Learning to Walk Like Children Do
For those of us who are in Christ, and who have Christ in us, God is our Father. We have been reborn and made into a new creation. We are his Children. Jesus even calls us His brothers.
Over and over, the terminology is used of the process of birth and childhood and growing into maturity. But I think we tend to gloss over the words and simply take them at face value and we miss so much of the depth of meaning. King Solomon said to seek after wisdom as a hidden treasure.
Now, we don't tend to look ourselves as children when it comes to our true life in Christ Jesus. You know, "What are you talking about? I'm not a child, I'm (insert age) years old." And yes, by human standards you may or may not be a child. But there is a definite order of process that accompanies our spiritual life. A growth, from infancy and onward, hopefully, to maturity. Some of us however, tend to stay in the infancy stage. The writer of Hebrews spoke to those he was writing to because they had the same issue. Unable to eat the meat of the Word (or the true depth of revelation, the bigger picture, the big boy toys as it were...) they were stuck only wanting the milk of the Word (the simple truths, unable to handle the bigger picture, stuck with their plastic kids tools).
Let's take a look at how a child learns to walk: He observes people walking first of all. He starts to imitate his parents. He tries to stand, and he falls. He does it over and over, falling each time. Sometimes his parents help him up, or hold him there standing but eventually they let him go so he can stand on his own. Slowly, bit by bit, he gets stronger and stronger, standing a little longer each time before he falls again. At one point though, he does it! He stands! All on his own... this of course is only the beginning. He's still weak in this area, and probably will fall some more later on. But there's more to learn after that too. Running, jumping, all that good stuff.
What about us? We are just the same. We must learn, grow, get stronger bit by bit. We cannot let failures keep us from getting back up on our feet. But so many times, we are so concerned when we fall. We beat ourselves up about it. Or worse, we beat up others when they fall. We put up walls and fences and build crutches to make sure we don't fall in the future. And you know what? To an extent, we have succeeded with what we wanted. A man in a wheel will not fall... but He will never stand, he will never run, he will never jump. A man in a wheel chair is handicapped, he cannot fight and he is quickly overtaken by any person who intends him harm.
God put in place a process of how a child learns to walk. Why do we expect different in our spiritual childhood? Is it bad to fall? Yes. Does it hurt to fall? Absolutely... But the child does not dwell on the fall, he gets back up again. Why? Because he wants to be like daddy. Dad can walk, so the child wants to walk. It should be the same for us. Our Father walks, so we should walk too. At times there may be need for support, just like sometimes the child is held up by someone else, but only for a time. He must become strong enough to walk on his own, and not rely on external support. Just as if the child were to only ever be held up, he would never learn to stand, and so we too, if we are always protected by rules and barriers that "indeed have an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body," we will never stand or be able to fight or be victorious because these things "are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh." (Colossians 2:23)
