How Problems Can Protect Our Kids

All this week we’re looking at five lessons from the persecuted church regarding how God uses problems and persecutions for our good and His glory. These are lessons that we must teach our kids as they grow up in a youth culture that’s increasingly set against the Gospel and God’s people. Today’s lesson is this: God uses problems and persecutions to correct us. If you are like me, you know that there are some lessons that are learned only through pain and failure. The Psalmist makes this clear in the words of Psalm one-hundred-nineteen, verse seventy one: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” Paul Estabrooks from the Open Doors USA ministry to the persecuted church writes this: “John seventeen clearly teaches that God does not desire to have His church in the comforts of a problem-free society. He desires for His church to be faithful in the midst of trials and testing.” Teach your kids to welcome life’s difficulties as God’s pathway into a deeper faith.