May the risen and ascended Lord be with you in power and love today! On this Ascension Day 2026, our local church community (Walmer Methodist) is worshiping at 10h00 at the Newton Park Methodist Church and at 18h30 at Walmer Methodist. If you’re local, you’re invited to join us.
Prayer
Before you read, I invite you to pray this prayer, which is the third verse from the modern hymn ‘Speak O Lord‘:
Speak, O Lord, and renew our minds
Help us grasp the heights of Your plans for us
Truths unchanged from the dawn of time
That will echo down through eternity
And by grace, we’ll stand on Your promises
And by faith, we’ll walk as You walk with us
Speak, O Lord, ’til Your church is built
And the earth is filled with Your glory. Amen.
Briefly prepare your heart in silence, and ask the Holy Spirit to awaken your awareness to the voice of God, coming to you through His Word.
Reading
In a world where self-advancement is the order of the day and getting ahead in life depends on self-promotion, the Kingdom of God is fundamentally different. A citizen of the kingdom of this world is motivated by personal ambition, prestige, publicity, popularity and profit. But, it is not so in the Kingdom of God..
According to Jesus in today’s passage, when it comes to the Kingdom of God, unless we humble ourselves and become like little children, we will neither enter the Kingdom of God nor attain any greatness in the Kingdom of God.
The very fact that the disciples were asking about how to attain greatness in the Kingdom shows that they had the wrong end of the stick and were headed in completely the wrong direction. That’s why Jesus started by saying, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” In the older version this verse reads something like, “Assuredly, I say to you, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven.”
The disciples needed to repent of their prideful pursuit of “greatness” and be converted to the pursuit of humility. They needed to humble themselves! To be a citizen of the Kingdom means to completely embrace the path of “self-forgetfulness” and to pour ourselves into a life of humility, which aims at making the lives of others greater through service and not at making our own lives greater through grasping power and prestige.
To become like a little child emphasizes the place of trustfulness and dependence.
Children are naturally dependent on those who love and care for them, and they are perfectly content in that position. The Christian disciple is called to embrace a position of utter dependence on God who loves and cares for us, and to find in Him our strength and our peace.
Children are completely trusting by nature. In this world, that is sometimes to their detriment when they put their trust in an untrustworthy adult. But God our Father is perfectly trustworthy. So the Christian disciple is called to trust the LORD with everything we are and have.
Only then will we truly be living the life of the Kingdom!
Contemplation
Please take time to ponder what Jesus has commanded us. Turn these declarations over in your mind. Keep them in mind throughout the day and live in step with our King, Jesus.
As a disciple of Jesus Christ,
- I will pursue an attitude of humility in all my dealings with the Lord and people.
- I will embrace a position of complete dependence on the Lord.
- I will trust the Lord with everything I am and everything I have.
Loving God, help me to humble myself and embrace a childlike dependence on and trust in You. Amen.
Dave's Diary 
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