3 Things Your Children Can Teach You About Faith Right Now

“Guess what?”

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times as I’ve walked through the door in our home. One of our children has learned something, discovered something, experienced something – and they need to share it with me. They need to educate me on what new thing has entered into their understanding. In a sense, they need to switch places with me – for them to be the teacher and me to be the student.

But our children have other things to teach us, too. Not necessarily with their words, but with their lives. Jesus, after all, told us that “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” (Mark 13:15). Our kids have some things to teach us about faith.

Here are three examples of what that might be:

1. Simplicity

As we get older, our faith tends to get more complicated. Perhaps that’s because we have seen too much of the world, been hurt by too many people, or have been burdened with too many concerns.

Whatever the reason, we have the tendency to look at the teaching of the Bible as somewhat naive, always finding an exception as to why things are not as simple as the Bible seems to make them out to be sometimes.

We can learn from our kids in this. For kids, things are blissfully simple, or at least they are for a while. You could argue, of course, that this is because kids live insulated lives, which they do. But you could also say that as Christians, we live in eternally insulated lives. That no matter what else happens, it doesn’t change the simple fact that Jesus loves me, this I know – for the Bible tells me so. This is the kind of simplicity of faith we can learn from our children.