Have You Lost the Wonder? — Vance Havner

Becoming Like Little Children in the Kingdom

At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, and said, Verily I say unto you, except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, as saying, Is greatest in the kingdom of heaven, and whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receive it me. But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea.

Gypsy Smith and the Freshness of Ministry

Gypsy Smith, the great evangelist, died in true gypsy tradition on a journey in his eighty-seventh year. He was called to preach as a lad, sang and preached the gospel around the world. He was simple and original and colorful.

He used to say, I was born in a field, don't put me in a flowerpot. He was not a theologian. He would have agreed with Sam Jones, who said that he liked flowers but not botany and religion but not theology.

Or Billy Sunday, who used to say that he didn't know any more about theology than a jackrabbit did about ping-pong. Well, I don't see why a man can't like religion and theology both, but that was gypsy for you.

Somebody told him he ought to take music lessons, ought to learn how to sing from his diaphragm. He said he didn't want to sing from his diaphragm, he wanted to sing from his heart. I suppose you can do both, but that was the gypsy for you.

When he started out as a lad to preach, he didn't have much education. He said some of the Bible words were too big for him. He said the way he worked it was he'd read until he saw one of those big words coming, and then he'd stop right on this side and make a few remarks, and then start reading on the other side of that reading.

But anyway, the Lord mightily used him. The publishers of my books, Fleming Revelle, of course, in years past published the gypsy's books, and Mr. Barber, the president of the company, told me once, they asked the gypsy, what is the secret of the freshness of your ministry way into the eighties?

And he said, I have never lost the wonder. I heard him in Stony Brook, New York, just before he died, and he hadn't lost the wonder. A preacher ought to have the mind of a scholar, and the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros, and the problem is how to tiffen your hide without hardening your heart.

The Childlike Wonder of Faith

Smith had the heart of a child, he never lost the wonder. And this, I think, is one thing our Lord meant in Matthew 18 .3, except he'd be converted and become as little children. Children have not lost the wonder, they've not been here long enough to get used to it.

They still have a sense of surprise, anything can happen, everything's new. At four you have all the questions, and at eighteen you have all the answers. With a child, every turn of the road may hold some glad discovery, and the commonest hum-drum day is glorified by the glamour of imagination.

Everything with a child, one-fourth facts and three-fourths fancy, and that makes for interesting living. But all too soon, and sooner now than ever, they lose the wonder. Saturday Evening Post recently carried an article on what happened to the magic of childhood.

It's high time somebody asked it, because youngsters become cynical now, fed up, sophisticated, old men and women, before they're out of their teens. We're in the TV age, we've seen everything, heard everything.

I wonder what it would take to surprise anybody anymore. I preached in Indiana some time ago, in the Mennonite country, wonderful people. I saw a motto, we are too soon old and too late smart. How true that is.

We get smart too soon, we lose the wonder. Well the young people are not entirely to blame. We oldsters don't have much time to wonder anymore, to meditate and reflect. Teddy Roosevelt went to South America on a hunting trip when he should never have tackled such a thing.

He was approaching 60, and it practically killed him. Never got over the fevers of it. But he said, it's my last chance to be a boy. And people who knew Theodore Roosevelt always remembered that there was the perennial boy in him.

Recovering Stillness and Meditation

Well today, we get over not only childhood, but the spirit of it all too soon. In my boyhood, we didn't go around asking, what can I do, what can I do? Of course, father always thought to it that there was something to do.

But we had time to do nothing, sometimes. And we often found that the times when we did nothing were as important as the times when we did something. There was time to be still, to walk in the woods, to sit before an open fire, to meditate.

I don't think anybody ever thought of anything worth thinking about, looking at a steam radiator. There's something about an open fire. But you remember that the Bible says that Isaac meditated. Now, if Isaac took off across the fields today meditating, people would say, poor Isaac.

I was afraid he was coming to that, but Isaac meditated. Today, everything's organized, supervised, planned, programmed, and correlated. You don't just walk. Now, it has to be an organized hike. I'm a birdwatcher, like our brother was talking about here last night.

I'm guilty, but nowadays, you're not just an ordinary birdwatcher. You have to join the club and keep records and all that sort of thing, which I never do. But you lose the wonder of it in the work of it.

And this gets into Christian experience and what was meant to be a life of faith or working by love becomes highly organized religious activity. And the Thessalonian work of faith and labor of love and patience of hope just becomes the Ephesians' work and labor and patience, period.

Because we lose the wonder. Now, in the light of the text, there are three kinds of people. Children, verse 2, Jesus took a little child and set him in the midst of them. I've never heard a sermon from this text.

Children, the Childish, and the Childlike

The silence is pretty profound. I think some Christians would be more comfortable if the Lord had used a business tycoon or a scholar or a popular hero for his mother. But here's one who puts a child in the midst and upsets our pet standards because it's very disconcerting to us adults who like to act as if wisdom would die with us.

Then, not only the children, but the childish, Matthew 11, 16, but where unto shall I liken this generation? It is likened to children sitting in the market and calling unto their fellows and saying, We have piped unto you, and you have not danced.

We have mourned unto you, and you have not lamented. But John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say he had the devil. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a man gluttonous and a wine-bebber, a friend of publicans and sinners, but wisdom is justified of our children.

What a description of this generation. John the Baptist came fasting, and Jesus came feasting, and they called John a demoniac and Jesus a glutton. And nothing suited them. They were like spoiled children who've had too many toys.

We still have them in the churches. They've been pitted and pampered, and no kind of preaching pleases them. If the wrath of God is preached, the minister's too severe. If the love of God is proclaimed, he's too sentimental.

If he speaks in a low tone of voice, he's dull. If he speaks in a loud voice, he's deafening. If he stands still, he's a statue. If he moves around, he's a sensationalist. That used to bother me a lot until I learned how to identify these children of the marketplace.

They play, they pipe, they play wedding, they mourn, they play funeral, and it looks real, but it's all make-believe. And we play church just like that. I was invited to Tremont Temple in Boston some time ago for an evangelistic conference, and the pastor said, Oh, we're so worried about playing church.

Well, I'd heard that many times before, but what a common thing it is today to play at it, and our Lord told us to play acting. Hypocrisy. Spiritual babies who won't grow up. Milk feeders who ought to be on meat.

Carnal Christians, not newborn babies desiring the sincere milk of the Word, but overgrown babies who have become such as have need of milk and not of meat. 150 and 200 pound church babies who keep the pastor busy running around with a milk model when they ought to have been on meat a long time ago.

And then when they call a new pastor, they say, I don't like him, he changed my formula. A headache and a heartache to any pastor pouting and selfish to whom John the Baptist would be only a demoniac and Jesus a gluttony.

Spiritual Maturity and Childlikeness

But in the third place, children, childish, childlike. A revival, beloved, is when church members quit being childish and become childlike. You can call it anything else you want to, but that's it. Here are the keys to the kingdom.

Conversion and childlikeness. Just that. We're not to be children tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lie and wait to deceive, but speaking the truth in love, grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ.

When we were children, we spoke and understood and thought as children, but we ought to grow up. We're not to remain babes in Christ, but grow in grace. But in order to be a childlike Christian, there isn't so much to learn as there is to unlearn, because this secret has been kept from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes.

A childlike Christian has not lost the sense of wonder. There ought to be about every child of God an expectancy, a sense of surprise, believing that God not only can but will work a miracle. We don't look for miracles.

We don't see many. We pray for rain, and we don't take our umbrellas. I've just been out in North Phoenix Baptist Church in Phoenix, Arizona. Dr. Hall told me about a drought they had out there, and a Christian governor some years ago called them to pray.

And they were to meet at a certain church. And the governor came, and there'd been a drought, and there wasn't a cloud in the sky, and he brought his umbrella and overshoes and raincoat. And they had a rain.

He looked for something to happen. This is my Father's world. Anything can happen. Happiest fellow in this world is a young Christian before he's met too many Bible scholars. Just some time ago out in Kansas City at the simultaneous meetings, I had the privilege for two weeks of talking to the pastors and the evangelists, and we had a fine bunch of Australian Baptist preachers there.

Oh, what a glorious two weeks. It's their breakfast each morning. And one of these fine young preachers said, Brother Hebner, I'm beginning to think that when Paul said to Timothy, Let no man despise thy youth, there's another application.

Returning to First Love and Spiritual Zeal

It intrigued me. We can despise our own youth. We can reach that sad state when we look down with scorn on our earlier years, when we started out all aglow with our first love. But the spiritual honeymoon has become grim reality, and it has smothered our zeal.

You remember you loved the Lord, and you loved the Bible, and you didn't know any better than to want to tell everybody. You were like a country boy come to town, and you were a spiritual yokel maybe, but the sedate soul's resting in Zion may have resented your zeal.

Then you grew up, and you became educated and established and experienced, and now you look with condescension and even distaste on these blash young Christians like you were once. And you say to the young zealot, Oh yes, I used to expect miracles, but I got over it, and you will too.

And I see these faces in preachers' meetings sometimes, in evangelistic conferences, and the glow is gone. And they look irritated when some young Timothy comes along who reminds them of better days. But say one thing.

I was with Dr. Paul James, Grove Avenue in Richmond for a conference, and there was an old boy there who joined church on Sunday, a brand new Christian. He came every night to the meeting. He didn't know any better.

The deacons didn't come, some of them. He was there every time. And I found myself, as I looked over the crowd and couldn't find some of the church stalwarts and saw this old boy brand new, I found myself praying, Lord, don't let him catch on.

Don't let him see these absent deacons. I was out in Riverside, California at First Church, and an old boy out there grew up in my home community in Catawba County, a veteran of the First World War. He'd been a bad boy, but his mother kept praying, and God saved him.

He lived out there on the edge of town. He brought his family every night. He was a working man, and it was a hard thing to get them there on time. They had a bench full of folks there every night up here.

One night he came up to me after the service, and we hadn't had some folks there who should have been there. He said, Vance, there's just one question I want to ask you. Where are these folks who've been Christians a long time?

What would you say? I swallowed and cleared my throat a couple of times and looked at him. What would you say? I didn't want to say you'll get old. I didn't want to say they used to come too, but they despise their youth now.

Nothing does me more good than a brand new Christian. One old boy down in Louisiana some time ago got such a double dose of it when he was saved that his parents thought he was crazy and sent him to a psychiatrist.

And the psychiatrist said, well, let's see, where were you born? Well, he said he'd been born twice. Which time are you talking about? The psychiatrist cleared his throat and said, your father's name, please.

We said I've got a heavenly father and an earthly father. We couldn't tell him. The psychiatrist said, where is your home? He said, I've got a heavenly home and an earthly home. Which one are you talking about?

You know, they said before that was over, they had to send the psychiatrist to a psychiatrist. I like that sort of thing.

I like that. I've got a brother down here.

The Cost of Recovering Spiritual Freshness

But let me tell you, brother, if you have lost that glow that you once had, and I believe some of you, bless God, have regained it this week, but if you've lost it, there's a price to pay, and it's going to humble your pride and shatter your complacency.

But it's worth all it costs to have your youth renewed as the eagles. Senator Boyle used to say there are two steps in any movement, the apostolic and the mechanistic. And when a preacher gets over into the mechanistic stage out of the apostolic, woe unto him, grace doesn't appear as precious as it did the hour he first believed.

It's like those iron fountains A .J. Gordon used to tell about out in courtyards with the water gushing out their mouths, but they never tasted. They pray prayers that have no taste, preach sermons that have no taste.

The soul has lost its savor, and it's good for nothing but to be trodden underfoot, insipid, flat, tasteless. There ought to be something about our Christianity to smack the lips over. There ought to be a taste and a zest and a relish.

I've seen more cheerful faces on iodine bottles than I've seen on some sand over America. Where is the blessedness I knew when first I left the church at Ephesus? The trouble wasn't false doctrine. It wasn't worldliness.

They weren't playing bingo in the basement. They were still sound in doctrine. But you can believe the truth and stand for the truth, and yet in the very activities of the truth, you can get over being gripped by the truth, so that you traffic in unfelt truth.

You can work in the bakery till you lose your taste for the bread. And it was old Baxter who said, Many a tailor goes in rags that make of costly clothes for others, and many a cook scarcely licks his fingers when he hath dressed for others the most costly dishes.

Oh, what a besetting ailment that is. The soul loses its taste. I used to think that leaving your first love meant that you were a confirmed backslider and that you'd quit praying and reading your Bible and going to church.

Oh, no. You can be in the middle of church work, teaching a Sunday school class, backsliding with a Bible under your arm. Leaving your first love. Ashorn Samson. Binding, blinding, and grinding. That was Samson.

Bound, blinded, grinding. Saying, I'll shake myself. I'll go through the old calisthenics. But the power's gone. Samson in a treadmill. And you get into the place where it's a battle of wits and a bustle of works.

And if you've lost the wonder, you might as well stop the work. Nothing under the sun can be as dry and flat and tedious and exhausting as religious work without the wonder. No wonder people dread going to church.

Some people. No wonder they're bored with the sermon. No wonder the Sunday school lesson puts them to sleep. We grow weary in well-doing. Singing in the choir becomes a chore. Church visiting becomes drudgery.

We sing, I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus, and wonder how he could love me. But this generation wants to sit amused, entertained instead of edified. Some years ago, on a train crossing the continent, everybody was unhappy.

Seeing the World Again Through Grace

It was before hair conditioning, and it was a steady coach. Everybody was miserable. One man over by a window, and he was having the time of his life. Every once in a while, he'd look out at the passing scene and say, Wonderful.

Wonderful. Finally, somebody could take it no longer. He went over and said, My friend, the rest of us are perfectly wretched, and you're having the time of your life. Could you tell us why you keep saying wonderful?

He said, I was a blind man until a few weeks ago, and then a great doctor restored my sight. And what is perfectly commonplace to him is out of this world for me. My friend, if the great physician has opened your eyes, if you've been to the pool of Siloam and have come back to see him, if you've had a touch and no longer see men as trees walking, if all that's happened to you, why shouldn't you make your way through this poor world singing wonderful, wonderful Jesus is to me?

Prince of Peace, Counselor, Mighty God is He, saving me and keeping me from all sin and shame. He's my Redeemer. Praise His name. A wonderful Savior is Jesus, my Lord. Wonderful, wonderful Jesus in the heart He implanted a son.

Beginning Again in Conversion and Childlikeness

Back to conversion and childlikeness for all of us. Campbell Morgan says, begin again as though you'd never known Him. And with all the simplicity of a little child, call it what you want, first love, joy of salvation, victorious life, revival, the secret of a glowing, glowing Christian experience is to be able to say with Gypsy Smith, I've never lost the wonder.

A few summers ago I was in a Bible conference where Billy Graham came up on Sunday morning, sat in the pulpit while I tried to preach about this. And after it was over, he leaned over to me and said, that was for me.

And as we walked out for lunch, he said, I get the team together once in a while and tell them if we ever get over this, we're sunk. Organization, all the rest of us, won't mean a thing in the world if we, as you put it, lose the wonder.

Then I went up to Minneapolis to the headquarters and they sang what our soror was singing a while ago. I'm so glad he sang. And Billy said to me, somebody told me the other day, he said that every preacher ought to be converted again at 40.

And he was around 40 then. And he said, I've been thinking it over. And I'm sure we do. A couple of summers ago I preached at Old Corinth Church near Hickory where I grew up. And then I slipped back to the little house where I'd grown up.

Still stands there, you can sit on the front porch at night and see the lights at five little towns and the mountains on the west. Everybody else had gone to bed and I sat alone on the front porch and rocked in the old rocking chair.

Rocked as I had as a little boy. I'd been listening to a lot of experts and soaking up a lot of information and reading a lot of new books about relevance and dialogue and communication and neo this and that.

And I just had to get the taste out of my mouth. And I sat there and I felt like praying, turn backward, turn backward, oh time in life, make me a child again. Just for that. I wanted to forget all that earth.

I wanted to sing as best I could with such a cracked voice. I love thee because thou hast first loved me. And purchased my pardon on Calvary's tree. I love thee for wearing the thorns on thy brow. Forever I love thee.

My Jesus is now with me. I wanted to go back to Sunday school and sing Jesus loves me. This I know for the Bible tells me so. I needed conversion and childlikeness because I'd been preaching my head off and running all over the country and nobody needs it more than a preacher like that.

And beloved, if you still, and I don't see how you could get this far this week without coming to it, but if you haven't, yes.

It is a M-U-S-T,.

Conversion and childlikeness for all who may know the word and do the work, but who have lost the wonder. God bless you.