The Spirituality of Children

Submitted by Jennifer Power

When I was a little girl, I believed the world contained great wonders beyond what my eyes could see. Even when life was hard, and perhaps especially when life was hard, I clung to this belief. I don’t actually remember much about when this belief was pure and untainted, but I remember the time when this faith began to weaken.

I remember many Christmases staying up late into the night listening for Santa Claus, clinging to the hope that he was real. I had already begun to doubt, so I listened in the hope of my doubts being dissolved. There were even times I was sure I heard bells. I wanted so badly to believe.

Perhaps the doubts began when I learned about world hunger. I remember sitting in a multi-purpose room at a church watching a video about missionaries and their work. I remember seeing the faces of starving children and being deeply moved by compassion. I remember wondering how Santa Claus could be real if there were hungry children in the world. Surely, if there was a man who could bring all the children in the world toys (and in America at least, it seemed these toys were often quite expensive), he could surely bring a basic supply of food to the world’s hungry, and wouldn’t that be a better use of such a magical ability?

I continued to try to believe. I still wanted to believe, but what I was learning about how the world worked did not line up with what I desperately hoped to be true. The belief continued to erode until one day I encountered proof of what I feared. With a new sadness, I went about my day without speaking about the incident. The day my belief in magical holiday creatures died was a day unnoted by anyone except myself.

Sometimes, we make the mistake of thinking children cannot have faith or a relationship with God before they are old enough to learn and process the important facts about Him. We think faith is based on information and on acknowledging the truth of these facts. We forget (or maybe never learned) that life in Christ is a sharing in His life – in knowing Him in a personal, intimate manner. In many ways, faith which knows Christ is more like a baby knowing its mother than about a head acknowledgement of facts. As a baby grows and becomes a child, then a teenager, then an adult, the child learns facts about his mother, but these facts do not replace the foundation of their relationship and do not become more important than the relationship itself. A newborn baby does not even realize she is a separate entity from her mother. She is perhaps closer to her mother at that time than she will ever be again.*

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“And they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”” Matthew 21:16

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If this is true of a baby and its mother, is it possible this is also true of a baby and its Maker? Is it not possible that a baby has an intimate relationship with God which is unmatched by this same relationship with adults who “understand how the world works?” I firmly believe children (even very young children) can connect with God in powerful ways. Sometimes we make the mistake of thinking the important years for faith development are the teenage or adult years. Because teenagers and adults can process complex information more easily than children, and because we often equate information with faith, we have perhaps under-emphasized the spirituality and faith development of young children.

Just like my belief in magical beings came easily as a young child and was eroded as I became educated about the world, for too many children today, this is true of their faith in God as well. Children have a natural ability to connect with and trust in God, but if we are not intentional in the ways we help our children develop spiritually, they will likely lose this ability as they learn the truth about the world they see with their eyes and touch with their hands. As we see the pain of the world and experience the reality that life is not always safe – that there is not always a perfect solution just around the corner – our ability to trust easily in our loving Father can fade.

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“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” Matthew 18:3

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This is natural, but it does not have to be like this – not quite. For reasons I may never know, God held on to me when reality began collapsing my hope in something more wonderful than I could see. For many years, throughout my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, I did not believe much good would come my way. Even the very promises of God which I read about daily in my Bible, I believed deep in my soul were for others – they were not promises for me. For me, I received the pity of God. Someday, He would save me from eternal punishment, but until then this future hope was all I had. There were times I tried to believe there was more for me, but a deep-seeded belief that I was not worth more stood in the way as a barrier to a moment-by-moment walking with God. I was often blessed with moments of closeness with Him – especially in my teenage years, but even then I continued to believe I was not good enough for more and never would be.

Despite these barriers, God had placed this gift of faith so deeply within my being that I never gave up the fight and eventually things did began to change. Today, the reality of who Christ is to me is so much greater than the magic I longed for as a child, but the journey from disillusionment to a child-like knowing of Christ has been long and difficult – beautiful, to be sure, but hard. Even today, the knowledge of God’s presence with me does not come easily and is quickly forgotten at so many points in each day. I will never give up, and I know God’s grace and goodness to me will continue. He has claimed me as His, and I have given up my right to live as a free person in order to be a servant of God.

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“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” Galatians 2:20

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Nevertheless, I wonder if it could have been different for me if I had not misplaced my hope – putting it in something false rather than in the One who has been with me always. He has been with me from the first moment of my existence and will continue with me always. Even when the world falls apart around me, even if I lose everything on this earth I hold dear to me, He will never leave me and will never let me down. He loves me with a fierceness which rivals none. He invites me each moment to lay my cares at His feet and live life with Him – to exchange my life for His and to become fully alive in Him.

What if I had begun to grasp these marvels in my early years? What if, during my early childhood when my ability to sense His presence and believe in His goodness was most natural, I had recognized His presence and begun to build my worldview around the truths of His goodness? What if I did not have to train myself to remember His presence in every moment because I had been trained as a child when learning was easiest and faith simple?

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“And they were bringing children to him that he might touch them, and the disciples rebuked them. But when Jesus saw it, he was indignant and said to them, ‘Let the children come to me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a child shall not enter it.’ And he took them in his arms and blessed them, laying his hands on them.” Mark 10:13-16

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I have no regrets, and there is little place in life for “what ifs.” God has brought me faithfully back to where I have always been meant to be – with Him. With Him not just in acknowledgment of facts but in a rich closeness which brings me to life. I have learned so much along the way and do not regret the journey, but this does not mean I do not want better for my children – to have them walk so closely with Him, to be so desperately in love with Him and assured of His love for them that trust in God becomes second nature – I long for this God-given dream for my children.

Sometimes, I have believed I could only be close to God because of the difficulties He has walked me through. I was not sure anyone could be genuinely close to God without walking through some valleys with Him. In the last two years, however, I have begun to wonder if there is not another way – the way of a childhood so richly steeped in God that walking close with Him throughout life becomes most natural. As I have spent the last nine months learning what it means to practice the presence of God and walk with Him in every moment, I have considered how to teach these concepts to our kids. I have reminded our girls often of God’s presence, encouraged our oldest to talk with God throughout her day since He is with her, have at various times encouraged her to picture God as a person playing alongside her, and have prayed for my children much that they would learn what it means to walk closely with God and have His loved deeply rooted in their hearts. We talk about stories in the Bible and about how to show God’s love to the people around us. My husband and I are working on this together, and though we have a long way to go, I am confident God walks this journey with us. I found great encouragement in the Scripture from Isaiah 40 I shared last week about how God gently leads those who have children.

So today parents, I encourage you to not wait another day to be intentional about the way you are helping your children develop spiritually. Whether you are already being intentional in this regard, are just starting out, or have not yet given this much consideration, know this: you matter in your children’s faith development, and the younger they are, the better chance we have of helping them connect their early experience with God with what they are learning about the world. And no matter how old your children are today, they are younger today than they will be tomorrow.

So consider this question: What can you do today to be intentional about the faith development of your children?

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“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6

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Last week, I encouraged us all to give ourselves grace in our parenting as God gives grace to us. I do not mean today to put the pressure back on. Cutting ourselves some slack and giving up perfectionist parenting does not mean we do not take steps towards improvement, but rather that we do so with God, believing He can and will equip and strengthen us and leaving the outcomes to Him. It means we do not beat ourselves up when we fail but that we recognize our status as forgiven children of God empowered by His Spirit by His grace to do what we otherwise could not do. It means we move as He moves us and not allow exterior or interior pressure to break us down and leave us broken and empty. We allow God to fill us and to move us. It means we walk closely with Him, clinging to Him with every fiber of our beings and trusting Him at every turn.

Blessings to you all on your parenting journey.

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*I first heard the analogy of our walk with Christ being like that of how a baby knows its mother from a podcast by Peter Rollins then later learned more about the spirituality of children in the book Children’s Ministry in the Way of Jesus.

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