Adaptability
Let your kids help you prepare a chocolate fondue, and use it as a metaphor to help your children understand how God uses tough times to refine us.
Find and follow your favourite chocolate fondue recipe. As you add “bricks” of chocolate, pretend the chocolate chunks are bricks of gold.
While you and your kids watch the chocolate melt, talk about how gold is heated up to high temperatures to burn off any impurities and improve the quality of the gold. The heat makes the gold pure.
In the same way too, the “fire” or the stove top are like the difficulties we face in life. As we experience trials, God wants to use our discomfort to teach us to trust Him.
When life gets hard we can be tempted to:
- feel sorry for ourselves
- lose hope in God
- get angry and blame others for our circumstances
- have a bad attitude
- refuse to believe that any good can come out of the situation.
However, that’s not how God wants us to respond. Instead, God wants us to keep a hopeful and joyful attitude and remember that He is with us. In that way, we cooperate with God so He can use our trials to make us pure, like refined gold.
We know exactly when it is time to take the chocolate off the stove, so it doesn’t burn. So it is with God: He knows exactly how much “heat” we can handle.
As you enjoy your fondue together as a family, share a simple summary of the story of Job, a man who loved God even when God allowed all kinds of dreadful things to happen to him. Follow up by asking the questions for discussion.
Questions for discussion
- What do you think Job meant when he said in Job 23
“My foot has held fast to His steps; I have kept His way and have not turned aside”
? - What do you think Job meant when he said,
“I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my portion of food”
? - Job said that although he knew God was at work, Job couldn’t see Him. Have you ever wondered if God is really with you?
- Job also said that God was testing him so he could “come out as gold.” What kind of a problem could make you feel like God was testing you?
- Has there ever been a time when you thought life was getting too hard for you to handle?
Relevant Scripture
Job 23:8-12 “Behold, I go forward, but He is not there, and backward, but I do not perceive Him; on the left hand when He is working, I do not behold Him; He turns to the right hand, but I do not see Him. But He knows the way that I take; when He has tried me, I shall come out as gold. My foot has held fast to His steps; I have kept His way and have not turned aside. I have not departed from the commandment of His lips; I have treasured the words of His mouth more than my portion of food.”
Proverbs 17:3 “The crucible is for silver, and the furnace is for gold, and the Lord tests hearts.”
- Acceptance
- Adaptability
- Attentiveness
- Christmas
- Compassion
- Confidence
- Consideration
- Contentedness
- Cooperation
- Courage
- Courtesy
- Discernment
- Easter
- Faithfulness
- Forgiveness
- Generosity
- Gentleness
- Gratitude
- Harmony
- Honesty
- Humility
- Joy
- Kindness
- Obedience
- Patience
- Perseverance
- Respect
- Responsibility
- Reverence
- Righteousness
- Self-control
- Thanksgiving
