The Wonder — Vance Havner

Becoming Like Little Children

I want to read from Matthew 18, just six verses. 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, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name, receiveth 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 depth of the sea.

The great evangelist Gypsy Smith died in true Gypsy tradition on a journey in his 87th year. He began to preach at 17, sang and preached the gospel around the world. He was simple and original and colorful.

He said I was born in a field, don't put me in a flower pot. He was not a theologian. He would have agreed with Sam Jones, who said he liked flowers, but not botany and religion, but not theology. He said he didn't know any more, or Billy Sunday said it, but Gypsy would have agreed with him.

He didn't know any more about theology than a jackrabbit did about ping-pong. But he could preach. They told him when he sang that he 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.

Well, you can do both, of course, but if I had to have either one, I believe I'd take the heart singing, forget about the diaphragm. The president of Fleming Revelle and my publishers, they used to publish the Gypsy's books.

He didn't write many, they just took down some of his sermons. But they asked the Gypsy one time, what is the secret of the freshness of your preaching well into the eighties? And he said, I have never lost the wonder.

Now a preacher ought to have the mind of a scholar, the heart of a child, and the hide of a rhinoceros. But the problem is how to toughen your hide without hardening your heart. Gypsy Smith had the heart of a child, never lost the wonder, and that's one thing our Lord meant in Matthew 18 .3, except you be converted and become as little children you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.

Children have not lost the wonder, they've not been here long enough to get used to it. There's still a sense of surprise, anything can happen, everything's new. At four they know all the questions, and at eighteen 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. Because with a child, everything's one-fourth fact and three-fourths fancy, and that makes interest in living.

The Loss of Wonder in a Cynical Age

But all too soon, and sooner now than ever, Lord help us, they lose the wonder. Saturday Evening Post had an article some years ago, What Happened to the Magic of Childhood? It's a great danger of losing it.

It's about time somebody asked that. Youngsters become cynical, fed up, sophisticated, old men and women, before they get into their teens sometime. They live in the TV age, they've seen everything, heard everything.

What would it take to surprise them? They're almost beyond it. We're too soon old and too late smart, the men and I'd say. Today we get too smart too soon, and we lose the wonder. Now the children are not entirely to blame.

The oldsters don't have time anymore to meditate and reflect about anything. We've lost the sense of surprise. Teddy Roosevelt went to South America and went through the jungle down there when he was nearly 60, and it almost killed him, he never got over it.

And they asked him why. He said, it's my last chance to be a boy. That was one wonderful thing about Teddy Roosevelt, he was just a great big boy all his life. But he was a man too. Now today we don't know what it is to be still.

The patron saint of today is St. Vitus. And everybody's in a dither, what can we do, what can we do? I didn't ask what can I do when I was a boy, father saw to that. But we had time to do nothing. And there were times when we did nothing, sometimes as important as when we did something.

We had time to be still, walk in the woods, sit before the open fire and think. I don't think anybody ever thought of anything worth thinking about looking at a steam radiator. But now you push a button.

Everybody's sitting in front of the TV, developing eyes as big as cantaloupes and brains the size of peas. My Bible says Isaac meditated in the field at eventide. Now if he'd take across the field these days meditating, somebody'd say poor Isaac.

Off his rocker. I walk a lot, yes, one thing keeps me going, it's my only un-American activity. I get to a town sometimes and ask where's the post office and they say you're driving, no I'm not driving, walking.

Well, you'd never make it, never make it. Four blocks down the street. I was at a conference out in the mountains of Tennessee not long ago, a crowd of preachers out there and I couldn't get them up in the morning to meditate and be still.

One morning the good Lord intervened. The horn on one of their cars went crazy. And every preacher thought it might be his car. So here they came, rather miscellaneous garb, but they came. I said you see, I couldn't get you up, the Lord got you up one time early in the morning.

Old William Law used to say who am I that I folded up in the bed late of the morning when the farmers were about their work and I'm so far behind with my sanctification. That ought to get us up. But today everything's organized, supervised, planned, programmed and correlated.

You just don't walk, you have to take an organized hike. You see a fellow just walking down the road meditating. They figure he's either out of his head or out of gas, one of the two. I'm a bird watcher, that's one of my hobbies.

Done that all my life, trying to get acquainted with our songbirds. And, but now you've got to join the club, keep records. 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 working by love becomes highly organized religious activity.

Childlike Faith Versus Childish Immaturity

You remember that the Thessalonian folks had a work of faith and a labor of love and a patience of hope. But the Ephesus crowd just had work and labor and patience and that won't do it. Now in the light of this text there are three kinds of folks, children, verse 2, Jesus took a little child and set him in the midst of them.

I've never heard a sermon on this, the silence is profound. Some Christians would be more comfortable if the Lord had used a business tycoon or a scholar or some popular hero as his model. But here's one who puts a child in the midst and upsets all our pet standards, very disconcerting to us adults who like to act as if wisdom would die with us.

But the Lord didn't mind that. Then the childish, Matthew 11, but whereunto shall I liken this generation? It is like unto children sitting in the markets and calling unto their fellows and saying, We've piped unto you and you've not danced, we've mourned unto you and you've not lamented.

For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He hath the devil. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold a man gluttonous and a wine bibber, a friend of publicans and sinners, but wisdom is justified of her children.

John the Baptist came fasting, and Jesus came feasting, and they called John a demoniac, and they called Jesus a glutton. Nothing suited them. They were like spoiled children who've had too many toys.

We still have plenty of them in the churches today. They've been petted and pampered, but no kind of preaching suits them. If the wrath of God is preached, the preacher is 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 tone, he's deafening. If he stands still, he's a statue. If he moves around, why, he's a sensationalist. Nothing suits him. That used to bother me a lot until I learned how to identify these children in the marketplace.

They were playing, mind you, at it, playing at it. They piped, they played wedding, they mourned, they played funeral. And the whole business looked real, but it was just make-believe. And Jesus said that hypocrisy is play-acting, and play-acting is hypocrisy.

And there's a lot of it in the church. I was invited to Tremont Temple in Boston some time ago for meetings, and they said, we need somebody to say something about playing church. Well, I'd heard about that all my life, but we need some preaching about it.

We have spiritual babies who won't grow up, milk feeders who ought to eat meat, carnal Christians, not newborn babies desiring the sincere milk of the word, overgrown babies who become such as need milk, and meat, and not merely milk.

These 150 and 200 pound church babies keep the preacher busy running around with a milk bottle, and they ought to have been on beefsteak a long time ago. And they're the ones that cause all the trouble, these church babies.

I don't mean the ones in the nursery, I mean the other crowd. And when you call a new preacher, they say, I don't like him, he changed my formula. They're a headache and a heartache to any pastor, pouting, selfish, to whom John the Baptist would be only a demoniac and Jesus a glutton.

But then a childlike, and there's where the text comes in, a revival, beloved, is when childish church members become childlike, just that. It's a hard lesson to learn. We have to be converted first. Let's get the order straight.

Growing Up Into Christ While Recovering Childlike Wonder

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.

Paul said to them as a child, I spake and understood and thought as a child, but I grew up. We're not to remain babes in Christ, but grow in grace. But to become childlike, there's not so much to learn as there is to unlearn.

You see, this secret's been kept from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes. There ought to be about every child of God an expectancy and a sense of surprise. Faith is not believing that God can.

Anybody knows he can. It's believing that he will. We don't look for miracles. We don't see many. We pray for rain. We don't take our umbrellas. Oh, I never want to get to where I don't start for a meeting without saying, maybe tonight will be the big night.

Maybe this will be the time when the fire will fall. Anything can happen. Happiest fellow in the world is a young Christian before he's met too many Bible scholars. Doesn't know any better than to believe the Bible.

I had a meeting in Richmond some years ago, and I had a fellow join the church on Sunday, brand new Christian, and he came every night. Some of the deacons didn't make it, but he was there. He didn't know any better.

He thought you were supposed to come, and I'd look at him over there and look for some of these deacons. I'd say under my breath, Lord, don't let him catch on. Don't let him find out that you get over it and you lose the wonder.

You take it for granted. Sometime ago in Kansas City, I was there in a simultaneous meeting and talking to the preachers every morning at breakfast, and one young preacher came up and said, Brother Habner, I sometimes think that verse about let no man despise thy youth, and that was spoken to a young preacher, said there's such a thing as a preacher despising his own youth.

Well, I thought that one over a little bit, and he said, I mean this, 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. The spiritual honeymoon is over, and grim reality has smothered our zeal.

We loved the Bible back then. We loved the Lord, didn't know any better, didn't want to tell everybody. But we grew up, and we got educated and established an experience. Now we look down with condescending distaste on some brash young Christian like we were once, and we say to him, oh yes, I used to expect miracles, but I got over it.

And we look irritated when some young Timothy comes along to remind us of better days that we had. If you ever lose this wonder, it's pretty hard to regain. Some folks never get it back. Now you can regain it, but there's a price to pay.

It'll humble your pride and shatter your complacency, but it's worth it. To have your youth renewed is equal. One of the greatest senators we ever had in Washington, William E. Borah, said there are two stages in every movement, the apostolic and the mechanistic.

Woe unto a Christian when he moves from the apostolic to the mechanistic. When he gets to where grace does not appear as precious as it did the hour he first believed. When he becomes like those iron fountains that A .J. Gordon used to tell about, the fountains one sees in public squares, with the water gushing out their mouths, but they never taste it.

And the salt loses its savor, and they become good for nothing, but they be cast out and trodden underfoot of men, insipid and flat and tasteless. Beloved, there ought to be something about the Christian experience to smack the lips over.

There ought to be a taste and a zest and a relish. In vain we tune our formal songs, in vain we strive to rise. Hosannas languish on our tongues, and our devotion dies. Well, I've seen more cheerful faces on iodine bottles than I've seen on some saints in the last few years.

The Church at Ephesus and the Loss of First Love

Where is the blessedness I knew when first I saw the Lord? Where is the soul-refreshing view of Jesus and his word? Now, the trouble at Ephesus was not that they had gotten into false doctrine. It wasn't that their theology was low, it was that their experience was flat.

It wasn't worldliness. They weren't playing bingo in the basement. 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 until you traffic an unfelt truth.

You work in the bakery and lose your taste for the bread. Many a tailor goes in rags, said old Richard Baxter. Many a tailor goes in rags who maketh costly clothes for others. And many a cook scarcely licks his fingers when he hath dressed for others the most costly dishes.

And how true that can be of a preacher. Missionaries sometimes come over here and after spending a little while in America, they say, let me get back. And I want to get back where it has a taste. A preacher had better stop in his tracks if he finds himself moving from the apostolic to the mechanistic.

A lot of churches today think they need a new preacher, and they don't. They need the same preacher renewed. That's the outstanding need. No use praying, Lord, use me. I used to pray that. God's using you now all he can, up to your usability.

What you ought to pray is, Lord, make me usable. He'll wear you out. You'll say, Lord, you're about to kill me. I didn't know you were going to use me like that. God is using us all that he can, but not all that he could.

I wish I could disturb some preacher tonight, some Christian with that. He's shorthanded. The harvest is plenteous and the labors are few, and the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the earth, looking for somebody, waiting to show himself strong in the behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward him, not waiting to show us strong in his behalf, but himself strong in our behalf.

That's what he's looking for. God's on the lookout. Don't ever ask him to use you. Get usable. I used to think that leaving your first love and lost joy applied only to confirmed backsliders who'd quit praying and reading the Bible and going to church.

But there are church workers and Sunday school teachers and preachers working harder at it than ever who have left their love and lost their joy, and they wouldn't think of admitting it. They probably don't really realize it.

Sometimes the preacher's wife discovers it a long time before he does. Or somebody else. And so we have these shorn Samsons from whom the Spirit has departed, binding, blinding, and grinding. That was his lot at last.

Bound, blind, grinding. He said, I feel all right. I look all right. I'm going out to shake myself. I'm going through the old calisthenics again. Oh, I get into so many churches where they're going through the same old calisthenics.

And wish not. They don't even know the Holy Spirit's departed. Samson in a treadmill. 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 they dread going to church. Oh, Malachi said, they said, behold, what a weariness is it. No wonder. No wonder the sermon bores them. No wonder the Sunday school lesson puts them to sleep. We grow weary in well-doing, church visitings, drudgery, and singing in the choirs of chore.

We used to sing, I stand amazed in the presence of Jesus the Nazarene, and wonder how he could love me, a sinner condemned unclean. Now we don't sit amazed. We want to sit amused. And so we brought into the church everything under the sun that may tantalize some of these poor Athenians out and tickle their ears.

It makes me so tired. Every time the world comes up with something new, here comes the professing church trotting along, imitating. They've tried every time. Church at Ephesus said, we're going to have a folk concert.

Church at Thyatira, they've got a fellow that can pick a guitar and blow a harmonica and beat drums all at the same time. Sardis says, we're not going to be outdone, so we'll put on Aunt Dinah's quilting party.

Everybody come dressed like they did a hundred years ago, and we'll all see Nelly home. And then Olad, the seer, said, we're going to have a talking horse. I heard of one some time ago. We had him trained and said, how many commandments?

And he stomped 10 times. How many apostles? Stomped 12 times. Some smart aleck out in the crowd said, how many hypocrites in this church? He went into a dance on all fours. They're moving continually among churches, some of which started in a fire, and they're living in the smoke.

Got over the honeymoon. I heard of an old couple the other day, and the old man thought he ought to say something good to the dear woman he'd lived with so long. He said, I'm proud of you. She couldn't hear well.

She said, hey? He said, I'm proud of you. She said, I couldn't understand. He said, I'm proud of you. Oh, yes, he said, I'm tired of you, too. And you know, we get tired of it, and we lose that love. Now, it's not a matter of recovering the same degree of excitement and ecstasy that you had at the start.

That isn't it. But there's a deeper growing love and trust and comradeship in marriage. You don't expect to have the same manifestation that you had in your 20s, but it grows sweeter as the years go by.

Spiritual Maturity and the Church's Generational Life

You can't retain the spirit of childhood by wearing old-fashioned rompers and pigtails in the 20s and 30s and 40s. Wouldn't you be a sight to see? Grow up! But I've seen old folks grow sweet with an increasing devotion that ripens in the autumn and the snows of winter.

Thank God I've seen Saints like that, too. A church ought to stay young with a constant influx of new Christians and the seasoned maturity of old Christians. Young folks keep it from going too slow, and the old folks keep it from going too fast.

Some mountain up with wings in youth, and others running and not weary in middle age, and others walking and not fainting in old age. Now, you get that combination, all of them in love with Jesus. You got some.

You know the old story, back in the days when they had no air conditioning on the trains and that fellow riding along as the train crossed the country, and everybody was about their smother in the heat, and he was sitting over by the window looking out at the fast passing landscape.

Every once in a while he'd say, Wonderful! Well, the rest of them couldn't quite get the idea, as miserable as they were. Finally, one man went over to him and said, Friend, I don't get it. The rest of us are about to die, and you sit over here every once in a while and you say Wonderful.

Please explain. Well, he said, Until a few days ago I was blind, and a great doctor is stored in the side, and he said, What's ordinary to you is out of this world for me. Oh, beloved, if the great physician has opened your eyes, and you've been to the Pool of Solomon and come back seeing, if you've had the touch and no longer see men as trees walking, if all this has happened to you, why shouldn't you make your way through this world saying, Wonderful, wonderful Jesus is to me.

What a wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord, saving me, 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 the Son.

Conversion and the Freshness of New Faith

Back to conversion. Back to child likeness. About three years ago my pastor in Greensboro said, I want you to meet the most remarkable new Christian you've ever seen. He was the head of the drama department of the University of North Carolina across the street from where I live.

For 45 years his wife prayed that he'd be a Christian. Smart, spoke several languages, a master of drama, versed in literature, and then all of a sudden he got saved. Hadn't been to a meeting. I run around with him.

We're both in our 70s, and we old septuagenarians like to stick together. And I said, how did it happen? He said, I didn't hear your sermon. Didn't go to church. Said, God woke me up in the middle of the night and showed me what a miserable old sinner I was.

And he got saved right there. Came down the steps next morning, said to his wife, I'm going to church with you tonight. She said, I'd prayed for 45 years, but then nearly fell over, didn't I? That man is like a kid with a new toy.

I've never seen such childlike, utter enthusiasm and devotion and excitement about Jesus Christ in my life. He's going everywhere. Telling about it. He doesn't know one church from another, you know. He just goes wherever the door's open to brag on Jesus Christ.

Now, that's second childhood. You know, a lot of fellows my age, they say, well, he's in his dotage. He's back in his second childhood. Yeah, but this is another kind of second childhood. He's in it. And he's got me under conviction because I figured that if he's like that, I've only been a Christian three years.

Here I've been one ever since I was a kid in Sunday school. I said, how about you? Friend, I'm getting in a jam over this thing. Now you better think a little bit about that too. You see, we get over it.

Campbell Morgan says, begin again as though you'd never known him and with all the simplicity of a little child. Now, you can call it what you want to, first love, victorious life, revival. I don't care what you call it.

The secret of a growing and a going and a glowing Christian experience is to be able to say with Gypsy Smith, I've never lost the wonder. I made this talk sometime ago in a mountain conference and Billy Graham came out that morning, did me the honor of coming to the service, sat in the pulpit.

It's been quite a while now, in fact, and we walked out to dinner and Billy said, well, that was for me. Said, I tell my staff, tell the team every once in a while, if we ever get over it, to use your term, we're sunk.

Personal Renewal Through Solitude and Suffering

If we ever get used to it, all the organization and all the personality and all the efficiency and all the rest of it, won't amount to a thing in this world, if we get over the wonder. I remember not so long ago after preaching out at Old Corinth Church in western North Carolina where I had grown up, I slipped away for the night to my boyhood home in the hills.

I still own it just for sentiment's sake. Humble little house, stands on top of a hill overlooking at night the lights in five towns, one way and the Blue Ridge Mountains in the other. And everybody else, I sent them to bed.

I said, I want to be by myself. I remember not so long ago after preaching out at Old Corinth Church in western North Carolina where I had grown up, I slipped away for the night to my boyhood home in the hills.

I still own it just for sentiment's sake. Humble little house, stands on top of a hill overlooking at night the lights in five towns, one way and the Blue Ridge Mountains in the other. And everybody else, I sent them to bed.

I said, I want to be by myself. When I sat alone on the front porch and rocked in the chair like a little boy, I needed to be converted and become his little child. I'd been preaching all over the country, too much.

One of your great preachers, I told you about it at supper, Hill, who came out the other day and said, I've been preaching too much. He said, a good preacher just preaches once a day. He said, sometimes a good preacher will preach twice a day, but a jacklegged preacher will preach all day if anybody listens to him.

Well, I said, I've been jacklegging, I think, all over the country. And I needed my soul restored. And I felt like praying, turning backward, turning backward, O time and thy flight, make me a child again, just for the night.

I'd heard so much argument among the saints all summer, and all neo this and neo that, with all that wordy wisdom. I just had to go somewhere to get the taste out of my mouth. And I found myself singing with this old cracked voice of mine out there on the porch and knew nobody was listening.

Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so. Little ones to him belong, they are weak, but he is strong. And I found myself answering back to him and saying, I love thee, because thou hast first loved me, and purchased my pardon in the care of this tree.

I love thee for wearing the thorns on my breast. Forever I love thee, my Jesus. I needed to be converted and become a child. The first of last year, I was greatly exercised about a closer walk with God.

I prayed for it. I said, I want you to bring me to where you're all I want. Where I can sing, now thee alone I seek, give what is best, instead of lying about it like I've done. I want you to bring me to where you are glorified at any cost.

But I didn't know what the cost was going to be. Don't you ever ask God to bring you to himself at any cost unless you're ready to pay the price. He took me up on it, and I sat for six months by the bedside of a dying eye.

I've been through the saddest year of my life, but out of it all, and as you sing, through it all, I've had the greatest blessing I've ever had in my life. I learned some things in the dark that I never learned in the day, and I've been preaching a long time.

There was a lot of dross that needed to be burned in order that the gold might be refined. I don't think we're ever going to see much of revival, so people for once sing that old song and mean it. Once, certainly, joy I crave, so peace and rest.

Now thee alone I seek. Just give me what's best. How to get you over the guillies, just give what's best. I've come into a new place, beloved, and a large place. Sometimes God takes the most precious.

Sometimes he takes your help. Sometimes he takes your money. No matter what he takes, it's worth it. If you get converted again and become childlike in your spirit, well, how do you do it? Well, the way to be childlike is to be converted, and that means turn.

Conversion means two things, you know, in the scriptures. Sinners shall be converted. That's the conversion of regeneration. But then Jesus said to Peter, when thou art converted, strengthen the brethren.

Decision Must Become Obedience

We need a lot of that. And as Brother Taylor has emphasized, and you can't emphasize it too much, or even enough, decision must be followed by obedience. Just trotting down the aisle every once in a while and then going back to be the same thing you were before.

That's not it. It says the prodigal son said, I will arise and go to my father. What's the next thing? And he arose and went. Now, you see, the decision, it got down into his feet. I sometimes say two frogs were sitting on the edge of a pond.

They decided to jump. One of them decided to jump. How many frogs that lead? Everybody says one. I said, no, I didn't say he jumped. He said he decided to jump. When I was a boy, we used to line up down in the holler down there below the house.

I don't know what you call them out here in Texas. And we jumped together. A little old ravine down there had been washed out. It was quite a contest amongst, you know, we'd go running like everything, but I'd get right up to it and dig both heels in the dirt and couldn't make it.

I think there's a lot of folks that never jumped together. They've been down to more altars and made God more promises and never did jump together. They never made the rear. They've made, they've taken the step, but they've never had the walk.

And as you walk, you will become as a little child in the second childhood of the spirit. I'm greatly interested in this church. I've been hearing about it. Wouldn't take anything in the world for having been here.

I'm going about all over the country. I've been asked a lot about this church and about this preacher. And I've heard pro and con, you know, it's just like the house. And it said, you start anywhere for the Lord today and you will run into a lot of trouble.

That's a good sign. Devil doesn't bother. Some people are not doing anywhere. I don't know. I wasn't in your great revival back there a few years ago, but my heart's prayer for you is that you won't just merely try to recover any certain excitement.

But that you'll move on and be, do you need to be converted again, maybe and become childlike and have a new chapter? And I think we all do from time to time. Watch it. Because God started something around here and it's going on.

It's going to grow. But you can't just hark back and maybe the same feeling you had back there. And turn from any selfishness, turn from anything God points out is wrong in your life. Say, Lord, I want to get to the place where you're all I want.

Just give me what's best. You get to that blessed place where you haven't got anything, you got everything. That's what Paul said, and that's the greatest paradox I ever read. You get a man to that place where he's got nothing and everything both.

That's a great state to be in. But the devil can't do anything to a fellow like that. Devil say, I'll give you this and I'll give you that. And Christian says, you can't have got everything. That makes him mad.

And you say, I'll take this from you and I'll take that. And Christian says, you can't. I don't have anything. Now, when you get to that place, God's ready to do something. May the Lord help us to be converted and to become his little child.