So if you’ve kept up with my Instagram story at all in the past 24 hours, you already know that the fish I had since the beginning of summer died yesterday morning. I was actually pretty bummed because he was so cool and I may have accidentally killed it (but we don’t have to talk about that). So I went later in the day to get a new one at Walmart and I saw the two cutest fish ever and got them both, a black guppy and a white guppy. A few hours later, I came back into my room and the black one was dead and I got super sad because I literally just got him, so I figured I’d just keep the white one but when I woke up this morning, he was also dead 😦 so I went to Walmart, got a refund, and got a new Betta at PetSmart. I brought him home, cleaned the tank, put him in it and without thinking, I genuinely prayed to the Lord that this one would live (he’s super cool and I don’t want to have to flush 4 fish within a 2 day time span haha).

So I went to chapel later in the day and during it, I started thinking about the fish (don’t laugh, I have ADD haha) and just prayed once again that this one would live. At the time, this didn’t seem like an odd thing to pray for because I was genuinely concerned about my new fish and the Lord stopped me and said “Nadia, this is the child-like faith I called you to have.” Okay but whoa. To pray for a fish that, in reality, the Lord doesn’t even care about… That is a childlike faith—that we trust Him in the small things just as much as we trust Him in the big—no less, no more. To have a child-like faith is to have big faith.

The beautiful thing is that the Lord cares so much about things that are significant to us, even if they can’t get any more insignificant to Him. He cares so deeply about us that He chooses to care deeply about the things that are important to us—even a pet fish.

Someone once said “God seeks a childlike submissiveness and meekness, a gleeful childlike heart… and a childlike faith.” When you tell a child they can be a superhero, they believe with all their heart that they can be a superhero. When the Lord tells us we can tell the enemy to flee and he will flee, let’s believe that when we tell the enemy to flee, he will flee. When God tells us to do something, let’s do it without a second thought. Without a “what if.” A single act of simple obedience can change the world.

Children are so full of trust and humbleness which is something that the Lord desires for us in our adulthood. To trust Him so much with a measly fish—He delights so much in that. That is the type of faith He wants us to have all the time; despite what our circumstance may look like. Simple trust.

The more time a child spends with its parent, the more they’ll mimic them in the things they do and say and they’ll slowly begin to take on their qualities—this is the same with us and God; the more time we spend with Him, the more we become like Him.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 18:3 “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you change and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”

A child is innocent.
A child is trusting.
A child believes without complication.
A child has not had time to allow the preconceived notions of the world to form his decision-making process.
A child receives with joy, forgetting herself with light-hearted abandonment.
A child is humble.
A child is content in the little things.
A child has the faith to move mountains.
A child is awed by majestic splendor.
A child takes to heart God’s Word in all its simplicity.

Be these things.

Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours. / Mark 11:24