Peer Pressure

Read: Romans 12:2; 1 Corinthians 10:13; Titus 2:11-14

“It’s okay, just go ahead and grab them. No one’s looking!”

Maggie was at the arcade for Leah’s birthday party. Maggie and all Leah’s friends were running around playing games, winning tickets, and having a great time. That is, until Leah noticed the little door to one of the games was slightly open. One of the arcade employees had opened it to refill the tickets and forgot to close it, leaving the tickets unguarded!

Leah came up to her friends with a huge armful of tickets. “Heyyy, look what I got!” she sang happily.

“Whoa, no way! How’d you get all those?” one of her friends asked.

Leah led the way and pointed to the game with the open ticket door. One by one, her friends ran to grab tickets while the other girls stood guard to make sure no one saw what they were doing. When everyone had gotten tickets, they encouraged Maggie to do the same.

“That’s okay,” Maggie said. “I don’t need any. That’s stealing.”

“It’s not stealing,” they argued. “The employee should’ve shut the door if he didn’t want us grabbing tickets.”

Maggie knew it wasn’t the right thing to do, but…everyone else had done it! And she did really want those tickets. So with her friends blocking her from the view of any onlookers, Maggie went and grabbed some tickets from the game.

Later, when Maggie’s mom came to pick her up from the party, Mom said, “Wow! You got a lot of prizes there.”

“Yeah…” Maggie mumbled as her guilty conscience set in. “But I didn’t really earn them, Mom.” And she told her mom what had happened.

“It can be hard to do the right thing, especially when everyone else is doing something you know is wrong,” Mom told her. “But we can trust God to help us do the right thing. I’m really thankful God forgives us for our mistakes when we confess our sins to Him, because we all mess up. Because of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, God forgives all our sins.” Mom put an arm around Maggie. “Let’s go tell the arcade employees what happened. And let’s be thankful for God’s gift of forgiveness and trust Him to help us when we’re tempted to do the wrong thing.”

–Elizabeth Cooper

How about you? Do you struggle with peer pressure? When others are doing something wrong, are you tempted to do what they’re doing? When you feel tempted to do the wrong thing, pray to God and trust Him to give you strength to do what is right. If you mess up and do the wrong thing, confess your sin to God and know that He always forgives us when we make mistakes.

Today's Key Verse: God is faithful…When you are tempted, he will show you a way out so that you can endure. 1 Corinthians 10:13 (NLT)

Today's Key Thought: God helps us do the right thing