Why Having the Posture of a Child Is So Important
The Purpose of Our Pleading: We Are Helpless
Many of us know what it’s like to feel defeated in our Bible reading before we even start. The desire just isn’t there (or it isn’t very strong). So we trudge down the stairs in the morning, grab a cup of coffee, and intend to sit down and read . . . only to find the vibration on our phones too intriguing, or the quickly-accumulating mental list too pressing, or the needs and noise of our little kids too distracting.
We know what it’s like to prefer other things, and then to choose those things.
And most days, it’s not a fight. It’s an easy choice.
These common scenarios expose the deeper problem within our hearts: We are helpless to want what we ought to want and love what we ought to love. By nature, our hearts are twisted by sin, deceived into thinking that other things are more satisfying than God (Rom. 1:21–22). As Piper says, “It is not an inability that keeps you from doing what you want. It is an inability to want what you don’t want.” (Read that again.)
My husband and I enjoy watching the show Alone, where skilled survivalists are dropped in remote parts of the world and attempt to outlast the others. Those who trap, hunt, and catch the most food tend to survive the longest, but they all reach the point of starvation. And starvation changes the appetite. Interestingly enough, rather than wanting normal food and eating patterns, their intense hunger ends up completely changing what their bodies want.
What they need most, they don’t desire.
Similarly, we are dependent on the Redeemer of our hearts to change our very desires, to give us the ability to want what we ought to want and to love what he loves. We are helpless to produce this change on our own. Day by day, we need him to alter our appetite.
But please don’t hear me say that our helplessness excuses us from holiness.
Far from it.
Remember that only God can produce hunger within us for his words, but we can put ourselves in the blessed position to receive from him. We can let our helplessness propel us into a posture of desperate need before the Holy Spirit, as we choose to open our Bibles and proceed in total and complete reliance on him.
Our helplessness humbles us.
The Posture of Our Pleading: We Are Humbled
Let’s keep going with the illustration of children. Peter tells us to be like newborn infants, putting ourselves in a position to receive, and Jesus says something similar by telling us to become like little kids: “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matt. 18:3).
What are children like?
They can do very little for themselves. Most of the time, they know their limits and call upon those more capable than them for help. They make no pretenses, wearing their emotions on their sleeves. And they return to their parents again and again (and again), asking for what they want and need.
“I need milk, Mommy!”
In Jeremy Pierre’s lovely words,
Children don’t try to be important to Jesus. And that’s exactly why he welcomes them. To be near to God you cannot bring anything to impress him or to make you special in his eyes. You are not special to God because of your obedience to him. You are special to God because of his heart toward you. The Lord loves to show mercy to those who know they need it. And children are very good at knowing their need. (Jeremy Pierre, God With Us, 190.)
The question for us is, are we very good at knowing our need as we engage with God’s word? Do we recognize our helplessness, that even our very desires need to be changed by the Spirit’s transforming grace? Or do we approach Scripture pridefully, thinking we’ve “got this,” attempting to impress God, others, and even ourselves by our obedience? Are we fairly certain we can get what we’re seeking through enough well-concerted effort?
For too many years, this was the way I approached Scripture because I didn’t understand my neediness. I thought that by opening my Bible I was seeking something good and right to do, rather than primarily seeking Someone to love.
The reality is, unless we humble ourselves like little children before the Lord’s word, admitting our helplessness to love what God loves and see what he sees in its pages, we will struggle to love, and we will struggle to see. The Bible will become a means to our own ends—self-righteousness (John 5:44), for example—rather than a means of grace into satisfied hunger in God—true righteousness (Matt. 5:6).
But humility is the pathway to satisfied hunger, for it confesses its inability to find satisfaction anywhere else but in God. And our merciful God promises to answer the cry of the humble, helpless heart: “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word” (Is. 66:2).
Jesus, Our Great High (and Humble) Priest
I wonder:
When you read that verse, does it make you think of anyone in particular?
Only one perfectly humble heart has ever walked this earth. If the Word-made-flesh had not come to us, we would not be able to come to God. But he did. And only one perfectly humble heart is able to bring you to God as you plead with him, even right now.
As finite humans, I think we all wonder at times if our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. But Jesus is the answer to our wondering. He is the reason our pleading prayers before God are absolutely heard, for he has become the way for us to draw near to our Father again (John 6:37; Heb. 10:20). He is our great high and humble priest. The question is:
Do we actually trust that Jesus is this eager to help us?
Do we dare believe he wants to make his joy—closeness with the Father—our joy too?
Plead for a holy hunger, friend, because Jesus has made this available to you.
So as you confess your inability to want what you ought to want, imagine your great high priest saying, “I know that temptation. And I fought it and overcame it so you can too” (see Matt. 4:1–11). As you open his word in obedience and faith, even when you don’t feel like it, remember how his perfect, righteous record of joyfully obeying and believing God’s word is now yours (see Rom. 3:23–25). And as you wonder with a jaded spirit if more hunger is possible, see the Son sitting in his glory, risen from the dead, and conquering all the brokenness and sin that affects your heart (see Heb. 12:1–3).
See him, and love him, and plead with God through him.
Content taken from Help for the Hungry Soul: Eight Encouragements to Grow Your Appetite for God’s Word by Kristen Wetherell, ©2023. Used by permission of Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.
Kristen Wetherell is a wife, mother, writer, and speaker. She is the author of several books, including Help for the Hungry Soul, and coauthor of the award-winning book Hope When It Hurts. Kristen is a member of the Orchard and lives in Chicagoland with her husband and three children. You can find more of her writing on her website kristenwetherell.com.