David McGaughey
It was February 15th, 2010, I was sitting on a couch in the living room of my country home. I was doing my best to read a picture Bible I'd gotten recently, but the pictures were too captivating to ignore, especially the one with Jesus on a cross. I asked my mom "why did Je Je die?" And with that, I heard the gospel for the first time. It was then that I prayed to recieve Jesus as my Savior, at just over three and a half years old.
Something I've questioned time and time again as I've matured is my understanding of what I'd done that day. Did I really receive the Holy Spirit then, let alone understand the gospel? I've come to believe that we grow in our relationship with the Father just as Jesus did, slowly but surely, even as a child (Luke 2:52). The maturity of a Christian can be compared to learning to speak. Our parents, in many ways, teach us as infants how to talk, with new words flying at us that we can't understand. That doesn't mean we can't hear and try to say the words back, developing our understanding as we grow up. That's a way we can describe faith: following God because you see him as your all-powerful Father who will never let you down.
It took a long time to notice changes in my spiritual life, mostly after I started working with Child Evangelism Fellowship through CYIA as a 13-year-old. Within that surrounding year, I felt God give me desires for wisdom and spirituality, asked him to take sins and pain away, and had to grow up and put away childish things (1 Corinthians 13:11). On the other hand, I've seen God's craftsmanship in my life through childlikeness that I pray I will never lose. I hope I always trust God and follow in his footsteps, even though I'm prone to wander. Working in children’s ministry has kept my heart young, and for that, I thank the Lord, but the battle still rages. My testimony has been my heavenly Father by my side for almost as long as I can remember, and I'm holding to hope that next to him, I'll always be the little teary-eyed boy who said yes to Jesus.