Embracing the Inner Child

“As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him:” (Col 2:6 AV)

 

I cannot help but be reminded of Jesus’ teaching as He placed a little one on His knee.  That little one became an object lesson in how one must come to Christ.  He must come in humility, honesty, dependency, and faith.  Any element of pride or self-sufficiency would disqualify the seeker from salvation in Christ.  We can get too grown-up for our own good.  We can become sophisticated to the point we become self-dependent and self-governing.  We can articulate the mysteries of the kingdom of God, yet when it comes to humbly walking with our God, this becomes a struggle.  We form prayers to impress a crowd or ‘explain’ things to God.  We read the word of God as a textbook rather than the very voice of God.  We become complicated in our theology and thinking and much too often, bring God down to our level.  In our worship, we actually believe we can conjure up the Holy Spirit and bring Him down to us that we might have a ‘spiritual experience’ which, of course, it is not.  We have ceased to walk with Christ as we received Him.

When professionals look at older people acting a bit more immaturely than is socially acceptable, they say he is getting in touch with his inner child.  When wives watch their husbands do things as they did twenty years ago, they say he is getting in touch with his inner child.  Most of the time, it is something they used to do with ease and are trying to do so again with the same vim and vigor.  They may play some touch football or plan to hike up a mountain.  They are just getting in touch with their inner child.  This phrase is often meant as a judgment, of sorts.  Not necessarily condemnation, but judgment.  It only becomes condemnation if the person in question is unsuccessful.  When it comes to walking in Christ, getting in touch with our inner child is not a bad thing.  This is exactly to what Paul is referring.  Paul is encouraging the Colossians to go backward, in a sense, to the condition of their spirit when they accepted Christ.  Remember the inner child who cried out for mercy when convicted of their sin.  Remember the inner child who was condemned with no hope in this life or the next.  Then cried out for mercy.  Remember the inner child who simply took God at His word and placed all faith and trust in the record of Christ’s offering.

I see this quite frequently with older saints.  They have spent several decades getting their theological houses in order and all of a sudden, find the practical things of their walk have gone neglected.  They have studied and learned about God in an academic sense, then came to realize the God they thought they knew well the barely knew at all.  This changes one’s walk with God.  No longer are we concerned with understanding God.  We simply want to know Him.  We are knocked to our knees by one trial after another and in the process, relearn the basics of the Christian faith.  We learn humility, dependency, faith, and gratitude.  We learn, once again, there is simplicity in Christ.  We learn the second, third, or fourth time God has not changed.  Jesus is still Jesus and the Jesus of today is the one we met decades ago in a state of hopelessness and fear.  To ‘get in touch with our inner child’ is nothing more than to be reminded no matter how much we have learned or think we know, we are still so far from who God is that we have barely grown at all.  Paul is talking to a very educated and sophisticated church in Colossae.  They have brains to spare.  Because they are very smart, they have forgotten how to walk as children.  It is time to get back to that inner child and walk with Christ as we once did.