Growing in Christlikeness - Leaders' Talks

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Today be encouraged with a word from my guest speaker.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

You know, if I did a survey right now, an impromptu survey, and asked you, what are the characteristics or some of the attributes of a great leader?

I'm sure words like brave and courageous would come to mind.

Maybe decisive, encouraging, humble, visionary.

How about servant?

You know, servant is mentioned in the Bible, or leader is mentioned in the King James Bible six times.

Servant is mentioned 900 times in the King James Version.

So maybe a servant, that would be a good one.

But if I um had to say all those characteristics and traits, the one I want to talk about this morning is none of those things.

So if you would, would you turn with me to uh Isaiah chapter 11?

Isaiah 11 · chapter mention

When you get there, raise your hand.

When the more majority of people raise their hands, I'll go on.

In the meantime, I'm going to whistle the theme song for Jeopardy.

I'm even a worse whistler, you know.

Chapter 11, verse 1, we're going to start there.

These passages are talking about the reign of Jesse's offspring.

So let's start.

Verse 1, there shall come forth a rod of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

Verse 2, the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

Verse 3.

His delight is in the fear of the Lord, and he shall not judge by the sight of his eyes, nor decide by the hearing of his ears.

Verse 4, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.

He shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked.

Verse 5 Righteousness shall be the belt of his loins, and faithfulness the belt of his waist.

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.

Let me say that last sentence.

But here it says, a little child shall lead them.

Now turn with me, if you would, to Matthew 18.

Matthew chapter 18, verse 3.

Matthew 18:3

And he said, Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted, become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

And I'll repeat that.

And he said, Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted, become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

I read that over and over and over again.

And one word really popped out, and that word was become.

So I looked it up in the dictionary.

A lot of dictionaries.

One version defined it as something you can grow into.

And I thought, boy, that's interesting.

Another version, it was the Cambridge English Dictionary.

It defines it as something that causes someone to look attractive.

As in, boy, that really becomes you.

So, ladies, I gotta tell you, you don't need more makeup.

You just need to become more childlike, to become more attractive.

And guys, let me be the first to tell you, you don't need makeup at all.

You know?

And so become more attractive.

So childlikeness is it's saying here, it's something we can become, something we can grow into and not out of as we grow older.

So many leaders are not children, but so many leaders display characteristics of childlikeness.

So today I want to talk about five attributes of childlikeness.

And the first one is kids smile and laugh a lot.

I recently read an article in Parenting Magazine that said that adults on average smile or laugh 12 to 15 times a day.

But kids, kids smile or laugh three to four hundred times a day.

I like to say smiling is contagious.

Try it and see.

So look at your neighbor, look at a couple people and see if they smile back at you.

You know, I like to say that smiling has the same effect on people that sunlight has on an unbudded rose.

It may allow a struggling life to blossom once again.

It reminds me of a story I was at the mall with my kids.

They're Christmas shopping.

I've got four kids, two boys, two girls.

Let me just preface all this with saying, I hate shopping at the mall.

If it's me, and I think a lot of guys are that, and I go to the mall, man.

I get in, I get out, I see a couple shades of blue at Power Shop, and I get out of there, right?

But with kids, it's different.

So my youngest two girls were teenagers, but they were pre-driver's licensed aged daughters.

So I had to take them to the mall, and I knew I had to stay there, and I wanted to honor them.

And so, but what's nice about the malls, usually at either end of the mall, you have these nice, comfortable chairs to sit in.

I think they put them there for guys like me.

And so the year before, they told me, Dad, you got one job, guard the packages.

And so let me tell you, these these chairs are they're comfortable, you know.

And the next thing I knew, I was snoring away, you know.

And someone said something heard a noise, and I woke up and I stood up and I stretched, forgot about the packages, and walked all the way to the other end of the mall.

Found another chair, and you know, that chair was just as comfortable.

So before I knew how long I was snoring away, and my kids found me.

They found that I wasn't at the one end, they came to the other end, found me, and they said, Dad, where are the packages?

I said, Packages?

And they said, Dad, you had one job, you know.

So we went to the lost and found, and thank God someone turned in the packages.

So this year they said, Dad, you got two jobs.

Guard the packages and don't fall asleep.

Yes, ma'am, you know.

So I thought, well, I'm gonna do something different.

I gotta do something to occupy the time.

So I'm just gonna smile at people to see what kind of effect it had.

And so I didn't want to do any old ordinary smile.

I wanted to give one of those cat that ate the canary kind of grins, you know, cheesy smiles.

So I did that.

Everybody walked by.

People would look at me, some would gaggle, some would look at me like, gee, he's weird, you know, which is kind of par for the course for a guy like me.

I'm kind of used to that.

I learned a long time ago the loudest boos come from the cheapest seats.

So I learned not to let it affect me.

So I'm smiling at people.

This was all day Saturday.

We went after church on Sunday, been there a couple hours, and this guy comes up to me and says, You were here yesterday.

I said, That's right.

And I said, So were you?

He said, Huh?

I said, I remember you.

You had a blue jean jacket on and a ball cap.

So that's right.

So let me tell you about my day yesterday.

I went into work and they fired me.

Two days later, as I got home, I noticed a dear John letter on the counter, and my wife had left with my little boy, and I was devastated.

When you saw me, I was walking through the mall to go to the other end of the mall to the sporting goods store to buy some ammo for my gun to end it all.

But you smiled at me.

Something happened, something changed.

And for the first time in probably years, I had a little glimmer of hope.

And I had to come back today just to see if there's any small chance that you might be here again, and you are.

So I said, sit down for the next hour and a half.

I told him about the love of God.

I told him how he was the apple of God's eye.

If God had a refrigerator, his picture would be on it.

How God had a glorious plan for his life, his life was full of hope, and he had a glorious future.

And he's just weeping the whole time and he he gave his life to the Lord.

And you think that's amazing.

But you know, all I did was smile.

I don't think sometimes we have any idea the impact we have on people.

I give the illustration sometimes that if you throw a rock into a pond in the natural realm, because everything in the natural realm is patterned after something in the spiritual realm, you throw a rock into a pond in the natural realm, a splash occurs.

And there's ripples, and they get smaller and smaller as they grow away from the point of origin.

In the kingdom of God, it's a little bit different.

When we make a splash, maybe with our smile, maybe with our gee, you look great today, maybe with our you have a great smile.

When we make a splash in the kingdom of God, ripples occur.

The ripples don't get smaller and smaller, they get bigger and bigger.

Those ripples become waves, those waves become tsunamis, mountain ranges can't stop them, oceans can't stop them.

That little loving act of kindness that you did may have an eternal effect.

Bob Goff is one of my favorite authors.

He um he's got three New York Times best-selling books, Love Does, Everyone Always, and Dream Big, and I encourage you to read his books.

I love the way he writes, because it's the way I write when I write, but I love the way he writes.

He said the aroma of every selfless act of loving kindness we do rises like the smell of freshly baked bread all the way up to heaven's open windows.

We may never know what kind of effect it has.

So kids smile and they laugh a lot.

Proverbs 17, 22 says, A merry heart doth good like medicine.

A merry heart or laughter does good like medicine.

So number one, kids smile and laugh a lot.

Number two, children are naturally curious.

What's the most common question a three-year-old will ask?

Why?

You tell me the answer, what do they say?

Why?

Tell them the answer again.

Why?

They sound like a broken record.

How many of you have young children?

Number of you raise their hands.

Ever travel with them?

You pull out the driveway three blocks later.

Are we there yet?

Are we there yet?

You know, are we there yet?

And so uh they're very naturally curious.

They ask questions, but why captures purpose?

Large companies have figured this out many, many years ago.

Most big companies have a purpose, vision, and mission statement for their company.

Those three statements help answer three questions why, what, and how.

The purpose statement answers the question, why are we in business?

The vision statement helps answer the question, what do we want to accomplish?

And the mission statement helps answer the question, how are we gonna do it?

Why, what, and how.

But kids naturally ask questions.

You know, leaders see the same problems that everyone else does.

The difference is leaders are curious enough, just like kids, to explore all the solutions and they see the answers.

I think that curiosity is at the very core of all creativity and innovation.

Leaders are curious, so are children.

Number three.

Children are persistent and they forgive quickly.

I think one of the toughest jobs in the world has got to be a vacuum cleaner salesman, right?

I mean, how many times do they get rejected and the door slammed in their face?

If you can't handle rejection, that's probably not the job for you.

I tell people if at first you don't succeed, skydiving's probably not your sport, right?

How about a timeshare salesman?

How many times do they get rejected?

People go on those things just to get the free room for the night or whatever, but they get rejected over and over again.

I think a vacuum cleaner salesman and a timeshare salesman, they need to have the persistency of a three-year-old asking their mom for a cookie.

Mom, can I have a cookie?

No.

Mom, can I have a cookie?

No.

Mom, can I have a cookie?

We're about to eat, Junior.

Mom, can I have a cookie?

Junior, what pirate?

No, don't you understand?

Two minutes later, mom, can I have a cookie?

I mean, they're undaunted by failure.

Real leaders are undaunted by failure, too.

You know, Einstein once said, if you always do what you've always done, you always get what you always got.

He also said in the next breath, problems can't be solved by the same level of thinking that created them.

You need to do things different.

Edison, they say he found a thousand ways not to create a light bulb.

He didn't think any one of those ways that he was unsuccessful, that he didn't think any of those were failure.

He says that failure only comes when you stop trying.

In fact, FAIL is an acronym.

It stands for first attempt in learning.

Just keep going, just keep going.

Some guys I can think of that were persistent, they failed or were unsuccessful a lot, but they kept going.

People like Abraham Lincoln, 1831, he started the business and it failed, it went bankrupt.

1832, he ran for state legislature and he lost.

1833 started another business.

It went bankrupt.

1834, he was engaged to be married.

His fiance died.

He kept going, kept plugging away.

1838, he ran for Speaker of the House and he lost.

1843 ran for Congress and he lost.

1854, he ran for Senate and he lost.

1858, he ran for Senate again and he lost.

But 1860, in 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected as 16th president of the United States.

Here's a guy that's undaunted by failure.

Kids are like that.

It's such a childlike quality.

How about Milton Hershey?

Any of you, raise your hand if you've been to the town of Hershey.

Did you know that there is no town called Hershey?

That's not the name of the town.

The name of the town is Derry Township, but everyone refers to it as Hershey because just everyone does.

Probably because Milton Hershey was there and everything.

But if you've never been to the town of Hershey or Dairy Township, I lived about five miles from there, so I can say these things.

And I and I worked in there in the town.

Their street lights are Hershey's kisses.

It's pretty cool.

And you can smell chocolate.

You can have meeting, you got all your car, you smell chocolate from the chocolate factory.

You can take tours of the factory, go to a thing called Chocolate World.

It's pretty good.

And they have Hershey Park there, all the rides.

It's great.

I ran a restaurant real close to there, and we it was our busiest restaurant.

But uh Milton Hershey, 1871 and 14 years old.

He got fired from his first job.

Four years later, he studied under a guy how to make candy, and so he gathered some money.

He borrowed uh money from the three F's, family, friends, and fools.

And he and uh and he went bankrupt.

Four years later, he moved to Chicago, did another internship with a guy, and he opened up a candy shop and it went bankrupt.

1883 he moved to New York.

He opened up a company called Hershey's Fine Candies, and it was going good, but the price of sugar skyrocketed, and he lost his business, had to sell all his equipment.

About four years later, he moved to Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, and he opened up Lancaster Caramel Company, and it actually did really well.

And he sold it and he started Hershey Chocolate Factory, and the rest is history.

There's a guy that was undaunted by failure.

You look at guys like Colonel Sanders in Kentucky Fried Chicken, that man, he went bankrupt so many times.

Do you know who put Colonel Sanders on the map?

Dave Thomas from Wendy's.

He was Colonel Sanders' right-hand man.

He's the one that sold all the franchises for him.

In his 60s, Colonel Sanders finally became successful.

I think about it in the Bible.

How about someone like Job?

Everything was stripped away from him.

His family, his possessions.

He had nothing.

His friends were mocking him.

His wife said, Curse God.

But it says in Job 14, 14, in the second half of the verse, he looked up to heaven, he said, All the days of my appointed time, I'll wait until my change comes.

And shortly after that, God restored everything doublefold to him.

Guys that were persistent.

Leaders persevere.

They're like a Timex watch.

They keep a keep a take a licking and keep on ticking.

Reminds me of a story.

I grew up in a small town and my grandpa had a farm there, so we all worked on the farm, dairy farm.

In fact, my grandpa, I tell the story, my grandpa had 16 kids, his brother 14, another brother 12, another brother 10.

So there were 88 in my graduating class.

I was related to 52 of them.

It's the only town in America where the family trees do not fork, you know.

You divorce your wife, she's still your sister, you know.

I tell people, I walked my kids to school because we were in the same grade, you know.

Small town.

We stare at our orange juice because it said concentrate, you know.

So but I took my boys, you know, I lived in town there, took my boys to the farm.

I wanted them to see what my life was growing up.

And there was a calf being born in the barn, and and my uncle needed a hand, so I we got in there, our hands in there, and got them dirty and pulled the calf out.

Sometimes you pull a calf out and they're not breathing right away.

If you lived on a farm, you'll know these things.

But you hold them upside down by their back feet, that blood rushes to their heads, or you shake them, and um, and then they start coughing and they come to life.

So, you know, this happened, and my one of my kids said, Dad, what time is it?

And I looked, my watch was gone.

I wonder where it could be.

So I went back in there, it was inside that cow.

So I reached in there and finally grabbed that watch, you know, and it took a licking, it took it, it kept on ticking.

It was a time X.

Children forgive quickly.

You know, you could put 23-year-olds in a room that have never met each other.

You can put them in a room and they're best friends within minutes.

You know, one kid might push another kid down, and he one kid cries, the first kid says, I'm sorry.

The other kid jumps up, hugs him, and says, That's okay, we're best friends, you know.

And so they they they love each other, you know, they forgive quickly.

Doesn't matter what color their skin or nationality are, they bond quickly.

Racism, I think, is a is a learned trait.

It's a picture they'll put up of two little boys, black and white, they were in the same classroom.

They wanted to get the same haircut, so their teacher couldn't tell them apart, you know.

Isn't that cute?

You know, racism is a learned trait.

You know, when I was seventh grade, that's when busing was a big thing, and there was three or four schools in Jacksonville, Florida.

I lived there, and they put all the seventh graders in the whole city in like four schools.

And it was called Douglas Anderson Seventh Grade Center.

My two best friends were Mike Escara, I still remember it.

He was Filipino, and Brian Keith Smith.

He was a black guy.

They let us work at our own pace, and we went through seventh grade, eighth grade, ninth grade, all in seventh grade, because we we were so motivated, we were such buddies, you know.

But racism is a learned trait.

I still wake up every morning, you know, like a like a five-year-old on Christmas morning, you know, full of wonder and awe.

So, number four, the next one is children are full of wonder and awe and hope and expectancy.

It reminds me of the Christmas of 1986.

I was living in Williston, North Dakota.

I was working for a franchise of Hardy's.

I was their new store opening coordinator.

Had like eight states, but I was stuck in Williston.

I usually made it home every year to my mom's house, small hometown, northern Minnesota.

All my brothers, their wives, and kids.

This year.

It looked like I wasn't going to make it home.

So I called my mom.

She was crying.

Two days before Christmas, I found out I could make it home.

But I wanted to surprise everyone.

My hometown is so small, we don't even have a stoplight, just a four-way stop sign.

Every day it's snowing there in the winter, and I'm out there at the stop sign.

My mom's house is five doors down.

And I look, I look over, and there's a UPS truck.

And I look and it's a guy driving it that I went to high school with.

So I honked my horn and waved and rolled down my window.

We got caught up.

His name was Poof.

I said, Poof.

You got any boxes on there?

He said, Yeah.

I said, big ones?

I said, Yeah.

Empty ones?

Yeah.

I said, Poof, put me in one.

So he put me in a box.

Put my mom's address on there.

And he put it on there, opened immediately.

So he wheeled me up to my mom's door.

He said, Marion, I got a package here.

You just need to sign here.

And she says, You know, Poof, I've been so forgetful lately, I don't remember ordering anything this big.

I wonder what it could be.

This is such a great surprise.

And all the grandkids, Grandpa, what could it be?

Just the look on their faces.

And uh, and then one of the grandkids said, Grandma says, Open immediately.

So she opened it up and I jumped out.

My mom peed her pants.

I tell everyone that was here I mailed myself home for Christmas.

Isn't that a great story?

You know, the first few hundred people I prayed for when I got saved for healing, nothing happened.

I led about 400 people to the Lord in the first year because I had to tell everyone.

I was so on fire.

But, you know, the first few hundred people, no one got healed.

And I said, God, that's not a good track record.

I mean, you're gonna ruin my street rep.

And God said, Well, it's not your job to heal people, it's my job.

It's your job just to pray for people and believe.

And I said, Well, I can do that.

So years went by and I thought, well, I want to change things up.

So I I started praying this prayer I'm about to say for about six months every single day.

I said, Lord, open my eyes so I can see the prisms of your presence.

I want to see what you see when you're looking at people.

Open my ears and touch my ears so I can hear the frequencies of heaven.

Because I want to hear what you hear when you're dealing with people.

Touch my heart, Lord, so I can love people unconditionally like you love people.

Touch my hands so I can reach people like you reach people.

Six months I prayed this.

After six months, some things started changing.

I'd walk into rooms and I would smell heaven.

So, what do you mean?

I'd walk into rooms, I'd smell beautiful bouquets of flowers, and there was no flowers there in the natural realm.

Or I'd smell frankincense and myrrh or these aromatic spices, but they weren't there.

And then I started hearing things.

I started hearing heaven.

We'd be in church and I'd hear angels singing in when we did worship.

It was such a pristine and clear, perfect sound.

The best word to describe it is it sounded angelic.

Yeah?

Angels.

I'd hear them take off flying behind me.

Sound like a partridge or a pheasant.

I hear this.

I look behind me, get outside, and they weren't there.

But another thing that started happening, well, first of all, I asked God, why is all this happening?

He said, Well, number one, you prayed for it.

Number two, he said, Al, when you start getting close to the glory realm of heaven, it just naturally seeps into the natural realm.

So, what do you mean?

When you go to the beach, you start to see the signs of the beach way before you get there.

So, like what?

Well, you go to the ocean, you can smell the salt in the air from the ocean way before you get there.

He said, You can see the gulls and the turns flying overhead.

You can see surfboards on cars.

I'll give you the thumbs up, thumbs down, for surfs up or surfs down.

I used to surf, and so he says, when you get close to the glory realm of heaven, it just starts seeping into the natural realm.

And the other thing I noticed that started happening is when I started praying for people, I started seeing people get healed.

I remember there was a seven or eight-year-old girl.

Her left leg was five inches longer than her right leg.

She had a platform shoe, really exaggerated platform shoe on her right foot.

And I took her shoes off and held her feet by her heels and prayed for her and watched as God grew her leg out, even to the other one.

And I'm I'm just giddy, I'm beside myself.

I've seen it on video.

I saw it one other time where someone else did it, but never when I prayed.

And I'm just giddy.

And I noticed she wasn't giddy, but what she was full of was wonder and awe.

I'll never forget the look on our face.

And God spoke something very clearly to me.

He says, You know, Al, for the most part, adults have lost the ability to be awestruck.

He says, But I'm gonna send you out to the world to demonstrate to adults what being childlike is like, and he's done that for decades, you know.

I was at Rosie's Diner one time.

They call me the breakfast pastor.

So I know where every breakfast special is in the city, believe me.

So uh, and some mornings I have three breakfast meetings, so I'm eating breakfast at all three of them, you know.

I sometimes feel like a hobbit getting my third breakfast in.

It's amazing.

I take off my shoes.

Sometimes I think they're gonna be furry like a hobbit, you know.

So I'm eating breakfast at Rosie's Diner, and they have songs from the 60s, you know, playing in the 50s.

And one song came up, and I'm gonna sing it to you, and I you have to promise me you're not gonna run out the door when I start singing, okay?

Because I got a voice that makes old ladies run for blocks.

The song was called Kinda Hush, and it's by Herman's Hermits.

If you're over 55, you've heard of it.

But it goes, There's a kind of hush all over the world tonight.

All over the world you can hear the sound of lovers in love.

You know what I mean?

And it says, Ah, now listen very carefully, closer now, and you will see what I mean.

It isn't a dream.

The only sound that you will hear is when I whisper in your ear I love you.

Forever and ever.

There's a kind of hush all over the world tonight.

All over the world you can hear this sound of lovers in love.

So I'm listening to that.

When the chorus came up, God said, Listen to those words.

He said, Ow, the words awe and awesome are used so often they've lost their significance.

But I'm gonna return the holy hush back to the body of Christ.

That wondrous, holy awe.

And they knew exactly what he meant.

When I first moved to Pennsylvania, I moved to Cheyenne, Wyoming, to Pennsylvania.

Belonged to a church called Word Fellowship.

Later became Life Center, and it's like the Bethel or the IHOP of the East Coast.

Sean Foyt was our worship leader, one of our worship leaders, you know, later on.

But this church to begin with was pastored by this guy that had an apostolic calling on our life.

We sent out 17 teams and started 17 new churches in about a two-year period.

We'd get to a point where we'd grow, go to a couple services, and we'd send out another team.

But I remember two weeks in a row, we had two services, two weeks in a row.

There was no worship, there was no announcements, there was no sermon, no one said a word.

The reason for it was the manifest presence of God came down, touched down on the church, and all you could do was sit there and soak and saturate and be in awe of God.

You'd want to praise him, you'd want to declare back to him the value of his worth, but our words couldn't even take flight because they were weighted down by the dew of his presence.

So people, most of the people were on their faces weeping.

The service would end, people would leave reverently.

Before the other people would come in, before they even hit the door, they sensed the presence of God.

The next service was the same way, two weeks in a row.

God says he's going to return that holy hush back to the body of Christ.

Have you ever been in your car and you're listening to a worship song?

And it's so good, you can't get out of your car, you can't move, you can't do anything.

There's times like that.

I give an illustration that you might be sitting on the front porch with your favorite friend or spouse or girlfriend, boyfriend, and you're rocking there, and you're so comfortable with each other, rocking back and forth, that you don't even have to say a word.

And you walk away thinking, that was the best conversation I ever had.

I think God does that with us.

When he touches down, his manifest presence shows up, and we can't even do anything.

There's been times in my apartment, my house, when I had a house, that God would show up and I'm just laying there weeping.

I can't do anything.

All I can do is sit there and be loved.

God's going to return that to the body of Christ.

So four things so far.

They smile and they laugh a lot, they're curious, they're persistent.

Number four, they're full of wonder, awe, hope, and expectancy.

Number five, children are full of faith and trust.

Leonard Ravenhill was a fiery evangelist from England.

He moved to the United States.

He said one time, someone's gonna come along someday, pick up the Bible and read it, believe it, and do it, and we're all gonna look stupid.

That was me.

I walked into church first time when I was 19 years old, and I got saved that night.

Got down my knees, and it was asked Jesus in my heart, and I felt fresh and pure like the fresh falling snow.

It was amazing.

I had to tell everyone I knew, so I walked into a bar that it I barked in on the side.

It was already packed for the day.

This was the next day, and invited everyone over to my house for a Bible study, and they thought I found a new drug, you know.

And I did.

His name was J-E-S-U-S.

And I thought, you know, I should probably find a church.

And there was one on my block I didn't know it was there because it wasn't on my radar, but now it was.

I drove by this building, I saw a little cross.

I didn't know anything about denominations or that there even were denominations.

It said assembly of God.

I didn't know what that meant.

I went in and said to the receptionist, I'd like to speak to the manager.

She said, You mean the pastor?

I said, How are you calling?

I didn't know.

So she got up, she's gonna show me to his office, and I just barged in.

He's on the phone.

I said, I want to do the stuff.

I read it in his book.

He said, The stuff.

I want to raise the dead, my hands on the sick, and see demons cast out.

He said, Did you just get saved?

I said, last night.

He was still on the phone.

He said, Bob, I need to call you back.

I got a live one here.

I was full of wonder and hope and expectancy back then, still in.

Little kids are full of trust.

My kids grew up in church, and I remember they'd play on the stage after the service.

My back was to the stage, and I remember several times my kids would say, Catch me, daddy! And I turned just to see this flying bundle come through the air.

Thank God I turned quick enough.

But there was no hesitancy.

They had full trust that I'd catch them.

That's the way we should be with God.

He's so tired of weekend visitation with his kids.

He wants to have full custody again.

So these are all attributes and characteristics of childlikeness that we can grow up into.

There's more.

They embrace vulnerability, they forgive without bitterness or resentment.

They have a short memory when it comes to pain.

All those are great qualities that we can grow up into.

Thank you for listening to the Forn for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steveholdonline.org.

God bless.