THINK TOGETHER
Who in your life is an example for you to follow?
READ TOGETHER
Becoming a Christian is supposed to be very easy. All you have to do is have faith in Jesus Christ and his death for you on the cross. You don’t have to earn your salvation, or win it, or perform for it. It is a simple gift.
But living as a Christian is supposed to be hard. Why do I say that? Because when we become a Christian we are called to follow Jesus. And Jesus has chosen to suffer, and so to follow him is to suffer too. Here’s how Peter says it in his letter to Christians:
1 Peter 2:21. For to this [suffering] you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps.
Jesus left Heaven and came to Earth. He left all his comforts, and all his riches behind so that he could come to love us and walk alongside of us in our hard times. Jesus chose to suffer “for you” so that you could live with him forever one day without any suffering.
But until that day we are still on Earth aren’t we? And here on Earth, Jesus wants us to live like he did. He is our “example.”
And how did Jesus live while he was on Earth? He chose to enter into the hard times with others. And he experienced those hard times too, didn’t he? He chose to suffer, and be sad, and be criticized, and even crucified so that we could all have eternal life.
Now it’s very important to remember that God doesn’t want us to try to be sad, and he doesn’t want us to go looking for sad and difficult things. But as you grow up you’ll see that sad and difficult things have a way of finding us and the people around us. And many Christians spend a lot of their time trying to ignore sad things, or make hard things go away. And God doesn’t want us to do that either. He wants us to be like Jesus. He wants us to use the hard things to help ourselves and others to trust God more and more each day.
Can you do that? Yes, if you have Jesus you can, because he is doing it through you.
Because of Jesus we won’t suffer forever.
With Jesus we can choose to follow him, even into suffering so that others might live.
DO SOMETHING TOGETHER
Play a game of Follow the Leader. Wherever the “leader” goes everyone else goes too. Talk to your kids about following Jesus wherever he leads – even into hard things, sad things, and suffering.
PRAY TOGETHER
Jesus,
Help me to be like you today. Help me to not run away from hard things, but instead to help others to make it through them while learning to trust you.
Amen.
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