Chapter 9 Childlike Faith

* Pray Like a Child
- Children tell God what they are genuinely thinking. They are honest, simple, and direct. They understand that God is listening, and they understand that prayers are very important. Somehow when we become adults, we forget how important praying is. So if you and I are going to be like little children, we must not forget our prayers.

* Don't Be Limited by Adult Vocabulary
- Little children don't have a large vocabulary ... of words, but their vocabulary outside of words is massive. It's not limited to but included hugs, winks, tears, squeezes, laughter, screaming, jumping, hopping, skipping, dancing, and silence. When you and I decide to be childlike, let's remember the vocabulary of children.

* Ask for Help!
- Children are not afraid to ask for help. They have no problem admitting they are in over their heads. To children, a call for help is a proud expression of their dependency on those who love them. Adults, on the other hand, are anxious about calling for help. We are hesitant to admit we're in trouble. Calling for help is humiliating; it's an admission of need, an acknowledgment of weakness, and we don't want to experience that kind of humiliation.
- It is hard to ask for help. Childlike faith is not for people who need a little help; it is for people who are desperate, who are at the end of their rope. Faith is for those who are not too proud to wave their arms and admit they are drowning.
- Faith is not religious positive thinking. It's not a motivational course, a pep talk, an exercise in positive self-imaging. Faith is for the helpless. It is a humiliation, out of which humility is birthed. We do not come to faith to find the extra punch we need to make it over the hill. We come to faith because we are exhausted, weakened, ready to give up. Faith is more than giving up, it is giving in.
- If we want to experience a childlike faith, we must be more than willing to admit our helplessness.

* Embrace Your Ordinariness
- Children have an innate leveling mechanism that keeps reality in perspective. They are neither overly impressed with power or unimpressed with the ordinary. Faith allows us to recognize the indiscriminate power of God that takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary.
- Genuine saints are genuine human beings who are capable of boredom and bad God days. Grumpiness, idiosyncrasies, pouting, and pettiness are all present in saints as well as the rest of us. Silence and solitude are not instant cures to busyness. They are lifetime commitments worked out in the real world of schedules and flawed human beings.
- Childlike faith is for ordinary people. People like you and me who know our flaws only too well. We are familiar with our inconsistencies and our unsaintliness and understand the good news of the gospel - Jesus Christ liberates us from the oppression of our ordinariness and gives us permission to trust God to make us extraordinary.

* Don't Stop Playing
- As you look at your life, as you contemplate embracing the faith of a little child, as you wonder what difference your bumbling, flawed life will make, I hope you have heard in the pages of this book God's whispering voice, "Don't stop, Keep on playing. You're doing great."
One day we shall all be gathered in that great concert hall of God, and we will hear the glorious beauty of the concerto God was playing while you and I plunked out our childlike version of "Chopsticks."