Faith is contrary to human nature. Most people do not react to situations in faith. Hebrews 11:1 states “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Faith is a difficult concept to define, this scripture sums it up perfectly. Having faith is choosing to believe in something you can’t see or touch, but knowing in your heart that it’s there.
For some reason as a child it’s so easy to have faith in God. Growing up in a Christian home it was how we got through every difficult situation. I even remember a story my parents love to tell about my brother. He was about 6 or 7 and he watched a show called Goosebumps (which if you don’t know is a suspenseful show). One episode in particular was a little too scary for him. What does my brother do? The next Sunday we were at church and when the pastor called for people to come up for prayer, my brother got out of his seat and walked up to the front and asked for prayer, because he just knew God could rid him of this fear. No one told him that he just took it upon himself to have faith in Christ. Children don’t need an explanation. They just trust and obey.
Then as we grow we often are more hesitant to have faith in Christ, but it’s still our go to, to seek help. When I was 12 my mom noticed one day that my eyes looked a little yellow, so she made a doctors appointment to get to the bottom of it. She pulled me out of school early and we went. I was thinking okay we’ll go it’ll be a quick fix, because up until then I was an extremely healthy kid. That was not the case. We went into the doctor’s office with questions and left with more questions and no answers. I couldn’t go back to school, because I may be contagious over the next 2 weeks. I went to doctor after doctor who couldn’t tell me what was happening. A question they asked me every visit was ‘How are you feeling?” to which I would reply “I feel great” which was always a surprise to them apparently I should have had very painful symptoms. So when the doctors didn’t know, I went to the one person who had never let me down. I prayed and asked God to send an answer and help. He did. The doctors got test results back and I finally got my answers. It was still a rough couple of years after I got diagnosed with Auto Immune Hepatitis, but God has been there every step of the way.
Something happens when we become adults, that makes faith seem so childish. As adults we choose to believe that we can no longer have faith, because if we can’t solve our problems, or we don’t have the answers we are inferior. Which is a lie straight from the devil, but we all believe it at some time or another. Why is it that if there’s an issue too big for us instead of putting it in the hands of the One who controls it all we just push even harder to fix it ourselves? We know that we can admit at any time that we are overwhelmed, but instead we just hide it which in turn makes us more overwhelmed. We adults can take a lesson from children. We need to be a little more childlike in the faith department. It doesn’t make us weak to ask for help, it makes us human. No one can get through life alone. We weren’t designed to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. It is literally impossible. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can be helped up.
Faith exists for a specific purpose. It was designed so we can lean on the One who holds the world in His hands. It may be a children’s song, but it’s not just for children. “He’s got the whole world in His hands, He’s got the whole world in His hands.” The words of this song reign true especially now.
