Forged By Faith

Matthew 18:3 NIV Childlike and childish sound one in the same to grown-up hearts now broken well beyond the ability to hope or imagine or believe or trust or even try. To call someone childish has this air of impropriety to it these days. It’s something akin to an affront to be considered childish. In fact, a simple google search presents these words considered synonymous with childishness: Foolish, immature, infantile, irresponsible, juvenile, naïve, silly, stupid. Yes, up here in the big person land we find kids to be stupid, silly, foolish to the point of using their outlook as a way in which to bash and berate those who don’t fit what we’ve come to expect. But that’s the whole problem we’re facing when it comes to our faith: He’s not asking us what we expect so that He can fulfill our demands in such a way that make faith and evidence based expedition. God doesn’t care what we want when we’re caught living our lives like what we want is all that matters. That’s not to say that He d...

1 Corinthians 1:19 NIV I am convinced that growing up is without a doubt the most detrimental and problematic thing to experience in life. It causes us to feel as though we’ve become intelligent, wise, learned, but only because we’ve had more time to grow accustomed to the teachings of the world by which worldly wisdom is weighed. Growing up only fosters this mindset in which we find ourselves having arrived at the goal without actually accomplishing anything other than getting older. Oddly enough, as little kids, all we want is to be older. We want to be bigger. We want to be stronger, to be taken more seriously, to be given more opportunities and freedoms and responsibilities. We look to these giants in our lives and wish for nothing but to be just like them because they seem to have a more wide-open way of life not hindered by size or age or anything else. But then the most unfortunate thing happens; we grow up. We get older. We get wiser. We learn things and that's where the pr...

Luke 18:17 NIV You know what's weird? As we grow up we start thinking we have it all figured out. We look back on our younger days and almost laugh at how silly and gullible we were. We reminisce on some of the goofy things we did and some of the things we fell for and we can't help but think we've got a better handle on life now that we're older and wiser. But the problem is the more we learn the more we think we know. And the more we think we know the less we try to learn. Maybe that's another one of those things that we should reconsider. As we talked about yesterday, we've made this walk a bit too complicated. We've been in such a rush to leave our childish ways behind that we've maybe lost some of the value and important aspects of those younger ways of thinking. Maybe we've tossed out and left behind some things that would actually help us greatly moving forward. And maybe it's time that we try to get back to a few of them because well, may...

Luke 18:17 NIV Y'all ever miss being a kid? Everything seemed so much easier. There were no worries, no fears, no stress, no doubts, no shame, no regret, no weight. We just ran around having fun and enjoying life. We didn't wonder if things were too good to be true. We didn't worry about being let down. We weren't carrying around the burdens of weaknesses and mistakes. We were simply alive and carefree. Simpler times indeed! Personally I miss those times. Back when trust was natural. When we didn't worry about having things or money or power. Back when our biggest concern was watching cartoons and getting to play with our friends. Unfortunately life never stays that way. We grow up and go through things that bring on the stress and worry. We learn fear. We pick up those bad habits that bring shame and regret. We lose those simple childhood ways. But here lately we've been talking about making changes and walking away from the negative aspects of life. We've ...