Have Faith Like Little Children

My eight-year-old daughter attended Vacation Bible School at CGBC last week, five days in all. She relished the time there, had fun playing and learning. Kids are impressionable and teachable. But here’s something I didn’t expect she would pick up:

“Hey, would you believe it, God just answered my prayer!” Charissa reported out of the blue, sounding rather excited. We were on the road from Ipoh to Klang. I was driving, Mei Wan was seated next to me with our little girl at the back.

“What is it?” I asked, wondering what led to such proclamation.

“He took away the pain in my head,” Charissa answered.

“You had a headache?”

“Yes, when I woke up from sleep just now, but it’s now gone. I asked God to take it away and He did what I asked!”

We were more than pleased. Even though we had taught her about God’s healing before, I reckoned the last few days of VBS must have reinforced something to that effect. So I probed, “Did they teach you on healing at the VBS?”

“Yeah, teacher showed us a video of a pastor praying for people. He prayed for a kid blind in the left eye and then he could see!”

Teaching kids on healing at VBS! I never expected this. The church has done a good job.

But after journeying a further half hour, Charissa said, “Aiya, I think the headache has come back.”

“You can pray again,” said Mei Wan.

So Charissa blurted out, “O God please take away my pain... heal me please, I don’t want to have this pain. Please, please quickly do that...I don’t want it... please, please take it away!”

She went on and on, begging God. Not looking like in much pain, she nevertheless sounded earnest appealing to God. But as she continued pleading I decided to correct her. “You don’t have to ask God like that, as if begging Him do something He is not keen doing. No need to talk to God, talk to the pain, ask it to go away. By His stripe you are healed.”

“Just talk to the pain?” she asked.

“Yes, God has given you the authority,” I answered.

“Ok, ok daddy. Pain, you go away. Go far, far away from me....Don’t come near me anymore. I don’t want you, you go to other people....Stay there, don’t come back....Go to other people, don’t come to me....”

Hearing this, I looked at my wife and we both started laughing.

“Why must you send the pain to other people? You can command the pain to go away, it need not go to other people. Okay, send it to hell.”

She stopped for a moment, staring at both of us who couldn’t stop laughing. Then, in a matter-of-fact manner she commanded, “Go to hell you pain, I don’t want you. Stay there and don’t ever come back!”

I tried to stop laughing but couldn’t contain myself.  Charissa must have been healed amidst our laughter.

No wonder Jesus said those who come to him must be like little children. They had the capacity to simply believe. Our heavenly Father would be very pleased if we would believe Him simply like our children believe us. That would bring Him great joy.

On the other hand, as parents we are in the best position to instil in our children the right belief. They learn not only from what we taught them, but also what they see what they hear and what they observe from us.

Coming back to our trip. The next day we went shopping at KLCC for Christmas presents. We spent almost the whole day there, so at the car park auto-pay machine I already anticipated a hefty sum. After I slotted in the ticket, the machine read “RM33.00”. More used to the RM2.00 that we pay at Kinta City Ipoh, Mei Wan exclaimed, “Wow, so expensive!”

Immediately the little fellow chipped in, “All because of Najib! Everything is so expensive because of him. He is to be blamed.”

My wife and I burst out laughing.