Bruce Collins, Evangelist

The personal website of Bruce Collins

Meditation for the week of February 3, 2008

Matthew 18:3 And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

The story is told of a man who wanted to teach his young child to be a businessman. He sat the child on a short stool and asked him to jump into his arms. The child jumped and the father caught him. So the father stood him on a chair and told him to jump. The father caught him again. Once the child was getting comfortable with the game and had developed trust in his father, the father put him on the top of a step ladder and told him to jump. When the child jumped the father let him fall. He told him, “That will teach you to never trust anyone.” He assumed he was teaching his child self-reliance by teaching him that no one including his father could be depended upon. This is the message that many of us get from the time we are young. That is why we need to be “converted” and become like little children are in their innocence in order to trust the Lord.

We need to be simple when we read the Word of God and we need to be simple when we teach the Word of God. Because of the educated opinions of men, no one feels qualified to say “God says!” anymore. We do not approach the Scriptures and their promises in the way a child would. When we read the Scriptures and find what seems to be an obvious truth, there will always be an educated person somewhere with a popular book someplace that will disagree with what it appears that God has said. I have always felt that the Bible was written to the common person with enough sense to know that we can’t understand God but we can believe Him. We don’t need to explain away what God has said, we need to believe what God has said. Our eternal destiny depends on being like an innocent child and just taking God at His Word. The Lord Himself says in John 5:24, “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in Him who sent Me has everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but has passed from death into life.”

While the whole Bible is written for us, the New Testament epistles were written directly to us and we need to be child-like as we read them. Just because they were addressed to specific churches or to specific men does not limit their truth to those churches or those men. Good teaching from the whole Bible will be consistent with the message of the epistles and should leave us thinking that we should have seen the truth we are being taught on our own. We should walk away saying, “Why haven’t I seen that before?” Unfortunately, much of our teaching today leaves us walking away saying, “Wow, that must be good because I would never have seen that on my own.” But if we are to be converted and become like little children, our approach to the Scriptures must be, “If the plain sense makes sense, we should seek no other sense.” Abraham “believed God and it was counted to him for righteousness (Romans 4:3).” He obviously didn’t understand how God was going to do what He had promised. But he believed God. May we be like a little child and do the same.

Bruce Collins

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