Lessons Learned: Living Childishly
♥ 11 MIN READ-
I don’t often allow myself to need others. Wanting you is fine but the dependency that comes with need is not a requirement I want to meet. This tendency exposes my greatest conundrum.
It seems that I can be more comfortable with other facets of my relationship with God- friend, savior, lover, even servant is sometimes easier to deal with than child. Childness requires a vulnerable dependency. While adulthood is marked by self-sufficiency, need is a natural reaction of a child. If the only way to enter the kingdom of heaven is as a child, then I can no longer repel it when it becomes inconvenient. Being needy is a necessity.
Becoming Childish
What does it mean to be a child of God? This question has been rolling around in my head all month. I understood the cliché answers but I craved a response that was more than just a regurgitation of scripture without offering true revelation. I will give you the answers God gave to me.
What I See Clearly
Being a child is to allow yourself to truly need me, trust me and love me. Allowing yourself to need me will teach you how to trust me and trusting me will show you how to love me. To show your need, trust and love are to live childishly.
Our relationships with God are meant to be dimensional and unique. The specifics and application of mine may not look like yours but at their core, they should be the same. Every foundation should be childish. In a world that wants to be grown soo bad, I want the Peter Pan syndrome. Not the fantasy but the perpetual child mentality. I never want to outgrow being a child.
So many of us grow up in ministry and respond to the responsibility of service yet lose being a child. When what we do becomes more important than who we are we’re in danger of losing our childlike wonder and a child’s reaction. Honestly, so many of the titles reflect what we do- pastor, teacher, evangelist, prophet- these titles simply categorize the role you may play in a given moment, but a child is who you are. This title often gets lost and we never are it because we don’t do what’s required. My goal is to be forever childish.
Childish Behavior
For many of us, our default understanding of this concept is based on what it meant to be our parent’s child. Whatever expectations marked that relationship is the baseline for this one. So what definition are you living out? There comes a time when you outgrow the influences of your past and allow your relationship to only be defined by the people in it. You and God. Your relationship with Him is not created based on the disappointments of your past relationships but by the evidence of this one. What type of parent has He shown you He is? What is His track record?
As children, we are by default an overflow of our parents. We develop into versions of them that highlight a compilation of what we perceived they were and weren’t. We continue their story by either correcting or excusing their shortcomings and embodying their successes. We innately try to be the best of them and better than them at the same time.
We all know that our relationships with our earthly parents and heavenly father can be related but when we dissect our rhymes and reasons for why we do what we do we can see how tied together they truly are. Our approach may differ but our defense mechanisms are usually the same. Healing is the only way to change that. Living childishly requires us to unlearn aspects of adulthood and heal facets of our childhood. Sometimes who you truly are isn’t who you’ve ever been because you never allowed yourself to be. A child is who you are. It is our default setting, but it takes intentional effort and reckless belief to fully walk in that identity. It feels familiar and foreign at the same time. But the question is do we believe that’s who we’re meant to be? We will never have the stamina to become something we don’t believe we’re meant to be. We will give up before we evolve and be left a half-bred. Something and nothing at the same time.
So before you move forward you have to ask yourself, “Do I actually want to be a child?” If the answer is yes, defining what it means to live childishly is the first step. You can’t be what you don’t understand. We’ve got to understand what it fully means to be a child to fully walk in it.
Living Childishly
My childish living is marked by my reciprocation and response. By looking at these my progress is easily measured. As a child, I take God as He is. I know that may seem odd to take an accepting approach to a perfect God but that is what I do. My journey with my parents has shown me that one of the greatest gifts a child can give is to know their parents and accept their parents for who they are. So, I apply this to my Heavenly Father. Who He is and how He is ok with me. For much of my life, I was frustrated with God because He never seemed to be vocal enough, fast enough, generous enough, protective enough, etc (I know I sound like a blasphemous spoiled brat). At the end of this endless list of ” not enoughs” was the feeling that God wasn’t good enough. But when we honestly sit with our dissatisfaction and disappointments we will see that we’ve tricked ourselves into believing God was someone that He wasn’t and that realization shows us that although we want Him to take us as we are, we rarely offer our acceptance in return. Although at times I want Him to be, my Heavenly Father is not a genie. He doesn’t run on my schedule. He doesn’t follow my plans. When I let go of all the things I wish He were, I am free to appreciate all of the things He truly is. We know that God is perfect but it takes a child’s heart to truly see God’s perfection.
Servant vs. Child
So many of us have served in and out of church for years and deep down we feel unsatisfied. We have given so much to churches, ministries, and others trying to be the hands of God but if we’re honest, we’re burnt out. And if we’re not honest with ourselves about our feelings of dissatisfaction, we’ll internalize them. Let it out. We so often internalize the feeling that He made a mistake, that we were mistreated, overlooked, or whatever imperfection or persecution we may face in life. I believe these feelings can sneak in and linger because we focus so much on having a servant’s heart, but we haven’t mastered adopting a child’s heart. They are different. Don’t get me wrong having a servant’s heart is important, but I believe we weren’t meant to just stay at that level. The benefits of a servant will never match that of a child.
Servants respond but children reciprocate. To put it simply a servant does what they are told. Now, there is nothing really wrong with this, obedience should be celebrated, but children operate on a higher level. A child reciprocates. They respond not based on what they hear, but what they see, which means they share space and time often enough with God to truly see what He’s doing. They don’t run off of hearsay. Their response is informed by relationship, not just instruction. They give out of their overflow. What they see God giving into their lives they give back to Him and to others.
So many of us believe we are children but we don’t live childishly. So many of us have so thoroughly internalized our dissatisfaction that we are working for God with our heads down. We are connected enough to hear instruction but haven’t lifted up our heads to actually see Him. Look up. What do you see? What do you feel? Can you sense His heart? Can you see Him working, not for others but for you? If not then dig deep, dissatisfaction may be disrupting the connection and creating a barrier for access to His heart. Be honest with yourself. Face it. Clear it and get back to living childishly.
Become Needy
My focus for staying childish is anchored in two main truths.
1. I am needy.
My neediness is my motivator. Whenever I lose sight of it is when I go off track. I get prideful, overconfident, and wind up burnt out and delayed because I thought I could solve my own problems and hustle like a maniac. I need Him. Not just to fulfill my needs, but I need to be near Him. Furthermore, not only do I need Him, but I need this. “This” is usually whatever I’m avoiding doing at the moment: I need the time in His presence. I need what He’s urging me to do. I need it because doing it has the power to change my life. The truth is God is not urging me to do it because He needs it, but I do. Honestly, in my shortsightedness I rarely see it, but what I want most is usually connected to the thing I don’t want to do. So remember, you need this.
2. The world can wait.
My savior complex and Ms. Fixedness often fight to wear me out, but my neediness constructs boundaries and the main one is: the world can wait. Keeping my neediness at the forefront of my mind makes me more protective of my time and energy. My responsibility is to first take care of the need God is bringing to my attention before I take care of anyone else.
Trusting Childishly
This is a tricky one (If being needy is an issue for me then you know trust is not a walk in the park either). I gauge my trusting childishly by hope and confidence. Hope is easy, but confidence is my challenge. Hope requires considering a person’s abilities and believing that your desired outcome is possible. To hope, you think someone can come through, but with confidence is knowing. That’s a much higher threshold and honestly, sometimes I don’t meet it. The hard part about trusting childishly is that usually, confidence is like a blank check. My confidence is not in Him to achieve a specific outcome, sometimes my confidence is just in Him. Point blank period. This may seem to be illogical, but roll with me.
To trust childishly is to rewrite the rules of what is possible based on your perspective of your parent’s abilities. As a kid, I knew some things but my daddy knew more, so I let him teach me and I trusted what he said. I may have had questions but they weren’t doubt-fueled. I just wanted to understand. But as an adult, I am educated. I have two degrees (please call me Master) and an established career. I know what I know and it can be a challenge to turn off my educated mind, boss mentality and Nancy Drew tendency.
In life, I have become accustomed to trusting my mind and figuring it out. Self-sufficiency is celebrated and being a solution-oriented problem solver has made me successful. To me, the solution is only ever one thought away.
Honestly, I have to fight to keep my childhood wonder. Often it slips away without me realizing it and I have to backtrack to find it again. In my mind, I know my heavenly daddy knows more, but I actively have to create space and time for Him to teach me. I have to intentionally trust what He says and not let what I think stop me from seeing what He’s said is true. As a child, I gathered evidence to confirm the truth of my daddy’s statement, but with God, I often look for all the ways it may be impossible. That’s not childish behavior. That adversarial.
The key to trusting childishly for me is to do what worked for me as a child. Questions (I was inquisitive although my sisters use a different word to describe me) fueled my learning and often helped build my confidence. If you are prone to wonder, then you’ve got to ask the questions burning in your mind and have the confidence that the answer is coming. That confidence that the answer is on the way should show in your preparation to receive the answer. Get quiet until it comes. Slow down. Have your pen and paper on standby and be ready to continue the conversation.
While I’m waiting on answers when I am unsure about all I don’t know, it is comforting to focus on what I do know. To trust childishly you have to consider all of the evidence. You must become familiar with God’s abilities and then ask yourself what He has shown you is possible?
A Message to You
You are always one thought away from a solution. God has placed within you wisdom for every situation you just have to access it and be persistent enough to wait for it.
Loving Childishly
With consistency, our confidence is supposed to mature into faith. I once heard that faith is God’s love language, so loving childishly is a pursuit of fluency. To be a child of God is to know Him, to know Him is to love Him, and to love Him is to have faith in Him. Faith is love in action. Sometimes faith may seem like some woo woo weirdo stuff but it’s not for the faint of heart. Faith takes work and it has no substitutes. Sometimes it may seem like faith is just requiring you to do nothing but think about it, it takes as much energy to stand still as it does to move when the winds of life are pushing against you. When you’re pressured, being unmovable is just as exhausting as moving forward.
Reflection
Much of my faith tests fall into two main categories- confronting that God is who He says He is and I am who He says I am. These pretty much cover every struggle in my existence. The cheat code for both of these tests is knowing God. Knowledge has always built my faith and this is no different.
We have to find the truth that’s being confronted and decide what we’re going to believe. Who you truly are is not up for debate, but who you’ll choose to become is. Therefore, being born is not a choice, but being a child is. To me, it’s like the difference between being a father and a daddy. You can be offspring or a child. The DNA is your’s bey default but a child chooses to reflect their parent. Through learning lessons, sharing time, knowing them we pick up facial expressions, mannerisms phrases, and behaviors to reflect the essence of who our parent is enough for the world to recognize who we belong to. But being a child is more than just mimicking. We are not impressionists or imitations of the real thing. To love God is to reflect Him.
Known
One of the greatest byproducts of being loved is being known- to be comfortable to let every wall down and to exist without any defense mechanisms. Our level of access to God shows us that He loves us, but allowing Him full access to us shows Him the same thing. It matters that we make ourselves known. God is not some distant being that doesn’t crave a relationship. The Bible makes it clear that He desires it so loving childishly is giving Him the things He desires most.
«Consider This»
- Has being your parent’s child affected being God’s child? What type of child are you?
- Can you say you’ve mastered being a child of God?
- How do you live childishly?
Let’s have a conversation about this. Share your thoughts below.
