And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, and said, “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever then humbles himself as this child, he is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

Matthew 18:2-4

One night, Denise found herself sitting in a cabin with 10 girls immediately after the salvation message. She and the counselor smiled as questions came rapid-fire from the students. “How did Satan come to be?” “What is the Trinity?” “What happens when you die?” and “What does God say about the end of the world?” were among their many queries.

The campers hungered for Truth, and wanted help navigating the depths of the Word of God. Denise realized that if she couldn’t translate the academic theology into the language of an eight-year-old, then she didn’t really understand the truth!

~ DiscipleLand

After our PromiseLand Preschool Christmas program, one of the young mother’s came up and hugged me and said, “you most definitely have found your calling“. That is not the first time that I have had someone say that to me in relation to teaching small children.

I have always loved children.

I can’t remember a time when I was not lugging around someone else’s children Whether it was my baby cousins, someone’s child at the ball park, my nieces or nephews, someone’s child at church, children I was babysitting, or my own.

I remember once in high school when someone showed me a picture of Aaron Spelling’s house, (you know when the whole 90210 was a thing) and I remember looking at that picture and thinking and saying out loud, What a waste. All that house and money for so few people… I would have every bedroom filled with an adoptive child. 

Loving children comes naturally to me… it has nothing to do with being Spirit filled. After high school I was planning to get a degree in child development and /or psychology and open my own day care or become a counselor for children. Something in me desires for every child I have ever seen to know that they are loved and beautiful and special and wanted… I am the weirdo that will wave at your kids in the check out line and have a ten minute conversation with them in the Target isle about why they must have this particular pair of shoes because they sparkle… because they matter.

Children matter.

I don’t cringe when I see the parents with 5, 6, 7, plus kids… I dream of what it would be like to have a quiver that full. I don’t go into a panic with a room of 10 or more kids… I sit back and smile and watch them interact with one another and me and wonder what amazing plans the Lord has for each of them and what impact will each of them leave in this world.

When the Lord called me to Himself, and I FINALLY began to walk with Him, and I learned that He had gifted me to teach His Word… teaching His Word to “grown-ups” terrified me... and to this day it still does. It takes His Spirit in me to stand up in front of any grown person whether it be two or three of them or over a hundred. That’s my calling. That’s what I can only do if the Lord goes with me.

What my love for children has allowed God to do within me is to show me how to learn His Word and actually be able to break it down in a way that anyone from two years old to ninety-two years old can understand it. What Denise learned at camp God taught me through leading a third and fourth grade Sunday School class and from simply interacting with little ones my whole life.

If we can’t translate our academic theology into something that an eight year old can understand then all we can do is repeat big words and memorize doctrinal statements.

There’s gotta be more.

To truly grasp the Word of God and all the beauty it holds for our everyday life we have to be able to chew it.

Your words were found and I ate them,
And Your words became for me a joy and the delight of my heart;
For I have been called by Your name,
O Lord God of hosts.

Jeremiah 15:16

Have you ever tried to swallow something without chewing it… simply because you didn’t like the taste? The texture of it being broken down in your mouth where you could experience all the little different aspects and flavors of it made you gag, and so you just choked it down without the discovery… and in the process you almost got strangled and choked as the massive size of the bite cut off your airway?

Yeh, well that’s what it is like to try and survive just off of academic theology without the understanding of how to break it down into bites small enough that a child could consume it without losing all its integrity.

Eating solid food (Hebrews 5:12-14) in a healthy way requires chewing… or it simply just will not come out right.

Eating solid food with a palate that can taste all the little delicious details in each bite requires time and practice… and cleansing the palate.

Would you join me for a tasting?

O taste and see that the Lord is good

Psalm 34:8

Tasting the Lord and seeing that He is good… If you only pick around at Him you will never experience the explosion of flavor that He is. If only pick around at Him and never try parts of Him that seem foreign and strange then your palate will never mature.

If you have ever had children then I can almost bet that you have experienced the spitting out of food before it has ever been chewed, or the snarled nose of refusal to even take a bite, the supper table showdown is a duel almost every parent will face.

Our youngest is still in the showdown stage… but our two older have passed it and their palates have matured because of it. Our youngest will spit and gag and even swallow things whole to keep from having to chew it… and her digestive system pays the consequences. On the contrary our older two will now try anything, and they will chew on it a while before they come to a conclusion on whether or not it is good and if they decide it is not, they have the ability to make a firm and educated reason why… it’s not based on simply its outward appearance.

If we want to mature in the Lord, we have to be willing to taste Him… all of Him… we have to be willing to take little bites of Him and chew on it. This is what studying the Bible through Precept does. It’s a supper table showdown. This January the table is set with the book of Jeremiah for me… would you like to join me supper?

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