I preached this Sunday on the subject of becoming like a child.

Matthew 18:2-4 (New International Version)

He called a little child and had him stand among them. And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

I defined the characteristics of a child as: Innocence, love, joy, freedom, peace, living one day at a time, not worrying about bills or the future, resting in the security of God’s arms.

The picture above is of my daughter, who has the joy of being a child and could just dance on the train for the joy of being alive – a joy we often lose as we become adults.

I don’t have time to go into the whole message but at the end of the message, I talked about having a child like faith.

A child like faith doesn’t question, it just trusts, it might doubt but it still trusts, it doesn’t need to know why or when or how, it just trusts.

I shared the following email from a man who demonstrates a child-like faith over and over again.

That man is John Wiley (@kcdreamcenter) and he is in the process of setting up a Dream Center in Kansas City (the River of Refuge). His email speaks for itself:

Today started like any other day. A day to see what Jesus would do in my city. A day to sign a contract to buy a former hospital – a great building to help poor working families get out of pay by the week motels.

Today was the day to sign the contract for the purchase of the former 150,000 sq ft Park Lane Hospital. We needed $60,000 to fulfill our down payment oblation and get the utilities changed into our name.

Eight weeks ago we had no money for the contract. We have seen an outpouring of love and faith as $50,000 came in.
At 4:00 pm yesterday I blogged that we were $10,000 short and had less than 24 hours until the contract needed to be signed.

At 9:00 pm last night a Foursquare Pastor in Colorado gave $1,000.

At 10:30 am this morning two more checks were hand delivered to the River office for $500 each. This left us $8,000 short and a contract to be signed at 1:30 pm.

At 1:00 pm a reporter and a photographer from the Kansas City Star came to the office to witness the contract signing. I did not tell them we were short $8,000. We simply sat and visited.

At 1:10 pm I got a phone call that the Real Estate Agent was in route with the contract and he would be on site at 1:30 pm.

At 1:15 pm a lady who I did not know was coming interrupted my visit with the reporters. She asked if we still needed $8000 for the Hospital contract. I said, “Yes we do.” She quietly handed me an envelope with $5,500 in cash and then proceeded to write a check for $2,500!

The Reporters were quite taken back by this as I informed them that NOW we had enough money with 15 minutes to spare. As you can imagine this cause quite a stir especially as the Real Estate Agent walked in and was shown the cash and told the miraculous story behind it.

So… it’s done the contract is signed. Now we have 2 years to raise 1 million dollars to pay off the hospital and in the mean time hurting families in my city are going to be helped in Jesus’ name.

“…if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.” Isaiah 58:10

Would you have enough faith that with half an hour to go, you would have let the reporter the Real Estate agent to come over?

The faith involved in that just blows my mind.