A childlike faith

Last Sunday in my sermon I said that if we want to experience the Holy Spirit in our lives, we need to put ourselves in the position where we really need him. It often means being uncomfortable, unsure, and undone. Sounds great, huh? Is it any wonder we shy away from such places in life? And yet not allowing ourselves to go to those places means shutting ourselves off from God. As I sit with this invitation to depend on God in my own life, I have been helped this morning by some words by Gary Haugen in Just Courage:
In different times and in different ways, our heavenly Father offers us a simple proposition: Follow me beyond what you can control, beyond where your own strength and competencies can take you, and beyond what is affirmed or risked by the crowd -- and you will experience me and my power and my wisdom and my love. 
Jesus beckons me to follow him to that place of weakness where I risk the vulnerability of a child so that I might know how strong my Father is and how much he loves me.
But truth be told, I would rather be an adult. I'd rather be in a place where I can still pull things together if God doesn't show up, where I risk no ultimate humiliation, where I don't have to take the shallow breaths of desperation. (p. 17)
Control, strength, and affirmation one side. Risk, weakness, and desperation on the other. Child or adult? Which will it be?

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