 I am sure that some of you who are reading this can remember attending Sunday school and church services when you were children. In Sunday school, hearing the Bible stories being read and the flannel graphs being used to help us see the story more vividly. Our childlike faith in what was being taught allowed us to just believe. No wonder the Lord said in Mark 10:15; “assuredly, I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will by no means enter it.” Then on to church to be bored to tears as most of it was delivered to an adult audience with a message that I could never grasp as a child. We heard the stories, learned what we were suppose to do and how we were suppose to walk as victorious Christians, but was never really taught how to accomplish living the life we were commanded to live in the Word of God. I saw a complete contradiction as I looked at the lives that sat there week after week hearing the words but never seeming to receive the power preached to live the words spoken.
By the time I was in high school the story of the miraculous was brought to the level of unbelievable and fantasy. With the teaching of evolution, the school helped me believe more and more that the Bible was a book to teach us how we should live, but that it was something that seemed so un-obtainable in our day and age. I couldn’t see the miraculous God that I learned about through the teachers in Sunday school. I didn’t see the living God, the miraculous God in my life, our home life behind closed doors was anything but the way the Bible said it should be. I couldn’t see God in any of it! It was as if the stories taught were exactly that, stories!
Satan seems to have pulled all the stops when it comes to our children today. With the divorce rate as high IN the church as IN the world, our children have, from that moment on, a new set of rules they need to live by, no more mommy and daddy, but mommy and Frank and daddy and Jenny or just mommy or just daddy or worse. Immediately they are thrown into doubting the power of God to heal the broken hearted and to repair that which is broken. Where is God in all of this hurt and destruction?
Then they have in school the TEACHERS contradicting the Word of God by teaching the THEORY of evolution as FACT! So now they have heard the Word of God about creation while being taught the opposite in a place of LEARNING. Where is God in all of this?
Then there’s the sex and violence that is being portrayed in the movies, music, electronic games and oh yes of course at HOME via television. This is the home where they are taught to go to church every Sunday and say their prayers every night. Where is God in all of this? How can God say it’s wrong to have sex before marriage when “Friends” says it’s okay? How can God say it’s wrong to murder another human being while the Christian family sits around being entertained by the violence portrayed all over the television screen? How can God say it’s wrong to open our minds and spirits to witchcraft while Harry Potter books and movies are breaking records in sales to non-Christians and to Christians alike? How can our children, when they spend 1 to 2 hours a week in church hearing what is sin and not to walk in it, understand when the remaining time is spent living as the world lives? Where is God in all of this?
I believe our children are taught the Word of God, only to come away doubting because, we as the teachers, fail to live the lives God has commanded us to live, TO LEAD BY EXAMPLE. Unless, we are an example of living the life taught us through the scriptures, in Sunday school and church, our children will end up walking as the world walks, with no identifying features of the power of God, because God, which is His Word, is left on the shelf after church. We MUST be doers of the Word and not just hearers only, deceiving yourselves. James 1:22
It is so important today, not only to teach the children the stories from the Bible, but also to teach them, by example. It is time we as adult Christians, through the power of the Holy Spirit that God sent to live in us, begin to live victorious lives. As the Word of God testifies, Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father but is of the world. 1 John 2:15,16
Jacquelyn Leone,
Jericho Junction Ministries
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