We moved around quite a bit growing up (my go-to icebreaker is that by the ninth grade, I had gone to nine different schools), and, as such, my dad figured that the best way to get to know the new town or area we had moved to was to get lost. So, my dad would often wake me up on a Saturday morning with the prompting, “Let’s go get lost!”With that invitation, I would scramble out of bed, throw on clothes, brush my teeth, and hop in the car—ready and waiting to explore the new city. Looking back, what stands out to me is that “getting lost” actually had little to do with exploration and a lot more to do with spending time with my dad. My dad could have woken me up saying, “let’s go fishing,” or “time to go for a hike,” or “we’re going to China,” and my response would have been the same—anywhere my dad was going, I wanted to go too.

When You Slowly Drift Away from God Without Realizing It

However, as the years waned on, I began to care less and less about spending time with my dad and more about other things. By the time I was heading off to college, ready to get lost on my own, I was caring a lot more about spending time with my friends or boyfriends or even just time alone. And in retrospect, it was a bit of a mirror of what was happening in my faith as well.

I came to faith as a child, and I had an honest desire to do whatever the Lord asked of me. I would read about great heroes of the faith like the Apostle Paul, Joan of Arc, Corrie Ten Boom, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, people who seemed to do anything the Lord asked of them, and I wanted to be like that. I wanted to become a woman who, when the Lord asked, “Who will I send?” would boldly declare, “Send me, Lord!” In that way, my faith seemed pure and simple.

But as I grew older, I became more concerned with my own wants and needs rather than simply being obedient to the Lord. It started in small ways. I stopped consistently reading my Bible and spending time in prayer. I began to care a lot more about fitting in with my peers. I dated guys and had relationships that I knew didn’t honor God. I slowly but surely became more and more concerned with glorifying myself more than glorifying the Lord. And as my disobedience grew, life seemed to get more and more complicated.

When Life Feels Complicated and You Feel Lost

I became focused on and overwhelmed by the busyness of life. I felt confused about how I should live my life. I was lost.

But this time, I wasn’t purposely lost. I wasn’t on some adventure. I was lost because I was no longer spending time with the God I loved.

During my junior year of college, this all came to a head. I was sitting at my desk in my small sorority house room. I had just broken up with a boyfriend I should have never dated in the first place. I was supposed to be writing a paper, but I just couldn’t focus, so I picked up my copy of My Utmost for His Highest, which happened to be sitting on my desk, and turned to the devotional for the day, January 15th. The passage for that day was about baptism and how we are buried with Christ by baptism so that we can walk in the newness of life (Romans 6:4). I had been baptized as a child, but it was in that moment that I became painfully aware of how much I was still walking in sin. I wasn’t walking in the “newness of life”; instead, I was trudging in the muck and mire of my selfish desire, hungry to fill every pitiful fleshly need. But it did not satisfy me. In fact, it left me hungrier. And as I reflected on my sin and the ways I had abandoned the faith of my youth, I began to weep.

What Jesus Meant by Faith Like a Child

Life was more complicated because I had made it more complicated. Life was complicated because I had abandoned the simplicity of the gospel, which beckons to come closer with these enduring words, “Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it” (Luke 18:17).

And how does a child receive the kingdom of God? A child receives it humbly, trustingly, and with a desire to simply know God more. It is a lot like the confidence of my seven-year-old self, who would gladly hop in the car with my dad because it didn’t matter where we were going as long as we were together. It is an imperfect analogy, but it points us to the simple, childlike faith Jesus spoke of.

How to Come Back to God, Even After You’ve Wandered

And so that night, as I sat weeping at the desk in my sorority-house room, I came back to God. And that was the beginning of a very imperfect journey of learning to have childlike faith, and it is a journey you are invited to take, too.

To learn more about what it means to have childlike faith, pick up our newest book, Uncomplicated | Simple Faith in a Complicated World. The book will be released on November 9, 2026, but you can sign up for launch notifications by clicking here.

If you liked this article, check out the related resources linked below!

Author Bio:

Jennie Heideman is the Editorial Director at The Daily Grace Co.®  She resides in Spokane, Washington, with her husband, two boys, and an Australian Labradoodle. True to the Washingtonian stereotype, she loves coffee, reading, and day hikes.

Related Resources:

Faith Foundations | A Study on the Basics of Christianity		Abide Bible Study		How to Come to God Like a Child
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