Matt.18:2,3 – Then Jesus called a little child to Him, set him in the midst of them, and said, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.

Years ago there was an elderly lady in the church we all called “altar call Shirley”. If you can’t guess she earned that name by answering every single salvation altar call ever given in our church. Miss Shirley went to heaven many years ago but I still think of her during the altar calls at Victory. Before you judge her for not having an “assurance” of salvation you might want to hold on for just a moment. The Lord checked me when watching Shirley one day, He said it is humility that causes her to keep coming forward. In that sense Miss Shirley was like a child, she didn’t care what others thought, she just wanted to be right with God. The Puritans spoke about multiple “conversions” in a person’s life. Here is how Matthew Henry described that.

“You must be converted, you must be changed. Besides the first conversion of a soul, there are later conversions from particular ways of backsliding. Every step out of the way by sin must be a step back to it again by repentance. You must become as little children. Converting grace makes us like little children. Like children, we must not worry about anything, but leave it to our heavenly Father to care for us. We must be humble like little children. The child of a gentleman is pleased enough to play with the child of a beggar. This is an attitude that leads to other good attitudes; the age of childhood is the age of learning.”

I love to give salvation altar calls. I love to see people come to that life changing moment in their life when they finally say yes to Jesus. Now don’t get me wrong, I know that going through the motions, praying the prayer, coming to the front doesn’t convert a soul. But what it does is give someone the opportunity to open their heart to Jesus. That is what the Lord was getting at in today’s verse; we must be converted and become like children. Have you come to that place of total humility, childlike humility that says, “I need Jesus in my life”? If not maybe, just maybe, today is the day. Let Jesus convert you and make you one of His children.