A Nugget from New Life Network
Scripture for the Day – October 17, 2019
And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:2-4)
The older (and hopefully wiser) I get the more I understand what Jesus was talking about when He said we were to become as little children. A little child is innocent. They trust. They have not been bruised and battered by the world. They have not yet been exposed to the deceptive tactics of the enemy such as religion, intellectualism, and perfectionism. They just believe in the goodness of their parents and run into their arms.
We just finished our first teaching class at our local church entitled “Conversation”. One of the things that I wanted to introduce to this class was a picture of what God is doing in other parts of the world. Sometimes we get too wrapped up in our own stuff, like what is going on in our own church, our own town, or our own country. We get tunnel vision, which can limit our view of what could be.
We showed a video of a church service in Nigeria. This Pastor was raised in a very poor environment and his parents did not have enough money to send him to school. But this child had a deep desire to go to school, so he went on a hunger strike. His father finally relented and sold a goat to raise the money to send his son to school. That son flourished in school and graduated college with a masters and doctorate degree. He gave his life to the Lord and started working at a local church and eventually became Pastor of that church. That church now has satellite churches in 100 different countries with 28 million members. They have 15 million members in Nigerian churches alone. Their normal meeting attendance in their home church is 50,000.
After we watched a portion of the video of one of this Pastor’s services, we had a class conversation about what we saw. The overwhelming consensus was that what we saw was a spirit of humility and humbleness. We did not see performance or perfectionism. I told the class that the first time I watched this video I had to rebuke myself because my first thoughts were thoughts of things that could be done a lot better like the singing and the musicians. But the real question is, better to who?
My point is this. Sometimes we get too wrapped up in performance rather just staying humble before the Lord. God is looking at out heart!!! When we come to Him as a child our heart is right, and He will bless that. It’s real easy to be critical, but how many churches do you know in the United States that have 28 million members and 50,000 on Sunday mornings? Could it be that we need to evaluate our own hearts? Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. (John 5:19)
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