For a number of years I coached junior high and high school boys’ basketball. I had the privilege of coaching the same boys as they transitioned into young men, during which I made an interesting observation. In their junior high years they would respond to coaching with an eager willingness. The players had an explicit trust in their coach. I said it and they unflinchingly complied.
During practice one day, I stopped play and summoned a player from across the court. Dutifully he jogged to me and stopped. Looking directly at a young man I had coached for years (and now stood about six feet, five inches tall), I firmly told him what he was doing was wrong and what adjustments he needed to make. The directive was not unlike the hundreds I had given him over previous seasons, but his response was decidedly different. He paused. I had come to expect him to react without question and this time he didn’t. For a few seconds he maintained his gaze and thought through the instruction I had just provided. His body was motionless and his face expressionless, but wheels were turning. He was not digesting the nuances of the instruction. He was deciding if he was going to assent to it. In those awkward seconds I realized that he was no longer going to unquestioningly accept instruction on the basis that I was the one that said it. He wanted to judge whether the instruction was worth following at all.
If you have parented teenagers then this experience is not foreign to you. It is natural for a child that is growing into an adult to become increasingly independent. It is healthy for a child to thoughtfully evaluate instruction before submitting to it, but that is not how a child of God should respond to his Heavenly Father. As a fallible coach, I had no right to expect players to unconditionally accept everything I said. However, as an almighty, infinite and most holy God, He has every right to expect His children to wholeheartedly obey His word without questioning it. This is what is meant by a “childlike faith.”
And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Mt. 18:2-4)
In these verses is a condemnation for failing to believe like a child and a promise of reward for those that do. Between them is the difference of eternal death and everlasting life. To believe as a child, is to believe without a full understanding of God’s purposes. None of us does that perfectly, but where do you fit on the spectrum? When you are face-to-face with the truths of God’s Word do you apply it to your life without question, or do you pause? Do you wait to calculate the negative impacts it may have? Perhaps it’s even worse. Perhaps you dig in and demand that someone prove to your satisfaction that His instruction is good and right. When confronted by biblical truth, perhaps you remain motionless and expressionless as you determine if it is a truth obeying at all.
God is good and His instruction is always for His glory and your good. Psalm 32:8 reads, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my eye upon you.” Could you ask for more from an all-powerful God? He gives you personalized guidance that is precisely the path that you should take. Even if the instruction comes with sacrifice, it is still “the way you should go.”
The verse that follows tells the reader not to be one that delays obeying. “Be not like a horse or a mule, without understanding, which must be curbed with bit and bridle, or it will not stay near you” (Ps. 32:9). There is added promise in verse 10. “Steadfast love surrounds the one who trusts in the Lord.”
The truth of God’s word frequently clashes with the world right where you live. You read it and you hear it preached. Do you believe that it contains counsel designed to teach you the way you should go? Are you willing to trust God’s commands or must you be treated to a bit and bridle? If you obey, even when you don’t fully understand, you have God’s promise that His steadfast love surrounds you. That’s instruction worth following without question!