If you’ve ever visited a playground to watch the sheer delight of children at play you might have observed the reality that a child’s joy isn’t centered on striving. Childlike joy flows from being present to the moment and simply receiving what is being given: a push on a swing set, a turn down the slide, or a ride on the seesaw. Children play with little regard for control. They believe a loving guardian is nearby, watchful, and trustworthy based on a relational history of safety. Children are humbly dependent and live for the possibility of delight even when they can’t quite see it yet. They don’t stop taking risks even when the risks they’ve taken have seemingly betrayed them. They know there’s someone loving at the helm who has the grand view of life at heart, so they play on. Jesus invites us all to return to childlikeness:
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3-4
What Is Childlike Faith?
This is a hard teaching in a grown-up world. So returning to childlike faith usually involves a very personal undoing. In some ways, all of life is an undoing; an unknowing of all we thought we knew and an unlearning of all we thought we’d learned— a growing young of sorts. Hebrews 11:1-2 casts vision for what it means to live into this kind of heart posture as it relates to faith:
Faith is the confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the ancients were commended for.
Faith is assurance, the same kind of assurance a child has in the authority of a loving caregiver. Childlike faith is rooted in relational exchange with God and a heart willing to answer yes to the core question at the center of every relationship: Do you trust me? The answer to this question determines everything. And as is true between a child and a caregiver, nothing less than a relational history of safety can build this level of relational equity over time.
Challenges to Childlike Faith in Today’s World
At face value, this sounds beautiful, but dig a little deeper and you’ll discover complexity. We live in a world where our emotional availability to trust is marred by our experiences of trust abused, a world where Hebrews 11, childlike trust is often considered blind faith that is neither honorable nor responsible. In our age, so many have replaced a patient posture of listening for the voice of God in prayer with searching for divine direction amid the chaos of a booked and busy pace. Childlike faith swims against this current and flows from the simplicity of a deep reservoir of private intimacy with God.
Hebrews 11 reminds us that the fathers and mothers of our faith flourished not by human strategy or intellectualism but by the force of a faithful friendship with an almighty God. Their faith and the faith of others we will chronicle throughout this book have one important quality in common. Each of these people ultimately lived their lives as sojourners—sojourners who found their home in a vertically aligned life with God. They understood that this world was shifting sand and set their sights on a home “with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10).
Biblical Examples of Childlike Faith
- Moses’ failure led him to the backside of the desert, where his divine calling beckoned to him from a burning bush.
- Joseph spent years in prison under false accusations and traumatic displacement before God ushered him into the fullness of his childhood prophetic dream.
- Mary spent a lifetime living in the tension of Jesus’ destined death on the cross before she witnessed the glory of His resurrection and ascension.
What can we learn from this?
Returning to Childlike Faith Through Surrender
Typically the winds of God’s Spirit come to invite us into the fullness of faith only after we’ve come to the end of ourselves. By this point we no longer want the dream—we just want God Himself. By this point we understand the cost is too high, but we know there is no option other than surrender. Oftentimes our pain invites us straight into God’s presence and becomes a doorway to destiny. If we cooperate with the suffering, we will discover that there’s something new He is trying to usher us into. And in this place of unprecedented dependence, we usually stand on the precipice of it all.
But as long as our systems of control are working, we will continue to use them. It is the grace of God, on a soul level, to allow us to experience the failure of these systems. This is when we are best postured to return to childlike faith. Sometimes the ruptures and impossibilities in our stories guide us into a posture of readiness for the long journey of unlearning and relearning, for the transformational return into childlikeness.
And it’s worth noting that some of us bear stories in which we experienced this reality well before we were emotionally, physically, mentally, and spiritually prepared to navigate it.
Learning to Trust Like a Child Again
When my own undoing began at the age of thirteen, I had already begun believing the oppressive and paralyzing lie of my own unlikeliness, as a kid from an immigrant mission with over-sized pink glasses. Much like Moses, I was an underdog, plucked out of obscurity. But I felt an inner call to push back on the darkness in the world with the uniquely singular light God has given to all His children, even me. With my smoky, left-of-center alto voice, I prayed there would be a path available to me even if it was the long way. I prayed I would be given the chance to sing us all back home. This grand undoing would mark the beginning of learning how to trade all my plans for the possibility of being surprised by God, a divine invitation Moses was given in a similarly unforced way.
Adapted from Befriending God by Tanya Godsey. Copyright © 2025. Used by permission of NavPress. All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, a Division of Tyndale House Ministries.
