Teach Obedience With Lessons From The Lord

I think it is hard for kids to obey. It’s not even a popular concept in our culture. We are all born with the nature to only listen to ourselves. Parents and teachers don’t always deserve to be obeyed, and some situations are just plain hard to obey.

Case in point: Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego going against the King’s edict to worship a statue of him. Their obedience to God first to only worship him meant they would be thrown in the fiery furnace. In the fiery furnace, the three men were miraculously rescued, and God himself was with them in the fire. We, too, are miraculously rescued—not from a fiery furnace but from hell itself by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.

I remember this story from childhood. It’s one of those action-packed Bible stories that captures children’s attention. At first, it seems the main point is to be brave like the three men. But the Bible actually shows us that their power and motivation to obey God was because they knew he loved them and was always with them. That powerful truth is the same for our children.

God tells children in his Word: “Children obey your parents IN THE LORD”(Ephesians 6:1). 

Our kids need to know that they are God’s embrace all the time and that he is with them now and forever and lives in them by his Spirit. You Are More: When Obeying is Hard shows these amazing truths to children in an easy-to-understand way.