Lesson 3: Baby Faith
But you brought me out of the womb.
You made me trust at my mother's breasts.
I was thrown on you from my mother's womb.
You are my God since my mother bore me (Psalm 22:9-10, WEB).
The people of Old Covenant Israel sang the Psalms, including the one above, as a normal part of their worship. This inspired song led them to believe that they each enjoyed a personal, faith-based relationship with God from the beginning. In this lesson, I want to answer the questions:
Let me begin by saying that I know that Psalm 22 is a Messianic Psalm, so first and foremost, it's about Jesus. On the other hand, it also has an historical application, and ancient Israelites sang it in the first person. Therefore Jesus is not the only one who can claim He trusted God at His mother's breasts.
Before I ask you to examine this issue of faith, however, I want to remind you of the main point of the last lesson. The infant in the cradle has to grapple with a deep spiritual reality. He must begin to put together the rudiments of his worldview, and he must either use self or God as the orientation point for that worldview.
Another way to put this is to say that a baby has to decide how it's going to relate to the God who confronts him, even in the cradle. I know it seems strange to think this way, but we accept the fact that beings without the power of language or reason form fundamental relationships all the time. Think of a puppy or a kitten.
The puppy wags its tail as it licks the face of anyone who shows it attention. The kitten purrs as you stroke its fur. These little creatures have no words and no reason, yet they orient themselves to people in these ways.
As the puppy or kitten can relate to humans, so baby humans can relate to God. God is simply there, and they must orient themselves to Him one way or another. They will either trust Him or try to shut Him out.
The Bible tells us that, "The wicked go astray from the womb. They are wayward as soon as they are born, speaking lies" (Psalm 58:3). On the other hand, a man from a covenant family may say, "I have relied on you from the womb. You are he who took me out of my mother's womb. I will always praise you" (Psalm 71:6).
These verses provide additional evidence from Scripture that children make their fundamental orientation toward God even from the womb.
The best word I can think of for this kind of fundamental orientation is "attitude". Your attitude is how you relate to someone [or some thing] in the inmost part of your being. You can relate to someone with an attitude of kindness or contempt, trust or suspicion.
Your attitude, then, refers to the way that you, in the inner man, relate to another. This manner of relating is so basic, that it can exist apart from language or reason. That is why I call attitudes "fundamental" orientations. And when it comes to saving faith, the indispensable dimension is attitude.
The word "faith", as used in the Bible, actually has three dimensions. One is the cognitive or intellectual dimension. This aspect of faith affirms certain facts as true (e.g., I believe that Jesus rose from the dead).
Another facet of faith is behavioral, for the word translated "faith" in the New Testament can also mean "faithfulness". I think this is what James was getting at in his epistle when he said that works makes faith perfect. This is the outward visible part of your faith that testifies to the reality and presence of the inward aspects.
Finally, there is the dispositional or relational dimension of faith. It is an attitude of trust. Preachers appeal to this when they say that it's not enough to believe THAT the bridge can hold you, but you must commit your weight by stepping out onto the bridge (a behavioral response that confirms an inner attitude).
The word that best describes this innermost dimension of faith is "trust". That is the word used in Psalm 22:9, quoted at the beginning of this lesson. And that is the dimension of faith that determines the difference between saved and lost.
Now I would like to apply all this to your your baby. I am writing this to Christian parents of very young children. Your infant child right now is either a believer or an unbeliever. What, ultimately, makes the difference? I can answer in one word: GRACE!
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God . . . (Eph. 2:8, WEB).
Faith -- particularly, faith as an attitude – is a work of God's grace in the human heart. That is the same no matter what the age or mental development of a person is. Faith is a work wrought in the human spirit by the grace of God alone.
Do you remember how in a previous lesson I mentioned that all children come with an inborn bias against God (Original Sin)? Well, apart from His grace you relate to God according to that bias. Grace is the free gift of God that gives you the ability to relate to Him in a better way than your bias dictates.
At the end of yesterday's lesson, I challenged you to begin praying about your child's spiritual state. Not what he may do at some date in the dim future, but about the spiritual issues he's dealing with right now. From today's lesson you can see that you may pray specifically for God's grace to intervene with the gift of faith RIGHT NOW.
You do not need to wait five, eight or twelve years to pray that your child come to Christ. The Holy Spirit is with the child, confronting him even from the womb. John the Baptist, while still in Elizabeth's womb, recognized the presence of Jesus and leaped for joy (Luke 1:43-44). That demonstrates a fundamental orientation of trust in God.
Moreover, even if your child does not become a believer from infancy, you have many reassurances from the Word of God that your child will receive that special grace to believe -- if you, as a parent fulfill the covenantal conditions for the promises God has made.
The good news is that the key to claiming God's covenantal promises regarding children lies in something we have been discussing throughout this lesson, namely faith. Only here, it's your own faith that makes the difference.
In the next lesson, I want to present to you the Biblically warranted parental faith that will lay hold of God's trans-generational covenantal promise.
But you brought me out of the womb.
You made me trust at my mother's breasts.
I was thrown on you from my mother's womb.
You are my God since my mother bore me (Psalm 22:9-10, WEB).
The people of Old Covenant Israel sang the Psalms, including the one above, as a normal part of their worship. This inspired song led them to believe that they each enjoyed a personal, faith-based relationship with God from the beginning. In this lesson, I want to answer the questions:
- How such a thing can be?
- Can this be true for Christian families today?
Let me begin by saying that I know that Psalm 22 is a Messianic Psalm, so first and foremost, it's about Jesus. On the other hand, it also has an historical application, and ancient Israelites sang it in the first person. Therefore Jesus is not the only one who can claim He trusted God at His mother's breasts.
Before I ask you to examine this issue of faith, however, I want to remind you of the main point of the last lesson. The infant in the cradle has to grapple with a deep spiritual reality. He must begin to put together the rudiments of his worldview, and he must either use self or God as the orientation point for that worldview.
Another way to put this is to say that a baby has to decide how it's going to relate to the God who confronts him, even in the cradle. I know it seems strange to think this way, but we accept the fact that beings without the power of language or reason form fundamental relationships all the time. Think of a puppy or a kitten.
The puppy wags its tail as it licks the face of anyone who shows it attention. The kitten purrs as you stroke its fur. These little creatures have no words and no reason, yet they orient themselves to people in these ways.
As the puppy or kitten can relate to humans, so baby humans can relate to God. God is simply there, and they must orient themselves to Him one way or another. They will either trust Him or try to shut Him out.
The Bible tells us that, "The wicked go astray from the womb. They are wayward as soon as they are born, speaking lies" (Psalm 58:3). On the other hand, a man from a covenant family may say, "I have relied on you from the womb. You are he who took me out of my mother's womb. I will always praise you" (Psalm 71:6).
These verses provide additional evidence from Scripture that children make their fundamental orientation toward God even from the womb.
The best word I can think of for this kind of fundamental orientation is "attitude". Your attitude is how you relate to someone [or some thing] in the inmost part of your being. You can relate to someone with an attitude of kindness or contempt, trust or suspicion.
Your attitude, then, refers to the way that you, in the inner man, relate to another. This manner of relating is so basic, that it can exist apart from language or reason. That is why I call attitudes "fundamental" orientations. And when it comes to saving faith, the indispensable dimension is attitude.
The word "faith", as used in the Bible, actually has three dimensions. One is the cognitive or intellectual dimension. This aspect of faith affirms certain facts as true (e.g., I believe that Jesus rose from the dead).
Another facet of faith is behavioral, for the word translated "faith" in the New Testament can also mean "faithfulness". I think this is what James was getting at in his epistle when he said that works makes faith perfect. This is the outward visible part of your faith that testifies to the reality and presence of the inward aspects.
Finally, there is the dispositional or relational dimension of faith. It is an attitude of trust. Preachers appeal to this when they say that it's not enough to believe THAT the bridge can hold you, but you must commit your weight by stepping out onto the bridge (a behavioral response that confirms an inner attitude).
The word that best describes this innermost dimension of faith is "trust". That is the word used in Psalm 22:9, quoted at the beginning of this lesson. And that is the dimension of faith that determines the difference between saved and lost.
Now I would like to apply all this to your your baby. I am writing this to Christian parents of very young children. Your infant child right now is either a believer or an unbeliever. What, ultimately, makes the difference? I can answer in one word: GRACE!
For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God . . . (Eph. 2:8, WEB).
Faith -- particularly, faith as an attitude – is a work of God's grace in the human heart. That is the same no matter what the age or mental development of a person is. Faith is a work wrought in the human spirit by the grace of God alone.
Do you remember how in a previous lesson I mentioned that all children come with an inborn bias against God (Original Sin)? Well, apart from His grace you relate to God according to that bias. Grace is the free gift of God that gives you the ability to relate to Him in a better way than your bias dictates.
At the end of yesterday's lesson, I challenged you to begin praying about your child's spiritual state. Not what he may do at some date in the dim future, but about the spiritual issues he's dealing with right now. From today's lesson you can see that you may pray specifically for God's grace to intervene with the gift of faith RIGHT NOW.
You do not need to wait five, eight or twelve years to pray that your child come to Christ. The Holy Spirit is with the child, confronting him even from the womb. John the Baptist, while still in Elizabeth's womb, recognized the presence of Jesus and leaped for joy (Luke 1:43-44). That demonstrates a fundamental orientation of trust in God.
Moreover, even if your child does not become a believer from infancy, you have many reassurances from the Word of God that your child will receive that special grace to believe -- if you, as a parent fulfill the covenantal conditions for the promises God has made.
The good news is that the key to claiming God's covenantal promises regarding children lies in something we have been discussing throughout this lesson, namely faith. Only here, it's your own faith that makes the difference.
In the next lesson, I want to present to you the Biblically warranted parental faith that will lay hold of God's trans-generational covenantal promise.
No comments:
Post a Comment