Children in God’s Big Story

Sheryl Grunwald

When we think about God's big story, we see how God was acting right from the beginning
creation through the fall. We see people in the history of Israel, trying to find their way back to
God to understand the promise of God. We see how Jesus came and brought reconciliation for
all that had happened, and then the church which is the act that we are in right now, living out
the power of the Holy Spirit and God's commission to make disciples of all the nations. And of
course, we know that at the End of Time, the last act will be the new heavens and the new Earth
that God will bring in restoring wholeness to the brokenness of our world.

But when we think about God's big story throughout scripture, where are children? Where are
children in the story? Do they have a place in the story? Sometimes, as people read through the
Bible, they don't pay a lot of attention to what it says or the children that God uses as a part of
living out, or acting out the big story. But in reality, children play a very important part in God's
big story.

Think about some of the children that you remember from the bible stories you may have grown
up with, or that you've read as an adult. Right from the beginning, we see God working through
children. Think about Isaac. He was a child that God taught Abraham about with the sacrifice.
He was also a gift that was given to Abraham. We see the story of Ishmael, a child who was
thrown out of his family. But then God heard him crying and showed that he is a God who is
near, a God who cares. Think about Miriam. She was just a girl, but she was sent to watch her
infant brother Moses when he was placed in the basket in the Nile River, and then had the
courage to go and talk to Pharaoh's daughter and say I can find someone to care for this baby.
Well, what about Samuel. As a child, he was serving in the temple with Eli the priest and then
God spoke to him. And he became a prophet to the nations, even as a child. David is probably
one of the most famous. And we know the story of him being anointed as a child to become
king. We see how he defeated Goliath as a child to restore the honor of the nation of Israel,
because he knew his God was stronger than the god of the Philistine army. There's young
children that became kings, Joash and Josiah both became kings as children and were
righteous kings. They made good godly decisions. There's a little girl we read. She was
Naamans wife's servant. We don't even know her name, but she had the courage to speak to
her mistress and say, there is a prophet that can heal your husband of leprosy. Well, what about
Esther? A young teenaged girl in a foreign country, being given to become a queen for a foreign
King and then suddenly being thrust into the position of having to stand up and be an advocate
for her whole people, her nation and becoming a savior for the nation or Daniel and his three
friends. Again, probably just a youth but taken to a foreign country and being forced with a
choice. Do I obey the king or should I obey what God has taught me to do?

When we look in the New Testament, we see the stories about Jesus as a baby. Even Jesus as
a 12 year old boy in the temple, having spiritual theological discussions with the religious
leaders there. We see as Jesus moves into his ministry how there was a boy that had five
loaves and two fish and Jesus took that simple gift and used it. A miracle to feed more than
5,000 people on a hillside. Or we see how Jesus in some of the healings he did, healed Jairus’
daughter or brought her back to life. Or the Canaanite woman's daughter who was with an evil
spirit. Or some other man whose son was possessed. Jesus often was doing healing with
children. We even read how the children were in the temple after the triumphal entry of Jesus,
and Jesus is receiving their shouts as they're saying, Hosanna to the son of David and Jesus
says, from the words in the mouths of children and infants, God ordains praise. And so, as we
go through the scriptures, even into the church, we think of Rhoda who opened the door and
believed that it was Peter, when nobody else thought he could be out of prison. Or Timothy who
as a child was learning the scriptures and then being mentored by Paul. So from the beginning,
in Genesis, all the way till the the New Testament, we see that children played a role in God's
story.

Children are not an afterthought in the Bible. The word child is mentioned a hundred and
twenty-one times children is over 440 times. The word, son, or sons more than 2700 times. And
I'm not talking about Jesus being called the Son of God. There's mention about the firstborn, the
firstborn child, over a hundred times. When it says boys and girls, almost 200 times. And there
are dozens of stories like the ones I've mentioned that mention children. And Roy Zuck in his
book, Precious in His sight, reminds us that all together children and family related words occur
more than 8,000 times in scripture. 8,000 times. It's not an afterthought. Children are a part of
God's big story. And of course, when we look at scripture, we realize that most of the stories of
children are exactly that. They are descriptions. They’re descriptive stories, or narratives of
something that happened to children or how God used children. However, in every single
example, we encounter this unchanging God, and see how he is interacting with children.

Well, let's think about a couple of those children that I mentioned earlier and how God actually
used them as instruments to bring wholeness from the brokenness of the world around them.
One of the most famous is David so I don't think I'll spend a whole lot of time with him. But even
though he was a simple shepherd boy, he was living in a culture that was being oppressed by
another army. The Israelite army was weak and the Philistine army had a great champion.
David didn't go out to the battlefield that day to say, I'm going to fight a giant. He went out to
care for his brothers, bring food for them, see how they were doing. But when he heard the giant
shouting out blasphemies to the people of God, David was angry. He's like, how could they say
this about my God? He had such a faith in God, that he said, he can't do this. And when all the
soldiers were afraid, this young boy stands up and says I'll fight the giant, He didn't want to do it
in the way that people thought he would. When King Saul tried to put his armor on David, David
says, I can't fight this way. I need to fight the way that I know. And he just took a sling and a few
stones and he fought the giant. And the giant thought it was a joke and you know cursed him.
But David said you come against me with your club, your spear, your sword, but I come against
you in the power of God. And David knew very clearly that it was because of God, that he would
have victory. And when he did, he restored the honor of a nation. It wasn't just about a boy
fighting a giant. It was about a boy who understood God's big story and wanted to see God's
honor restored into the people that he loved, and the people that were his people. And so there
was brokenness in the nation, and because of David's boldness, and trust that wholeness was
restored into the nation itself.
Well think about that little girl, Naaman’s servant girl, that we don't even know the name. She
was a servant which was actually probably a slave. She was trafficked because of the wars that
were happening between Israel and Naaman’s country. And she was just serving in a country
she didn't know, away from her family, away from her culture, away from her religion. But
somehow this girl had faith in God and she said to her mistress, If my master would just go and
ask the prophet, he could be healed. She could have said, I don't care about this man; I'm a
slave in this household, but she knew something about God. And because of her boldness to
speak up to her mistress and pass on the news about the prophet, Nahum ended up going to
Samaria. The prophet Elijah talked to him, told him to dip in the water and he was made whole.
It helped repair what was going wrong between those two countries, the conflict and the fighting
between the two countries and it probably averted further conflict. And so this little girl by one
word was actually doing something pretty amazing to save her country from further war. And
that's a wonderful thing.

So, when we think of all these children, like David, like Samuel, like Miriam, Esther, all of these
children were in act 3 and act 4 of God's Story. The thing is God's story is still being written
today. We're in act five and children today can still be a part of what God is doing to restore
wholeness to the broken world around you. And so if you think about your context, think about
the children you know, how might God be using them as part of his big story. I'd like to share the
story of a child I met not too long ago. She was actually a teenager. She was in Delhi, New India
and about 16 years old. I was doing a training for children's ministry workers and most of the
people that were coming in were teenagers from age 12 to 17 years old, and they were working
in children's clubs in the slums of Delhi. And so this girl, I'll call her Nikki, was one of the
teenagers in the group, and I heard her story. You see? She did not grow up in a Christian
family. She grew up in another religion and had never heard of the name of Jesus, but this
church began a children's Club in her community. And when she was about nine years old, one
of her, had invited her come to this children's club. ‘We have lots of fun there, we do songs, we
tell stories, all of this.’ And so, Nikki went along with her, and even though she never knew
about Jesus, she didn't know the stories of the Bible, she really liked the songs. And you know
what children do when they learn songs and they like to dance along with the songs. She would
go home and she would sing the songs and do the dances when she went home.

Now her parents were really unhappy about that and sometimes her mother would even beat
her for just singing these songs about Jesus. But Nikki kept going to the club. One day not too
long after she started going, she heard the story about Jesus healing someone. And she
realized this Jesus is a healer. And Nikki realized he can be a healer in my family's life, because
her mother had a chronic illness and was constantly sick. So that day, Nikki went home from the
club and she says, ‘Mommy, Jesus is a healer, Jesus can heal you.’ And of course, her mother
says, Don't talk to me about Jesus. I don't want to learn anything about Jesus.’ But Nikki
decided in her very simple faith, I'm going to ask Jesus the healer to heal my mom. So she was
even just beginning to learn what prayer was. And she prayed, Jesus heal my mom and that
day a miracle happened. Her mom was healed and because of Nikki's prayer, her whole family,
her mom, her dad, her siblings, and some of the neighbors, chose to believe in Jesus Christ.
Because of this little girl and her boldness, and her heart for Jesus.

When I met Nikki, she was 16 years old. And now she was a leader of one of those children's
clubs. She knew that Jesus was real. She knew that he could bring wholeness to the
brokenness. She was a kingdom champion and she was teaching other children, her community
about the message, the hope that Jesus could bring to their broken community.

I heard a couple of years later, she's now 19 years old. Now, Nikki is a leader, she is working
with a team of 20 other leaders and they're working with 600 kids in the slums every single
week. Nikki is it one of those kids in God's big story. So when you look at the children around
you don't see just a child. See a person who has a role in the big story as a child, come
alongside of them, encourage them, give them the opportunities because children are still being
used by God. Because his story is not yet finished.