Joe Imel/Daily News Guest speaker Barbara Cameron was featured at the 16th Annual Bowling Green Area Prayer Breakfast at the Carroll Knicely Center Tuesday . The annual event is attended by several hundred people and benefits the Salvation Army and Habitat for Humanity.

Speaking of the balancing act between keeping her faith and raising famous children, Barbara Cameron said she struggled to maintain her perspective.

“Although I believed in God, my life didn’t demonstrate the fruit of salvation,” said Cameron, the mother of Kirk and Candace Cameron, who became famous as kids through their respective roles on TV shows “Growing Pains” and “Full House.”

Cameron – guest speaker at the 16th annual Bowling Green Area Prayer Breakfast, held this morning at the Carroll Knicely Conference Center – said her personal struggles with her marriage and faith were not too different from those dealt with by other people.

That they occurred in the Hollywood spotlight, however, made matters more challenging.

A mother of four, Cameron talked about how she and her family arrived at their faith and explained what she considered three important things to know in order to raise children to know salvation through Jesus Christ.

The first component, she said, is to understand there is a right time for everything.

Just as Kirk and Candace benefited from fortuitous timing in securing acting roles, Barbara Cameron said it was important to recognize that children could not be forced to accept salvation before understanding what that means.

“You don’t want to cheapen God’s gift of grace, so kids need to understand sin in its true light,” said Cameron, who is now a talent agency consultant and sits on the board of directors for the Children’s Hunger Fund. “It has to be God’s timing, and God’s timing is always perfect.”

Giving children an understanding of sin and salvation, just like supporting their efforts to succeed in school and elsewhere, requires discipline – which Cameron identified as the second important thing to know.

Thirdly, Cameron said it was important for parents to lead by example, citing her charity work with the Children’s Hunger Fund, which has involved several trips to Africa to provide food to children there.

“Our children learn from us, and if you don’t have the faith that shows that you care for others, your children may not care either,” she said.

About 275 people attended the annual prayer breakfast, which is geared toward the area business community.

“This helps to encourage the business community in Bowling Green and Warren County by bringing in speakers that have had tremendous success in their fields but have come to learn that fame, fortune and notoriety aren’t their goals in life,” prayer breakfast president Mike Wilson said. “Their faith in Christ instructs how they live.”