We have all come across children. We were all ourselves children once. We all know and see the innocence of children and the willingness to believe what they are told. The innocence of childhood is precious, and one of the most distressing aspects of modern life is that children’s trust is so readily abused.
We have a responsibility always, in whatever circumstances ,to safeguard the innocence and trust of children. We must always act in their best interests, knowing that we have a serious responsibility to protect their beautiful innocence and to do all we can to see them develop as the person whom God has created them to be.
God their Maker is the one who can be trusted. Jesus is explicit in the 19th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel about allowing children to come to him. May I stress to him. That is not the same as coming to a particular church or religious organisation, but to him personally. Any genuine church or ministry worthy of the name “Christian” will always point us to Jesus and to our dependence on him for our eternal welfare – and indeed our welfare in this world.
Now Jesus makes a vital observation and teaching in closing verse 14 when he says:
for of such is the kingdom of heaven
To come into the kingdom of heaven requires a total trust in the message that Jesus Christ died to save me – save me from my sinfulness, and save me from the consequent hold of the Evil one on my life.
It requires childlike acceptance that we are sinners, and that only Jesus sacrifice on the cross can possibly put me right with God.
This ministry teaches plainly the apostolic teaching that a true convert will then understand that they should be baptised by full immersion in water. That faith without the consequent actions is not living faith but wishful thinking; that genuine God given faith will result in the genuine God given fruit of obedience to the teaching of Jesus Christ.
In fact only the genuine faith and repentance from God will grant a person both the insight and the desire to live obediently for Christ.
And that understanding and desire will be characterised by childlike trust. Because Jesus says it, we will do it.
Because he says we must decide to love God, we will do it. Because he says we are to love others and forgive them from the heart, we will do it. We will do what costs so much of our personal pride and Self because Jesus says to do it, and because Jesus showed the way.
A word of warning and advice because we are talking total, childlike type trust here, and some dear souls are very gullible !
So a word of warning. What Jesus tells us to do is defined in the New Testament – and the New Testament is the place we start with to interpret the Old Testament. No -one should ever get it into their head that because there is God ordained killing in the Old Testament that any such act has anything to do with Christianity.
For Christians the essential, fundamental and strategic principles are contained in Jesus instruction to love God and to love your neighbour as yourself.
Anything which deviates from, or conflicts with, those two fundamental principles taken together is not of God.
All we do, and all we say, should come from a place of love for God because he loves us; and that love from God must flow out towards others, even enemies.
Jesus set the example; we sacrifice our own self esteem, our own selfish self love, our pride in order to love others as ourselves and to obey his teaching.
We are to manifest that same innocence and trust which children express and which so characterises the state of childhood.
We are required to take God at his word.
Christian Preacher
Christianity 