4, Jn 2:19, Mt 12:40).

Since Jesus used the fulfilled prophecies of His time in the tomb to validate His Messiahship, then if we doubted that event we would certainly doubt whether anything else in the Bible can be taken literally.  Just as little children eventually lose their faith in their parents, we can digress to the point where we begin to believe that the Bible offers good advice for this life and hope for the next, but doubt whether the principles and especially the promises of God are applicable on an individual basis.

We may have “kind of” faith that accepts that God is helping Christians as a group. We may be able to accept that God generally assists us in our lives. But our minds may never be ready to accept that faith is an individual, personal faith. 

How can we believe that Jesus is with us even in the darkest hour if we cannot believe His own prophecy about His resurrection?

How sad and how unnecessary. And it is all because the devil blinded the minds of the church-leaders centuries ago, when they lost touch with the teachings of the Old Testament and the institution of Passover.  For indeed, Christ rose from the dead after 3 days and 3 nights in the grave because He was crucified on Wednesday, was laid in the tomb at dusk as the Sabbath for the Feast of Unleavened Bread was starting, and He rose again 72 hours later at dusk on Saturday.

With the faith in the veracity of God restored, we should now, with childlike faith, be able to appropriate all promises and prophesies of God for our own personal lives and the lives of our loved ones.  We should be able to see that God knows everything from before the foundation of the world, and that He created us to be gradually transformed into His image in this life, and to be made into His likeness in the next.  Moreover, the Lord uses ALL things (the good, the bad, and the ugly) to accomplish this in our own individual lives and in the lives of other believers.

Armed with this information, our minds should no longer fight against our faith and the knowledge of God, but support our faith so that we sense the love and presence of God, even in the most difficult situations.  This is what unshakeable faith is all about and what Jesus meant when He said that we must become as little children.

Amen