What is the hardest word to say in the English language? It is “No.”
Each fall, our family heads up north to our cabin in the woods to clean up from the summer and prepare the cabin for the chilly “up north winter.”
Like many modern families, our members attend a variety of Christian churches. Therefore, when we come together, we often do our own style of “family prayer” which I usually lead. Our typical format is to sing, pray, and do a Bible study. This year, we read the story of the rich young ruler in Mark 10:21-30.
Each person read a verse of the story and all participated in the discussion of it. We noted that the rich young man’s problem was not the overabundance of goods but rather too little faith. We then prayed for the needs of those present including my grandson, a sophomore at a public high school. I specifically prayed that the Lord would protect him and keep him safe from all dangers that could come against him — and especially that he would have the grace to say “no” when it was the right thing to say.
About four weeks later, some of his cross-country teammates asked my grandson to go with them into a building posted with “No Trespassing” signs. He said, “No, that’s not the right thing to do.” The others entered the building anyway, were caught by the police, and sentenced to community service. They were also disqualified from the cross-country team for the remainder of the season.
“No” is the hardest word to say in the English language, but my grandson’s “No!” resulted in a lot of us saying a resounding “Yes!” because he handled the peer pressure correctly.
For Discussion: What family events do you have coming up soon?
For Action: Work on two or three ways you could use the event to pass on character building or faith content. Choose the best.
William Navarre is a grandfather from Michigan who leads weekly Bible studies for Jackson College students.
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