The Christian Home
Teaching Children About Adversity

Parents must teach their children that they can not run away from problems, that we all have in life. The devil will work at trying to convince us that it is to hard to live the Christian life. Our children need to learn what the apostle Peter warns in 1Peter 5:8-9, “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” We need to make our children aware that when we start serving the Lord, the way He wants us to, we may be in conflict with family members, friends, co-workers, and neighbors. This is because we are living for God now and putting Him first in our lives.

Giving up is not an option for the Christian. A lot of God’s people have gone through rough times. Joseph spent years in prison for something that he did not do. His brothers sold him and he ended up in Egypt and spent years in prison. Surely, Joseph felt the separation from his family, but he never turned away from God. Then there was Job. Talk about hard times; he lost everything and even his wife said, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? curse God and die” (Job 2:9-10). Listen to what Job said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and not adversity? In all of this Job did not sin with his lips.”

We may lose our family members not through death, but because they don’t want to be near anyone who is close to God, and that would be very sad. Jesus said in Luke 14:26, “If anyone comes to Me and does not hate [love less] his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes even his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.” Loneliness is hard to deal with. Our children need to learn this at an early age, and they need to learn that they can do all things through Christ who strengthens them.

Satan will always come at us with such things as: “You are going to grow weary” or “You can't keep it up.” Always think about what we read in Galatians 6:9, "And

let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.” We grow weary about a lot of things, our jobs or raising our children, but we do not give up on these things.

Going through hard times helps us to appreciate what we have in the Lord. Without difficulties, we would not understand hard times others are having. Without hardship, we would not know how to help each other. We may have to stand alone sometimes for doing what is right. At the end of our life here, we are promised the crown of life. “...be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev.2:10).

Irene Shephard
Fairfield, CA.

Proverbs 22:6 - Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Ephesians 6:4 - And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

Deuteronomy 11:18-21 - Therefore shall ye lay up these my words in your heart and in your soul, and bind them for a sign upon your hand, that they may be as frontlets between your eyes. And ye shall teach them your children, speaking of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt write them upon the door posts of thine house, and upon thy gates: That your days may be multiplied, and the days of your children, in the land which the Lord sware unto your fathers to give them, as the days of heaven upon the earth.