I love teaching children the Bible! What a privilege! Today we have awesome resources available to help equip us! I have access to many children’s books, curriculum and web sites. Even Pinterest has thousands of ideas for stories and crafts so we can teach our children the Bible. But if there’s one thing that saddens me, almost to the point of nauseousness, is when authors turn a Bible story character into the hero of the story.
For two days on my blog , I’ve shared about studying Mark 1:30,31 where Jesus heals Simon Peter’s Mother-in-law. I’ve pondered it for many hours, wondering the best approach to teach it to the children. I asked myself, Who is the hero in this story?
- Is it Simon Peter, who told Jesus about the sick relative?
- Is it the woman who was sick?
- Is it Jesus?
I trust it’s so obvious to you that Jesus is the hero! But one site I looked at said,
“Simon Peter’s mother-in-law is today’s hero, because she showed us the gift of health.
No! No! No! This lesson isn’t about health any more than the story of Naaman is about taking a bath! Nor should the emphasis be placed on being kind to our mothers-in-law! The important truth in any story of the Bible is Jesus. He is always the Hero of the story!
I encourage you as moms, grandma’s or teachers of children not to weaken the Bible lessons by giving it some kind of humanistic point, rather than allowing the child to see Christ! To do that is to skip the reason God gave us His Word.
But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name. John 20:31
Let’s point to the real message in every story, and make our children know that Jesus is the Hero of the Bible!!
What Bible lessons do you think are easiest to miss the point of Christ being the hero?
RefreshHer 
Thank you for this reminder. It is easy to point to the human in a Bible story and talk about the “great” things they did. Just like with David, often we say David defeated the giant with a sling and a stone, but what we should say is God defeated the giant by using David. The latter perspective allows us to see that God is the true defeater of our giants.
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Perfect illustration! Thank you!
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