WHAT HAPPENED TO WONDER
One of my favorite movies growing up was Hook. In it, Robin Williams plays an adult Peter Pan who has left Neverland far behind. He’s become an attorney, weighed down by responsibilities and consumed with the busyness of life. Somewhere along the way, Peter lost his ability to imagine, to dream, to live with wonder. The movie is his journey back—back to Neverland, back to his true self, back to the awe and adventure he once knew.
There’s a moment in the movie that always brings tears to my eyes. One of the Lost Boys, “Pockets”, carefully contorts Peter’s face until he uncovers a smile buried under years of stress and cynicism. When he finds it, Pockets exclaims with childlike joy, “Oh, there you are, Peter.”
That scene is more than nostalgia for me. It’s a mirror. Pockets sees something in Peter that Peter can no longer see in himself—the fearless, imaginative spirit he once had. And in many ways, this blog—and the larger journey we’re embarking on together—is my attempt to play Pockets with my own heart and, hopefully, with yours.
Like Peter, many of us have found ourselves miles from Neverland. We’re consumed with the worries of life, and our sense of wonder and imagination has been stifled. We live in the black-and-white world of postmodern skepticism, detached from the God of limitless power, love, and creative energy who is intimately invested in our lives. It’s time to go back—to rediscover the childlike wonder we’ve lost and to see God as He truly is.
When I read the New Testament—especially the book of Acts—I can’t help but feel a disconnect between the early church’s experience of faith and our own. The apostles lived in a reality where the presence of God was undeniable, supernatural, and life-altering. People were healed, demons were cast out, and entire communities were transformed.
Does our modern experience of Christianity feel congruent with that?
I don’t think the primary issue is moral corruption or cultural secularization. The early church faced persecution and paganism, yet they still thrived in awe and wonder. Nor do I think it’s because God has stopped moving. His Spirit is alive and at work today, just as He was then.
The problem is that we’ve lost our eyes for Him.
We’ve become so focused on what’s tangible, measurable, and explainable that we’ve trained ourselves to see only what fits into our frameworks of logic and control. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, we’ve stopped looking for the ways God is moving all around us. The awe that once drew us to Him is replaced by routine, and the wonder that once fueled our faith is dulled by distraction. It’s not that God has stopped working—it’s that we’ve stopped noticing. We’ve lost the ability to see Him in the miraculous and the mundane, to recognize His presence in both the quiet and the spectacular.
We don’t need the Spirit to give us boldness because we’ve mastered marketing strategy. We don’t need the Spirit to radically transform hearts because we have discipleship pipelines. None of these things are inherently bad, but they’ve become the tail wagging the dog. In our desire for control, we’ve diminished our view of God into something more palatable, more manageable. And in doing so, we’ve lost the awe and wonder that should define our faith.
Years ago, when our daughter Caylee was about two, we took her to Disneyland. For me, Disneyland is still fun—it’s nostalgic and entertaining—but as an adult, it’s lost some of the magic. I know how the rides work. I know there are people inside the costumes. I know how much it costs to take my family! The fairytales feel more like novelty than reality.
But through Caylee’s eyes, it was pure wonder. Every castle was real. Every character was alive. Every ride was an adventure. Watching her reminded me of something profound: there is a difference between experiencing something with detached familiarity and experiencing it with childlike awe.
The same is true of our faith. Many of us start our journey with a sense of wonder, captivated by the beauty and mystery of God. But over time, we begin to analyze and dissect our faith. We become more familiar with the "mechanics" of church, theology, and life as a Christian. Faith becomes functional rather than transformational.
We lose the winsomeness of believing in a God who moves mountains, answers prayers, and does the impossible. And without realizing it, our faith begins to feel more like a checklist than an adventure.
Children are full of imagination. They don’t approach the world with skepticism or cynicism; they approach it with curiosity and confidence. When Caylee met a princess at Disneyland, she didn’t question whether it was “real.” She simply believed and delighted in the experience.
Jesus values this kind of faith. When the disciples tried to shoo away the children who came to Him, Jesus rebuked them, saying, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these” (Matthew 19:14).
In fact, Jesus said that unless we become like little children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 18:3). This isn’t just about humility, though humility is part of it. It’s about wonder—about believing with confidence that God can do anything.
Psalm 131:1-2 captures this beautifully:
“My heart is not proud, Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. But I have calmed and quieted myself, I am like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child I am content.”
Childlike faith isn’t naïve; it’s bold. It embraces mystery and approaches God with wide-eyed wonder. It dares to dream and believe beyond what we can see or understand.
The whole story of Scripture compels us to imagine and to re-embrace our childlikeness. When Jesus appeared to His disciples after the resurrection, He shattered their understanding of reality. When He taught in parables, He stretched their thinking, challenging their cultural, doctrinal, and ideological norms.
In the early church, spiritual imagination wasn’t just a nice idea—it was a way of life. The disciples healed the sick, cast out demons, and boldly proclaimed the Gospel, living in the awe-filled reality of God’s active presence. Philip, for example, went to Samaria and preached the good news of Jesus. As he did, miraculous signs followed: unclean spirits were cast out with loud cries, the paralyzed and lame were healed, and the city was filled with joy (Acts 8:7-8). Even Simon the sorcerer, a man who had previously astonished the people with his magic, believed and was baptized when he saw the power of God at work through Philip (Acts 8:9-13).
These events weren’t confined to a moment in history—they were the fruit of a faith that expected God to move in extraordinary ways. For the early church, spiritual imagination wasn’t optional; it was the lens through which they experienced and participated in the unfolding of God’s kingdom.
How do we read stories like this today? Some categorize them as “cessationist” miracles, believing God no longer works that way. Others embrace a “continuationist” perspective, longing to see God move in similar ways. But regardless of our theological positioning, I think way too many of us live as functional cessationists—we don’t deny that God can work supernaturally, but we don’t live as though He will. Why? Because it’s safer to assume the natural. It’s less risky to live without expectation than to risk disappointment.
But what if we dared to believe again? What if we embraced the seemingly irrational love of God—the God who lavishes grace, who seals us with His Spirit, who fills us with immeasurable power (Ephesians 1:3-19)? What if we stopped trying to rationalize our faith and instead celebrated the absurdity of a God who would create, love, and sacrifice for us—and lived in bold anticipation and expectation?
The Gospel is, by human standards, utterly irrational. It’s the story of a God who uses flawed, broken people to accomplish His purposes:
Paul, the persecutor of the church, became its greatest missionary.
David, a murderer and adulterer, became a man after God’s own heart.
Moses, a coward, became the deliverer of Israel.
Faith will always require an element of the irrational and imaginative—it requires us to embrace mystery. Oswald Chambers once said, “If your imagination is starved, do not look back to your own experience; it is God Whom you need. Go right out of yourself, away from the face of your idols, away from everything that has been starving your imagination. Rouse yourself… and deliberately turn your imagination to God.”
So, how big is your God—honestly? What would it look like to lift our eyes to Him and imagine anew? To approach Him with the wide-eyed wonder of a child?
This is the invitation of childlike wonder. To rediscover awe. To rekindle the supernatural impulse that reminds us God is not small, predictable, or tame. He is vast, creative, and deeply invested in our lives. We will get to the “how” in the coming weeks, but for know be encouraged, the God who imagined the universe hasn’t stopped creating. He’s still calling, still inviting, still moving in ways that exceed anything we can ask.
