CHILDLIKE OR CHILDISH FAITH
[6-minute read]
When our emotional age does not match our physical age, we will act in childish ways to cover up a myriad of struggles. We recognize childish adult behaviour when someone lacks the ability to negotiate and talk through issues and instead make demands and throw tantrums when they don’t get their way. Or they are habitually so self-focused that they are unable to empathize with another person’s experience of realities. In relationships, childish adults may put themselves in groups but like toddlers, they do not share anything personal or engage with people on any deep level.
This childishness naturally translates into childish faith in God. Believers with immature faith say that God is good but as soon as their obedience is put on the line, they find it difficult to accept correction in their thinking and behaviour. They can be well-versed with Scripture but when the rubber hits the road, they start making exceptions and excuses for themselves. Childish faith can be seen not only in new believers, but also seasoned believers and ministers.
Trust is the relational currency in any relationships. Those who refuse to grow up and mature in their faith have a distorted view of trust in God. They say they trust God but in reality, their trust is tempered with pride and a sense of entitlement, and dominated by their own conditions and demands.
1 Corinthians 14:20 makes it clear that we are to trust God like a child and think like an adult: “Brothers and sisters, stop thinking like children. In regard to evil be infants, but in your thinking be adults.” We cannot think erroneously that self-help and introspection will help us improve and grow on our own. Without allowing trusted believers to give us feedback, we invariably end up never reaching the level of maturity that enables us to experience the rewards of our faith and enjoy satisfying relationships with others.
To be sure, age does not determine the depth of our faith. Children, too, can possess a strong faith and trust in God that adults are told to imitate! Jesus welcomed children to Him, telling His disciples, ‘Let the little children come to Me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.’ (Luke 18:16-17). Jesus was alluding to children’s intrinsic trust in their caregivers. Like children, we should not overthink God’s credentials and His ability to take care of us.
To be sure, childlike faith is not ignorant or dismissal of realities. It means trusting God even when the facts that bear out are not what we had hoped for. Childlike faith produces a trust that does three things in us:
TRUST THAT COMES WITH DEPENDENCE
Just as children are fully trusting towards their caregivers without doubt or reservation, those with childlike faith consciously let God be involved in the big and small details of life. It takes humility to trust and depend on God. Every action we take and every decision we make should deepen our dependence on God, not diminish it.
God gives us an open invitation to depend on Him, “Come, My children, listen to Me; I will teach you the fear of the Lord.” (Psalm 34:11). What is ‘the fear of the Lord’, but the fear of living apart from Him that makes us super sensitive to any action that keeps Him out of our lives.
Pointedly, Jesus demonstrated this sensitivity. “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does.” (John 5:19). Jesus never acted on His own accord; even to the very end, He said, “Father, into Your hands, I commit my spirit.” (Luke 23:46). Jesus was always watching His Father, to keep in step with Him - not out of insecurity or a lack of confidence in Himself but in obedience to Him.
When it becomes unimaginable for us to live without God, we would readily give up anything that stands in the way of trusting Him completely – even what we think is so important to us now.
TRUST THAT COMES WITH AWE & WONDER
Trusting God without taking any risks is an oxymoronic idea because faith begins only when confidence, clarity and certainty ends. Many believers are content with joyless faith because they prefer to have a level of predictability in their lives, expecting God only to improve their life conditions and not change their life direction. Their needs are simple – protection for travel, financial security, good health, supportive family. They live life with little exertion and effort to step out of their comfort zones. In keeping their lives under rigid control, they rarely experience awe and wonder.
Those who confine God to the boundaries of what is familiar rather than risk experiencing the power of His transformation often defend themselves saying, “I’m fine with how things are going”. They treat God like ‘elevator music’ instead of their theme song, failing to recognise that every moment of life has the potential to ignite in us a deep curiosity to perceive our realities from His perspective.
If you want to exchange a ritualistic and routinised life with one that is filled with awe and wonder, start by having an honest review of your faith with a trusted person. Keep a keen lookout for what God wants to do in and through you in the big and small moments of interactions in your everyday life. If you do this, Jesus assured, “you will be amazed” because nothing that God shows us will be bland or banal (John 5:20).
Your next moment of awe and wonder is always within reach for Jesus said, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I too am working.” (John 5:17).
TRUST THAT COMES WITH MATURITY
Trusting God does not mean being detached from our realities and suffering. Even Jesus agonised over the prospect of what He was to endure on the Cross. Nothing is more counter-intuitive than trusting God when nothing makes sense to us but that is what maturity looks like. Forget about dishing out nice-sounding platitudes or prematurely turning personal loss into pulpit lessons. Maturity happens when we protect what we know about God’s character and we defend Him against the enemy’s accusations even when we don’t have answers to our problems (not saying God has no answers to our problems!).
The apostle Paul emphasized the imperative for believers to level up in maturity, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” (1 Corinthians 13:11).
Is it hard? Yes, it must be. But the price, pain and permanence of living with immature faith is far greater than the temporary stretching that comes with growing up in our faith.
This is a summary and reflection based on a virtual BIR Session held on 1 November 2025.
